Adam Smith

Men, like animals, naturally multiply in proportion to the means of their subsistence.

Adam Smith

Nothing but the most exemplary morals can give dignity to a man of small fortune.

Adam Smith

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

Adam Smith

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.

Adam Smith

That the chance of gain is naturally over-valued, we may learn from the universal success of lotteries.

Adam Smith

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 productive labourers, or the productive powers of those labourers who had before been employed.

Adam Smith

The difference between the most dissimilar characters, between a philosopher and a common street porter, for example, seems to arise not so much from nature, as from habit, custom, and education.

Adam Smith

The game women play is men.

Adam Smith

The learned ignore the evidence of their senses to preserve the coherence of the ideas of their imagination.

Adam Smith

The man of system is apt to be very wise in his own conceit. In the great chess board of human society, every single piece has a principle of motion of its own altogether different from that which the legislature might choose to impress upon it.

Adam Smith