Adam Smith Quotes

There is no art which one government sooner learns of another than that of draining money from the pockets of the people.

The man whose life is spent in performing a few simple operations of which the effects too are, perhaps, always the same or very nearly the same, has no occasion to exert his understanding, or to exercise his invention. He generally becomes as stupid and ignorant as it is possible for a human creature to become.

Consumption is the sole end and purpose of all production.

To found a great Empire for the sole purpose of raising up a people of customers, may at first sight appear a project fit only for a nation of shopkeepers. It is, however, a project altogether unfit for a nation of shopkeepers; but extremely fit for a nation that is governed by shopkeepers.

The principle which prompts to save is the desire of bettering our condition – a desire which…comes with us from the womb and never leaves us till we go into the grave.

Capitals are increased by parsimony, and diminished by prodigality and misconduct. By what a frugal man annually saves he not only affords maintenance to an additional number of productive hands…but…he establishes as it were a perpetual fund for the maintenance of an equal number in all times to come.