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  • Adam Smith Quotes   204
  • Every individual necessarily labors to render the annual revenue of society as great as he can. He generally neither intends to promote the public interest, nor knows how much he is promoting it. He intends only his own gain, and he is, in this, as in many other cases, led by an invisible hand to promote an end which was not part of his intention.
  • 5 years ago



    Tags : Adam Smith Quotes , Hands Quotes , Invisible Hand Quotes
  • It is the interest of every man to live as much at his ease as he can; and if his emoluments are to be precisely the same, whether he does or does not perform some very laborious duty, it is certainly his interest, at least as interest is vulgarly understood, either to neglect it altogether, or, if he is subject to some authority which will not suffer him to do this, to perform it in as careless and slovenly a manner as that authority will permit.
  • 5 years ago



    Tags : Adam Smith Quotes , Men Quotes , Suffering Quotes
  • 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.
  • 5 years ago



    Tags : Adam Smith Quotes , Hands Quotes , Rewards Quotes
  • Consumption is the sole end and purpose of all production; and the interest of the producer ought to be attended to only so far as it may be necessary for promoting that of the consumer. The maxim is so perfectly self-evident that it would be absurd to attempt to prove it. But in the mercantile system the interest of the consumer is almost constantly sacrificed to that of the producer; and it seems to consider production, and not consumption, as the ultimate end and object of all industry and commerce.
  • 5 years ago



    Tags : Adam Smith Quotes , Self Quotes , Purpose Quotes
  • I am always willing to run some hazard of being tedious, in order to be sure that I am perspicuous; and, after taking the utmost pains that I can to be perspicuous, some obscurity may still appear to remain upon a subject, in its own nature extremely abstracted.
  • 5 years ago



    Tags : Adam Smith Quotes , Running Quotes , Pain Quotes
  • The emotions of the spectator will still be very apt to fall short of the violence of what is felt by the sufferer. Mankind, though naturally sympathetic, never conceive, for what has befallen another, that degree of passion which naturally animates the person principally concerned.
  • 5 years ago



    Tags : Adam Smith Quotes , Fall Quotes , Passion Quotes
  • 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.
  • 5 years ago



    Tags : Adam Smith Quotes , College Quotes , Discipline Quotes
  • It is not by augmenting the capital of the country, but by rendering a greater part of that capital active and productive than would otherwise be so, that the most judicious operations of banking can increase the industry of the country.
  • 5 years ago



    Tags : Adam Smith Quotes , Country Quotes , Banking Quotes