Adam Smith

Though the principles of the banking trade may appear somewhat abstruse, the practice is capable of being reduced to strict rules. To depart upon any occasion from these rules, in consequence of some flattering speculation of extraordinary …

That a joint stock company should be able to carry on successfully any branch of foreign trade, when private adventurers can come into any sort of open and fair competition with them, seems contrary to all experience.

The Hudson's Bay Company, before their misfortunes in the late war, had been much more fortunate than the Royal African Company.

The tolls for the maintenance of a high road, cannot with any safety be made the property of private persons.

Justice, however, never was in reality administered gratis in any country. Lawyers and attornies, at least, must always be paid by the parties; and, if they were not, they would perform their duty still worse than they actually perform it.

Upstart greatness is everywhere less respected than ancient greatness.

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

Wherever there is great property, there is great inequality.

The proper performance of those several duties of the sovereign necessarily supposes a certain expence; and this expence again necessarily requires a certain revenue to support it.

Every man, as long as he does not violate the laws of justice, is left perfectly free to pursue his own interest his own way, and to bring both his industry and capital into competition with those of any other man, or order of men.

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.

Monopoly of one kind or another, indeed, seems to be the sole engine of the mercantile system.

To found a great empire for the sole purpose of raising up a people of customers, may at first appear a project fit only for a nation of shopkeepers. It is however, a project altogether unfit for a nation of shopkeepers; but extremely fit …

The government of an exclusive company of merchants is, perhaps, the worst of all governments for any country whatever.

price of a ticket is the whole fortune of a very rich man.

the most disadvantageous lottery in the world

the search after new silver and gold mines.

To hinder, besides, the farmer from selling his goods at all times to the best market, is evidently to sacrifice the ordinary laws of justice to an idea of public utility, to a sort of reasons of state; an act of legislative authority …

I have no great faith in political arithmetic, and I mean not to warrant the exactness of either of these computations.

In public, as well as in private expences, great wealth may, perhaps, frequently be admitted as an apology for great folly.

Mercantile jealousy is excited, and both inflames, and is itself inflamed, by the violence of national animosity:...

The violence and injustice of the rulers of mankind is an ancient evil, for which, I am afraid, the nature of human affairs can scarce admit a remedy.

The sneaking arts of underling tradesmen are thus erected into political maxims for the conduct of a great empire; for it is the most underling tradesmen only who make it a rule to employ chiefly their own customers. A great trader …

To expect, indeed, that the freedom of trade should ever be entirely restored in Great Britain, is as absurd as to expect that an Oceana or Utopia should ever be established in it.