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Adam Smith Biography

Adam Smith FRSA (16 June 1723 NS (5 June 1723 OS) – 17 July 1790) was a Scottish economist, philosopher and author as well as a moral philosopher, a pioneer of political economy and a key figure during the Scottish Enlightenment era. Smith is best known for two classic works: An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations (1776) and The Theory of Moral Sentiments (1759). The former, usually abbreviated as The Wealth of Nations, is considered his magnum opus and the first modern work of economics.

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Adam Smith Quotes

Civil government, so far as it is instituted for the security of property, is in reality instituted for the defense of the rich against the poor, or of those who have some property against those who have none at all.

Defense, Government, Property, Reality, Rich, Security

The annual produce of the land and labour of any nation can be increased in its value by no other means, but by increasing either the number of its productive labourers, or the productive powers of those labourers who had before been employed.

Annual, Increasing, Land, Mean, Numbers, Powers

Wonder. . . and not any expectation of advantage from its discoveries, is the first principle which prompts mankind to the study of Philosophy, of that science which pretends to lay open the concealed connections that unite the various appearances of nature.

Advantage, Discovery, Knowledge, Philosophy, Prompts

A gardener who cultivates his own garden with his own hands, unites in his own person the three different characters, of landlord, farmer, and labourer. His produce, therefore, should pay him the rent of the first, the profit of the second, and the wages of the third.

Character, Garden, Gardener, Hands, Rent

Fear is in almost all cases a wretched instrument of government, and ought in particular never to be employed against any order of men who have the smallest pretensions to independency.

Cases, Men, Order, Ought

On the road from the City of Skepticism, I had to pass through the Valley of Ambiguity.

Ambiguity, Cities, City, Progress, Road, Valleys

To hinder, besides, the farmer from selling his goods at all times to the best market, is evidently to sacrifice the ordinary laws of justice to an idea of public utility, to a sort of reasons of state; an act of legislative authority which ought to be exercised only, which can be pardoned only in cases of the most urgent necessity.

Ideas, Law, Market, Sacrifice, Times

Goods can serve many other purposes besides purchasing money, but money can serve no other purpose besides purchasing goods.

Besides, Economics, Purchasing, Purpose, Purposes, Serve

In ease of body, peace of mind, all the different ranks of life are nearly upon a level and the beggar who suns himself by the side of the highway, possesses that security which kings are fighting for.

Fighting, Kings, Mind, Ranks, Side, Suns

The liberal reward of labor, therefore, as it is the necessary effect, so it is the natural symptom of increasing national wealth. The scanty maintenance of the laboring poor, on the other hand, is the natural symptom that things are at a stand, and their starving condition that they going backwards fast.

Hands, Maintenance, Rewards, Backwards, Things

China is a much richer country than any part of Europe.

Country, Europe, China

The game women play is men.

Game, Games, Men, Play

A power to dispose of estates for ever is manifestly absurd. The earth and the fulness of it belongs to every generation, and the preceding one can have no right to bind it up from posterity. Such extension of property is quite unnatural.

Absurd, Bind, Earth, Estates, Generations, Property

The mob, when they are gazing at a dancer on the slack rope, naturally writhe and twist and balance their own bodies, as they see him do.

Empathy, Dancer, Balance, Slack, Mob, Naturally

Whatever work he does, beyond what is sufficient to purchase his own maintenance, can be squeezed out of him by violence only, and not by any interest of his own.

Doe, Maintenance, Squeezed, Sufficient, Violence

A monopoly granted either to an individual or to a trading company has the same effect as a secret in trade or manufactures. The monopolists, by keeping the market constantly understocked, by never fully supplying the effectual demand, sell their commodities much above the natural price, and raise their emoluments, whether they consist in wages or profit, greatly above their natural rate.

Competition, Constantly, Emoluments, Secret, Trading, Wages

The subjects of every state ought to contribute towards the support of the government, as nearly as possible, in proportion to their respective abilities.

Abilities, Government, Progressive Taxation, State, Support, Towards

The discipline of colleges and universities is in general contrived, not for the benefit of the students, but for the interest, or more properly speaking, for the ease of the masters. Its object is, in all cases, to maintain the authority of the master, and whether he neglects or performs his duty, to oblige the students in all cases to behave toward him as if he performed it with the greatest diligence and ability.

Benefits, College, Discipline, Duty, Ease, Students

Never complain of that of which it is at all times in your power to rid yourself.

All Time, Complain, Complaining, Economics, Power, Times

But though empires, like all the other works of men, have all hitherto proved mortal, yet every empire aims at immortality.

Empire, Empires, Immortality, Like, Men, Works

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