Best Adam Smith Quotes

Adam Smith Quotes About Education, Invisible Hand, Economics, Government, Self- Interest, Greed, Human Nature & Capitalism! Adam Smith, a Scottish economist, and thinker, was an influential member of the Scottish Enlightenment and a founder of political economics. He is also renowned as “The Father of Economics” or “The Father of Capitalism” for his contributions to the field. He was born on June 5th, 1723.

During his time at the University of Glasgow and Balliol College, Oxford, Smith received scholarships from fellow Scot John Snell, who had established a scholarship fund for Scottish students. His outstanding public lectures at the University of Edinburgh led him to collaborate with David Hume during the Scottish Enlightenment, which he achieved after graduating from college. Smith was able to secure a position as a professor at Glasgow, where he was able to teach moral philosophy.

During this period, Smith authored and published The Theory of Moral Sentiments. Later in his life, he accepted a post as a tutor, which gave him the opportunity to travel throughout Europe. During these travels, he met some prominent intellectual giants of the day. For the first time, an entire political economy was laid out in a comprehensive framework. That work, which has come to be known as the “Bible of capitalism,” was a forerunner in the development of economics as an academic study. After writing his book on free-market economics, he paved the way for the world to learn about it for the first time.

The book was included in a list of the 100 most excellent Scottish books. In addition to his fiscal theory, Adam Smith was a renowned moral philosopher and a pioneer of economic ideas. He passed away on July 17th, 1790. His comments are still applicable to today’s society’s glaring financial requirements, moral values, and the real things that guarantee a better life and a happier future.

Best Adam Smith Quotes

1. Science is the great antidote to the poison of enthusiasm and superstition.-Adam Smith
2. The first thing you have to know is yourself. A man who knows himself can step outside himself and watch his own reactions like an observer.-Adam Smith
3. The real tragedy of the poor is the poverty of their aspirations.-Adam Smith
4. Happiness never lays its finger on its pulse.-Adam Smith
5. No complaint… is more common than that of a scarcity of money.-Adam Smith
6. What can be added to the happiness of a man who is in health, out of debt, and has a clear conscience?-Adam Smith
7. Humanity is the virtue of a woman, generosity that of a man.-Adam Smith
8. Never complain of that of which it is at all times in your power to rid yourself.-Adam Smith
9. On the road from the City of Skepticism, I had to pass through the Valley of Ambiguity.-Adam Smith
10. The propensity to truck, barter and exchange one thing for another is common to all men, and to be found in no other race of animals.-Adam Smith
11. Adventure upon all the tickets in the lottery, and you lose for certain; and the greater the number of your tickets the nearer your approach to this certainty.-Adam Smith
12. Great ambition, the desire of real superiority, of leading and directing, seems to be altogether peculiar to man, and speech is the great instrument of ambition.-Adam Smith
13. I have never known much good done by those who affected to trade for the public good.-Adam Smith
14. This is one of those cases in which the imagination is baffled by the facts.-Adam Smith
15. Labor was the first price, the original purchase – money that was paid for all things.-Adam Smith
16. Defense is superior to opulence.-Adam Smith
17. The theory that can absorb the greatest number of facts, and persist in doing so, generation after generation, through all changes of opinion and detail, is the one that must rule all observation.-Adam Smith
18. Nothing is more graceful than habitual cheerfulness.-Adam Smith
19. No society can surely be flourishing and happy of which by far the greater part of the numbers are poor and miserable.-Adam Smith
20. A merchant, it has been said very properly, is not necessarily the citizen of any particular country.-Adam Smith
21. The world neither ever saw, nor ever will see, a perfectly fair lottery.-Adam Smith
22. It appears, accordingly, from the experience of all ages and nations, I believe, that the work done by freemen comes cheaper in the end than that performed by slaves.-Adam Smith
23. Virtue is more to be feared than vice, because its excesses are not subject to the regulation of conscience.-Adam Smith
24. Goods can serve many other purposes besides purchasing money, but money can serve no other purpose besides purchasing goods.-Adam Smith
25. The division of labour was limited by the extent of the market.-Adam Smith
26. The problem with fiat money is that it rewards the minority that can handle money, but fools the generation that has worked and saved money.-Adam Smith
27. Problems worthy of attacks, prove their worth by hitting back-Adam Smith
28. Every man lives by exchanging.-Adam Smith
29. Wherever there is great property, there is great inequality.-Adam Smith
30. The learned ignore the evidence of their senses to preserve the coherence of the ideas of their imagination.-Adam Smith