Browse 10 quotations connecting Adam Smith with Money, with meanings, source notes and related themes.
Each quotation is included because its central idea connects with this theme, not simply because one matching word appears in the sentence.
Sources represented here include The Wealth of Nations, The Theory of Moral Sentiments. Keeping the work and source note beside each quotation makes differences in setting, speaker and emphasis easier to see.
Sources represented here include The Wealth of Nations, The Theory of Moral Sentiments.
“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.
“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.
“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.