Browse quotations by Adam Smith with named works, context notes, meanings and recurring themes.
Focused collections bring together quotations from this author around one recurring idea.
“Humanity does not desire to be great, but to be beloved.”
Smith contrasts humane character with status-seeking by presenting affection and social trust, rather than greatness itself, as the fitting reward of humanity.
Source note: The Theory of Moral Sentiments, Part III, in Smith’s discussion of the rewards commonly associated with industry, truth, justice, and humanity.
“Justice, on the contrary, is the main pillar that upholds the whole edifice.”
The social metaphor makes justice structurally essential: Smith argues that a community may survive limited generosity but not continual mutual injury.
Source note: The Theory of Moral Sentiments, Part II, Section II, Chapter III; the sentence contrasts justice as society’s foundation with beneficence as its ornament.
“We run not only to congratulate the successful, but to condole with the afflicted.”
Shared life includes both celebration and consolation: Smith treats sympathetic participation in another person’s sorrow as a basic feature of social feeling.
Source note: The Theory of Moral Sentiments, Part I discussion of sympathy with joy and affliction; represented by the 1777 Dublin edition in Project Gutenberg #67363.
“It is not in being rich that truth and justice would rejoice, but in being trusted and believed.”
The passage separates moral reputation from wealth: truthfulness and justice seek the confidence of other people rather than riches as their characteristic reward.
Source note: The Theory of Moral Sentiments, Part III; this sentence immediately follows Smith’s contrast between humanity seeking love and industry receiving external success.
“This self-deceit, this fatal weakness of mankind, is the source of half the disorders of human life.”
Smith treats distorted self-judgment as a major moral problem because people can preserve flattering interpretations of conduct instead of examining themselves impartially.
Source note: The Theory of Moral Sentiments, Part III, discussion of self-examination and the impartial spectator; Smith is describing the difficulty of judging one’s own conduct fairly.
“Mere justice is, upon most occasions, but a negative virtue, and only hinders us from hurting our neighbour.”
Smith distinguishes the minimum restraint required by justice from positive generosity: justice first prevents injury, even when it does not itself supply active beneficence.
Source note: The Theory of Moral Sentiments, Part II, Section II, discussion comparing justice with beneficence and the obligations that society may enforce.
“What is the reward most proper for encouraging industry, prudence, and circumspection? Success in every sort of business.”
Smith links practical success with habits of industry, prudence, and careful judgment, while treating that success as the characteristic external reward of those traits.
Source note: The Theory of Moral Sentiments, Part III; Smith asks what rewards ordinarily encourage industry, prudence, truth, justice, and humanity.
“How selfish soever man may be supposed, there are evidently some principles in his nature, which interest him in the fortune of others.”
Smith opens his moral theory by arguing that human beings possess capacities for fellow-feeling even when another person’s welfare offers no material advantage.
Source note: The Theory of Moral Sentiments, Part I, Section I, Chapter I “Of Sympathy”; represented by Project Gutenberg’s 1777 Dublin edition.
“The habits of œconomy, industry, discretion, attention, and application of thought, are generally supposed to be cultivated from self-interested motives.”
Smith acknowledges that disciplined habits can arise from self-interest while still being socially praised for the steadiness, care, and practical competence they develop.
Source note: The Theory of Moral Sentiments, Part VI, Section II discussion of systems that make virtue consist in benevolence; historical spelling “œconomy” is retained.
“The rules of justice are accurate in the highest degree, and admit of no exceptions or modifications, but such as may be ascertained as accurately as the rules themselves.”
Smith contrasts justice with looser virtues by arguing that its external obligations require unusually precise rules if people are to rely on one another.
Source note: The Theory of Moral Sentiments, Part III discussion of the general rules of morality; Smith contrasts exact rules of justice with more flexible rules of prudence and generosity.
“Consumption is the sole end and purpose of all production.”
Production ultimately exists to serve people who use goods and services, a reminder that economic activity should not lose sight of its human end.
Source note: The Wealth of Nations; Smith states the consumer-oriented purpose of production while discussing economic policy.
“Money is neither a material to work upon, nor a tool to work with.”
Money facilitates exchange and payment but is distinguished from the materials, tools, and subsistence that directly enable productive work.
Source note: The Wealth of Nations, Book II, Chapter II; Project Gutenberg #3300. Smith is explaining money as part of circulating capital rather than denying its practical usefulness.
“His real wealth is in proportion, not to his gross, but to his neat rent.”
Smith distinguishes headline receipts from what remains after necessary costs, emphasizing net rather than gross resources in his estate analogy.
Source note: The Wealth of Nations, Book II, Chapter II; Project Gutenberg #3300. “Neat rent” is Smith’s historical term for net rent after management, repair, and other necessary charges.
“The produce of labour constitutes the natural recompence or wages of labour.”
Smith begins his wages discussion from the idea that labour’s product is the worker’s original recompense before later property relations divide output.
Source note: The Wealth of Nations, Book I, Chapter VIII; Project Gutenberg #3300. The historical spelling “recompence” is retained and the sentence belongs to a larger theoretical argument.
“Labour was the first price, the original purchase-money that was paid for all things.”
Smith grounds economic value historically in labor and effort, making work central to his discussion of exchange before money becomes the convenient measure.
Source note: The Wealth of Nations, Book I, Chapter V; Smith discusses labour as the original price and measure behind exchange.
“Wages, profit, and rent, are the three original sources of all revenue, as well as of all exchangeable value.”
Smith separates major forms of income according to labour, stock, and land, providing a historical framework for how revenue is distributed.
Source note: The Wealth of Nations, Book I, Chapter VI; Project Gutenberg #3300. The statement is part of Smith’s eighteenth-century theory of price and income distribution.
“The real price of every thing, what every thing really costs to the man who wants to acquire it, is the toil and trouble of acquiring it.”
Smith distinguishes nominal money price from the labour and sacrifice required to acquire something, making cost broader than the number printed on a transaction.
Source note: The Wealth of Nations, Book I, Chapter V; Project Gutenberg #3300. This belongs to Smith’s labour-command discussion of real and nominal price.
“Every man is rich or poor according to the degree in which he can afford to enjoy the necessaries, conveniencies, and amusements of human life.”
Smith defines economic command in terms of access to goods and services rather than the mere possession of coins, linking wealth with purchasing capacity.
Source note: The Wealth of Nations, Book I, Chapter V; Project Gutenberg #3300. The historical spelling “conveniencies” is retained; this is classical political economy, not a modern household-wealth metric.