I have never known much good done by those who affected to trade for the public good..

What is prudence in the conduct of every private family can scarce be folly in that of a great kingdom..

He is led by an invisible hand to promote an end which was no part of his intention.

It is the highest impertinence and presumption, therefore, in kings and ministers to pretend to watch over the economy of private people, and to rest….

The liberal reward of labour, therefore, as it is the affect of increasing wealth, so it is the cause of increasing population. To complain of it, is….

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..

We rarely hear, it has been said, of the combinations [that is, unions or colluding organizations] of masters, though frequently of those of workmen.….

Nobody ever saw a dog make a fair and deliberate exchange of one bone for another with another dog..

Corn is a necessary, silver is only a superfluity..

By pursuing his own interest (the individual) frequently promotes that of the society more effectually than when he really intends to promote it. I h….

Happiness never lays its finger on its pulse..

Though our brother is upon the rack, as long as we ourselves are at ease, our senses will never inform us of what he suffers. They never did and neve….

Every man lives by exchanging..

Ask any rich man of common prudence to which of the two sorts of people he has lent the greater part of his stock, to those who, he thinks, will empl….

Humanity is the virtue of a woman, generosity that of a man..

We are delighted to find a person who values us as we value ourselves, and distinguishes us from the rest of mankind, with an attention not unlike th….

An instructed and intelligent people are always more decent and orderly than an ignorant and stupid one..

The annual produce of the land and labour of any nation can be increased in its value by no other means, but by increasing either the number of its p….

The theory that can absorb the greatest number of facts, and persist in doing so, generation after generation, through all changes of opinion and det….

Sugar, rum and tobacco are commodities which are nowhere necessaries of life, which are become objects of almost universal consumption, and which are….

People of the same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment and diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public, or in ….