Adam Smith Quotes

To expect, indeed, that the freedom of trade should ever be entirely restored in Great Britain, is as absurd as to expect that an Oceana or Utopia should never be established in it.

Mercantile jealousy is excited, and both inflames, and is itself inflamed, by the violence of national animosity.

It is the natural effect of improvement, however, to diminish gradually the real price of almost all manufactures.

Problems worthy of attacks, prove their worth by hitting back

All registers which, it is acknowledged, ought to be kept secret, ought certainly never to exist.

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

As we have no immediate experience of what other men feel, we can form no idea of the manner in which they are affected, but by conceiving what we ourselves should feel in the like situation.

Upstart greatness is everywhere less respected than ancient greatness.

To subject every private family to the odious visits and examination of the tax-gatherers ... would be altogether inconsistent with liberty.

The tolls for the maintenance of a high road, cannot with any safety be made the property of private persons.

All jobs are created in direct proportion to the amount of capital employed.

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.

Humanity is the virtue of a woman, generosity that of a man.

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

Though the profusion of Government must undoubtedly have retarded the natural progress of England to wealth and improvement, it has not been able to stop it.

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

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.

The principle which prompts to save is the desire of bettering our conditiona desire which?comes with us from the womb and never leaves us till we go into the grave.

In public, as well as in private expences, great wealth may, perhaps, frequently be admitted as an apology for great folly.

There is a great deal of ruin in a nation.

I must give you this warning: your journeys will rarely ever go as you plan. You will make mistakes, and you will feel lost. Whenever that happens, look to the light and keep moving forward in faith.

In the quiet of the graveyard, the couple knelt together in soul-stretching silence—wishing, waiting, hoping, praying.

Willpower, though important in its own way, is never enough. In order for you to be truly powerful, you must open up and trust in something beyond yourself—something you cannot prove for certain.

Have faith in the light you carry.

Faith is believing in something you cannot prove for certain.

Always go as far as you can see, then let faith take you the rest of the way.

And so I tell you, restless one, that no matter what happens, when things get dark, look to the light and keep moving forward in faith.

Where does your soul walk? Does it walk in the sunlit woods or hide in the shadowy forest?

Public services are never better performed than when their reward comes only in consequence of their being performed, and is proportioned to the diligence employed in performing them.

I didn't just see a child in my dreams—I felt it in my heart.

Where does your soul walk?

All churches are an echo of this—the Cathedral of Nature.

To love the creations of the Earth is to worship the Being who created them.

Darling, I would follow you through the blackest midnight—just not without my trousers!

One human life is worth more than all the treasures of the earth.

Our home is a belonging place.

There are two forces at work in the world: the power of light and the power of darkness.

This is the miracle of all miracles—when life sacrifices itself to become something greater. When it awakens to its potential and rises in power. That is true magic.

In order to defeat the darkness, you must bring it into the light.

You cannot defeat darkness by running from it.

There is nothing more real than light.

When we're constantly thinking about ourselves, our world shrinks.

Abundance in life is achieved only when we tear down walls and fill our lives with light.

In lifting another person, we also lift ourselves.

Our joy in life is inexorably determined by the degree to which we love.

We can achieve the fullest measure of life by living it for others.

Thus bound together, they sheltered the child from the cold, dark night, enveloping him in warmth.

Extreme inequality and financial crisis usually coincide. But the elite who cause it usually come out OK. And they are usually man.

No society can surely be flourishing and happy of which by far the greater part of the numbers are poor and miserable.

For each of us, there comes a time when we must awaken and become what we were born to become.