Adam Smith

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.

How selfish soever man may be supposed, there are evidently some principles in his nature, which interest him in the fortune of others, and render their happiness necessary to him, though he derives nothing from it except the pleasure of seeing it.

Masters are always and everywhere in a sort of tacit, but constant and uniform combination, not to raise the wages of labour above their actual rate.

To seem not to be affected with the joy of our companions is but want of politeness; but not to wear a serious countenance when they tell us their afflictions, is real and gross inhumanity.

Honour makes a great part of the reward of all honourable professions.

Virtue is excellence, something uncommonly great and beautiful, which rises far above what is vulgar and ordinary.

Before the invention of the art of printing, a scholar and a beggar seem to have been terms very nearly synonymous.

Hatred and anger are the greatest poison to the happiness of a good mind.

They seemed to value them as we would do any little pebbles of somewhat more than ordinary beauty, and to consider them as just worth the picking up, but not worth the refusing to anybody who asked them.

Politeness is so much the virtue of the great, that it will do little honour to anybody but themselves.

To widen the market and to narrow the competition, is always the interest of the dealers.

In such societies the abilities to please, are more regarded than the abilities to serve.

It is better, says the proverb, to play for nothing, than to work for nothing.

Though every man may, according to the proverb, be the whole world to himself, to the rest of mankind he is a most insignificant part of it.

Among all the absurd speculations that have been propagated concerning the balance of trade, it has never been pretended that either the country loses by its commerce with the town, or the town by that with the country which maintains it.

We are angry, for a moment, even at the stone that hurts us. A child beats it, a dog barks at it, a choleric man is apt to curse it.

Money, like wine, must always be scarce with those who have neither wherewithal to buy it, nor credit to borrow it.

There is no greater tormentor of the human breast than violent resentment which cannot be gratified.

As defence, however, is of much more importance than opulence, the act of navigation is, perhaps, the wisest of all the commercial regulations of England.

Wherever prudence does not direct, wherever justice does not permit, the attempt to change our situation, the man who does attempt it, plays at the most unequal of all games of hazard, and stakes everything against scarce anything.