Quotes on Wealth Of Nations

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.

Wherever there is great property, there is great inequality.

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

The statesman who should attempt to direct private people in what manner they ought to employ their capitals would not only load himself with most unnecessary attention but assume an authority which could safely be trusted to no council and senate whatever, and which would nowhere be so dangerous as in the hands of man who have folly and presumption enough to fancy himself fit to exercise it.

Science is the great antidote to the poison of enthusiasm and superstition.

Man is an animal that makes bargains: no other animal does this - no dog exchanges bones with another.

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

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.

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

Civil government, so far as it is instituted for the security of property, is in reality instituted for the defense of the rich against the poor, or of those who have some property against those who have none at all.

The man whose whole life is spent in performing a few simple operations, of which the effects are perhaps always the same, or very nearly the same, has no occasion to exert his understanding or to exercise his invention in finding out expedients for removing difficulties which never occur. He naturally loses, therefore, the habit of such exertion, and generally becomes as stupid and ignorant as it is possible for a human creature to become.

Most economic fallacies derive from the tendency to assume that there is a fixed pie, that one party can gain only at the expense of another.