Sayings by Adam Smith. Smith Adam - quotes, aphorisms, sayings, phrases. Aphorisms, quotes, sayings, phrases - Smith Adam

Vanity is nothing more than an untimely attempt to gain great fame before we deserve it.

The character of each person influences the happiness of other people, depending on whether it tends to bring them harm or benefit.

To teach people to love justice, we must show them the results of injustice.

Only an extremely cowardly and extremely empty person can find pleasure in praise, which, as he well knows, he does not deserve.

Every wasteful person is an enemy of society, every thrifty person is a benefactor.

Our respect for the general rules of morality is actually a sense of duty.

A person's only treasure is his memory. Only in it is his wealth or poverty.

Misconceptions that contain some truth are the most dangerous.

A bestseller is a gilded tomb of mediocre talent.

Self-control in a moment of anger is no less high and no less noble, like self-control in a moment of fear.

Great nations are never made poor by the extravagance and imprudence of private persons, but they are often made poor by the extravagance and imprudence of public authority.

How many days of labor, how many sleepless nights, how many mental efforts, how many hopes and fears, how many long lives of diligent study are poured out here in small typographic fonts and squeezed into the cramped space of the shelves around us.

The greatest progress in the development of the productive power of labor, and a great deal of the skill, skill, and intelligence with which it is directed and applied, appears to have been the consequence of the division of labor.

Prudence, combined with other virtues, represents the noblest quality of a person, while imprudence, combined with vice, constitutes the most vile character.

Empty and cowardly people often show fits of anger and passion in front of their subordinates and in front of those who do not dare to show resistance to them, and imagine that they have thereby shown their courage.

Each person, so long as he does not violate the laws of justice, is left completely free to pursue his own interests according to his own understanding and to compete with his labor and capital with the labor and capital of any other person.

The establishment of perfect justice, perfect freedom and perfect equality - this is the very simple secret which most effectually ensures the highest prosperity of all classes.

It should be noted that the word “value” has two different meanings: sometimes it denotes the usefulness of an item, and sometimes the opportunity to acquire other items that the possession of this item gives. The first can be called use value, the second - exchange value.

In that primitive state of society, which precedes the appropriation of land into private ownership and the accumulation of capital, the entire product of labor belongs to the worker. He does not have to share with either the landowner or the owner. If this condition were to continue, the wages of labor would increase along with the increase in the productive power of labor...

For example, let's take... the production of pins. One worker pulls the wire, another straightens it, a third cuts it, a fourth sharpens the end, a fifth grinds one end to fit the head; manufacturing the head itself requires two or three independent operations; fitting it is a special operation, polishing a pin is another; Even wrapping the finished pins in bags is an independent operation.

Every man is rich or poor according to the extent to which he can enjoy the necessities, conveniences, and pleasures. But after the division of labor has been established, a person can obtain only a very small part of these objects with his own labor: he must receive a much larger part of them from the labor of other people; and he will be rich or poor according to the amount of labor he can command or purchase. Therefore, the value of any commodity for a person who possesses it and intends not to use it or personally consume it, but to exchange it for other objects, is equal to the amount of labor that he can buy with it or have at his disposal. Thus, labor represents the real measure of the exchange value of all commodities.

According to the system of natural liberty, a prince has only three duties to perform; they are indeed of very important importance, but clear and understandable to ordinary understanding: firstly, the duty to protect society from violence and invasion of other independent societies; secondly, the duty to protect, as far as possible, every member of society from injustice and oppression on the part of other members, or the duty to establish the strict administration of justice, and thirdly, the duty to create and maintain certain public works and institutions, the creation and maintenance of which is not may be in the interest of individuals or small groups, because the profits from them can never pay the costs of the individual or small group, although they can often pay them more than for the larger society.

The country or state in which we were born, in which we grew up, under whose protection we live, represents the largest society, the prosperity or misfortune of which is influenced by our good or evil behavior. Therefore, this society necessarily interests us more: besides ourselves, everything that is dear to us, our parents, our children, our friends, our benefactors, that is, the persons whom we most love and respect, form part of this great society, well-being and whose safety constitutes their welfare and their safety.


Adam Smith was born on June 5, 1723, in Kirkcaldy, Scotland. Scottish economist, philosopher, one of the founders of modern economic theory. Author of works - “An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations”, “Thoughts on the State of Competition with America”, “Lectures on Rhetoric and Letter Writing”, etc. Died - July 17, 1790, Edinburgh, Scotland.

Aphorisms, quotes, sayings, phrases - Smith Adam

  • A bestseller is a gilded tomb of mediocre talent.
  • To create the wealth of a country, a lot needs to be reduced to ruins.
  • Misconceptions that contain some amount of truth are the most dangerous.
  • The great secret of education is to direct ambition towards suitable objects.
  • Every wasteful person is an enemy of society, every thrifty person is a benefactor.
  • Being within the framework of one paradigm, it is difficult to imagine another paradigm.
  • Labor is the real measure of the exchange value of all goods.
  • Our respect for the general rules of morality is actually a sense of duty.
  • A person's only treasure is his memory. Only in it is his wealth or poverty.
  • To teach people to love justice, we must show them the results of injustice.
  • It is difficult to make a person understand something if his livelihood is ensured by not understanding it.
  • Self-control in a moment of anger is no less high and no less noble, like self-control in a moment of fear.
  • Vanity is nothing more than an untimely attempt to gain great fame before we deserve it.
  • Wages, profit and rent are the three original sources of all income, as well as of all exchange value.
  • Every man is rich or poor according to the amount of labor he can command or buy.
  • The character of each person influences the happiness of other people, depending on whether it tends to bring them harm or benefit.
  • Only an extremely cowardly and extremely empty person can find pleasure in praise, which, as he well knows, he does not deserve.
  • People of the same profession rarely get together even for fun, but their meetings end in a conspiracy against society or a plan to increase prices.
  • Happiness comes to us in different forms and is almost elusive, but I have seen it more often among small children, at home and in village houses than in other places.
  • Every man who receives his income from a source belonging to himself must receive it either from his labor, or from his capital, or from his land.
  • Great nations are never made poor by the extravagance and imprudence of private persons, but they are often made poor by the extravagance and imprudence of public authority.
  • Empty and cowardly people often show fits of anger and passion in front of their subordinates and in front of those who do not dare to show resistance to them, and imagine that they have thereby shown their courage.
  • The establishment of perfect justice, perfect freedom and perfect equality - this is the very simple secret which most effectually ensures the highest prosperity of all classes.
  • The greatest progress in the development of the productive power of labor, and a great deal of the skill, skill, and intelligence with which it is directed and applied, appears to have been the consequence of the division of labor.
  • Each person, so long as he does not violate the laws of justice, is left completely free to pursue his own interests according to his own understanding and to compete with his labor and capital with the labor and capital of any other person.
  • According to the system of natural liberty, a prince has only three duties to perform: first, the duty of protecting society from the violence and invasion of other independent societies; secondly, the duty to protect, as far as possible, every member of society from injustice and oppression on the part of other members, or the duty to establish the strict administration of justice, and thirdly, the duty to create and maintain certain public works and institutions, the creation and maintenance of which is not may be in the interest of individuals or small groups, because the profits from them can never pay the costs of the individual or small group, although they can often pay them more than for the larger society.

The article will examine the biography of Adam Smith, quotes and sayings. We will study the areas of his activity, what books he wrote, his role in the development of the economy.

Adam Smith is a very famous Scottish philosopher and economist. He is often referred to as one of the first free market capitalists the world has ever encountered, also called the father of modern economics, especially due to his advocacy against government intervention that creates restrictions in free markets.

Biography

Smith was born in Kirkcaldy, Scotland. Smith's early education took place at Burgh School, where he was exposed to Latin, mathematics, history and writing. He subsequently entered Glasgow University at an early age, aged just 14, and received a scholarship. Smith later moved to Balliol College, Oxford in 1740, where he gained substantial knowledge of European literature.

After completing the academy, Smith returned to Scotland and entered in 1748 as a professor. He also crossed paths with the legendary philosopher and economist David Hume, during which time he formed a close relationship with him.

Works of Adam Smith

In 1759, Smith published one of his most famous works, his theory of moral sentiments. It contained many quotes from Adam Smith, a lot of material that he covered in his lectures in Glasgow. The book's main argument concerned human morality: that the existence of morality depends on the strength of the relationship between a person and other members of society.

He argued that mutual sympathy exists between people because they have the ability to feel other people's emotions in the same way that they recognize their own. After the success of his book, Smith left his professorship in Glasgow to travel to France.

In the course of this endeavor, he came across other prominent thinkers such as Voltaire, François Quesnay, Jacques Rousseau, whose influence was reflected in his future works.

In Kirkcaldy he began work on his next book, The Wealth of Nations. It was published in 1776 and became a real hit among readers. It was considered by many to be the first book on political economy and rejected the idea that a country's resources were measured in stacks of gold and silver.

Smith's economic doctrine

Quotes about Adam Smith's economics are worth knowing.

"Thanks to water transport, a larger market is opened for all types of labor than if there were only land modes of transport"

Smith argued that it was the total output produced by the economy that was the proper measure, better known as the gross domestic product. He also delved into the study of specialization and division of labor, and how this affects the improvement of the quality of goods and services produced.

Smith's economic teaching revolutionized the discipline, giving it a new perspective. His work disseminated approaches to economics stemming from the belief that markets are better without government intervention such as tax regulation. Smith believed in this idea, declaring the existence of an "invisible hand" in economics that regulated supply and demand in markets.

Another Adam Smith quote.

“Each individual person has in mind his own benefit, and not at all the benefits of society, and in this case, as in many others, he is guided by an invisible hand towards a goal that was not at all part of his intentions.”

His belief in the invisible hand was based on the principle that because all people act in their own self-interest, they inadvertently result in a set of actions that are most beneficial to the entire society. The Wealth of Nations became one of the most influential books ever written, forming the basis of classical economics.