Browse 7 quotations connecting Adam Smith with Responsibility, 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 Theory of Moral Sentiments, The Wealth of Nations. Keeping the work and source note beside each quotation makes differences in setting, speaker and emphasis easier to see.
Sources represented here include The Theory of Moral Sentiments, The Wealth of Nations.
“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.
“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.
“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.
“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.
“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.