Adam Smith

Such taxes [upon the necessaries of life], when they have grown up to a certain height, are a curse equal to the barrenness of the earth and the inclemency of the heavens; and yet it is in the richest and most industrious countries that …

The act of navigation is not favourable to foreign commerce, or to the growth of that opulence which can arise from it. ... As defence, however, is of much more importance than opulence, the act of navigation is, perhaps, the wisest of all …

If the importation of foreign cattle, for example, were made ever so free, so few could be imported, that the grazing trade of Great Britain could be little affected by it. Live cattle are, perhaps, the only commodity of which the …

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

To give the monopoly of the home-market to the produce of domestic industry, in any particular art or manufacture, is in some measure to direct private people in what manner they ought to employ their capitals, and must, in almost all …

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.

By pursuing his own interest he frequently promotes that

to prefer that employment which is most advantageous to the society.

several of those unfortunate countries

Europeans rendered an event, which ought to have been beneficial to all, ruinous and destructive to

The savage injustice of the

The importation of gold and silver is not the principal, much less the sole benefit which a nation derives from its foreign trade.

It is not for its own sake that men desire money, but for the sake of what they can purchase with it.

Goods can serve many other purposes besides purchasing money, but money can serve no other purpose besides purchasing goods.

It would be too ridiculous to go about seriously to prove that wealth does not consist in money, or in gold and silver; but in what money purchases, and is valuable only for purchasing. Money no doubt, makes always a part of the national …

When the profits of trade happen to be greater than ordinary, over-trading becomes a general error both among great and small dealers.

The great affair, we always find, is to get money.

It proposes to enrich both the people and the sovereign.

All for ourselves, and nothing for other people, seems, in every age of the world, to have been the vile maxim of the masters of mankind.

A merchant, it has been said very properly, is not necessarily the citizen of any particular country.

By the removal of the unnecessary mouths, and by extracting from the farmer the full value of the farm, a greater surplus, or what is the same thing, the price of a greater surplus, was obtained for the proprietor...

But what all the violence of the feudal institutions could never have effected, the silent and insensible operation of foreign commerce and manufactures gradually brought about.

Avarice and injustice are always shortsighted, and they did not foresee how much this regulation must obstruct improvement, and thereby hurt in the long-run the real interest of the landlord.

It seldom happens, however, that a great proprietor is a great improver.