35 Inspirational Adam Smith Quotes On Success

Adam Smith was a Scottish economist, philosopher as well as a moral philosopher, a pioneer of political economy, and a key figure during the Scottish Enlightenment, also known as ”The Father of Economics” or ”The Father of Capitalism”. Smith wrote two classic works, The Theory of Moral Sentiments (1759) and An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations (1776). The latter, often abbreviated as The Wealth of Nations, is considered his magnum opus and the first modern work of economics. May these Adam Smith Quotes On Success inspire you to take action so that you may live your dreams.

1. “Happiness never lays its finger on its pulse.” Adam Smith

2. “Individual ambition serves the common good.” Adam Smith

3. “Nothing is more graceful than habitual cheerfulness.” Adam Smith

4. “Labour was the first price, the original purchase – money that was paid for all things. It was not by gold or by silver, but by labour, that all wealth of the world was originally purchased.” Adam Smith

5. “Wherever there is great property there is great inequality. For one very rich man there must be at least five hundred poor, and the affluence of the few supposes the indigence of the many. The affluence of the rich excites the indignation of the poor, who are often both driven by want, and prompted by envy, to invade his possessions.” Adam Smith

6. “He is led by an invisible hand to promote an end which was no part of his intention.” Adam Smith

7. “All money is a matter of belief.” Adam Smith

8. “What can be added to the happiness of the man who is in health, who is out of debt, and has a clear conscience?” Adam Smith

9. “Defense is superior to opulence.” Adam Smith

10. “The learned ignore the evidence of their senses to preserve the coherence of the ideas of their imagination.” Adam Smith

11. “A criminal is a person with predatory instincts who has not sufficient capital to form a corporation. Most government is by the rich for the rich. Government comprises a large part of the organized injustice in any society, ancient or modern. Civil government, insofar as it is instituted for the security of property, is in reality instituted for the defence of the rich against the poor, and for the defence of those who have property against those who have none.” Adam Smith

12. “Every individual is continually exerting himself to find out the most advantageous employment for whatever capital he can command. It is his own advantage, indeed, and not that of the society which he has in view. But the study of his own advantage naturally, or rather necessarily, leads him to prefer that employment which is most advantageous to society. 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.” Adam Smith

13. “Science is the great antidote to the poison of enthusiasm and superstition.” Adam Smith

14. “Mercy to the guilty is cruelty to the innocent.” Adam Smith

15. “The great secret of education is to direct vanity to proper objects.” Adam Smith

16. “The rate of profit, is naturally low in rich and high in poor countries, and it is always highest in the countries which are going fastest to ruin.” Adam Smith

17. “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

18. “The man of system, on the contrary, is apt to be very wise in his own conceit; and is often so enamoured with the supposed beauty of his own ideal plan of government, that he cannot suffer the smallest deviation from any part of it. He seems to imagine that he can arrange the different members of a great society with as much ease as the hand arranges the different pieces upon a chess-board. He does not consider that, in the great chess-board of human society, every single piece has a principle of motion of its own, altogether different from that which the legislature might choose to impress upon it.” Adam Smith

19. “Man is an animal that makes bargains: no other animal does this – no dog exchanges bones with another.” Adam Smith

20. “The game women play is men.” Adam Smith

21. “To feel much for others and little for ourselves, that to restrain our selfish, and to indulge our benevolent affections, constitutes the perfection of human nature.” Adam Smith

22. “No society can surely be flourishing and happy, of which the far greater part of the members are poor and miserable.” Adam Smith

23. “A merchant, it has been said very properly, is not necessarily the citizen of any particular country.” Adam Smith

24. “The real price of everything, what everything really costs to the man who wants to acquire it, is the toil and trouble of acquiring it.” Adam Smith

25. “Never complain of that of which it is at all times in your power to rid yourself.” Adam Smith

26. “A nation is not made wealthy by the childish accumulation of shiny metals, but it enriched by the economic prosperity of it’s people.” Adam Smith

27. “Virtue is more to be feared than vice, because its excesses are not subject to the regulation of conscience.” Adam Smith

28. “By pursuing his own interest (the individual) frequently promotes that of the society more effectually than when he really intends to promote it. I have never known much good done by those who affected to trade for the public good.” Adam Smith

29. “The interest of [businessmen] is always in some respects different from, and even opposite to, that of the public, The proposal of any new law or regulation of commerce which comes from this order, ought never to be adopted, till after having been long and carefully examined, with the most suspicious attention. It comes from an order of men, who have generally an interest to deceive and even oppress the public.” Adam Smith

30. “There is no art which government sooner learns of another than that of draining money from the pockets of the people.” Adam Smith

31. “But avarice and ambition in the rich, in the poor the hatred of labour and the love of present ease and enjoyment, are the passions which prompt to invade property, passions much more steady in their operation, and much more universal in their influence. Wherever there is great property there is great inequality. For one very rich man there must be at least five hundred poor, and the affluence of the few supposes the indigence of the many.” Adam Smith

32. “It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest.” Adam Smith

33. “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

34. “On the road from the City of Skepticism, I had to pass through the Valley of Ambiguity.” Adam Smith

35. “The disposition to admire, and almost to worship, the rich and the powerful, and to despise, or, at least, to neglect persons of poor and mean condition is the great and most universal cause of the corruption of our moral sentiments.” Adam Smith

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