Adam Smith Quotes

The only people who steal are thieves, and that's a very small percentage of civilization. Most people want to have some way to make the economic transaction valid. They want to return the favor, if you will... return the benefit and reciprocate.

The universal basis of co-operation is the proportioning of benefits received to services rendered.

I always think if you are asking somebody for something it is a good idea to give them something first.

Man is an animal that makes bargains: no other animal does this - no dog exchanges bones with another.

Man, an animal that makes bargains.

Commerce, trade and exchange make other people more valuable alive than dead, and mean that people try to anticipate what the other guy needs and wants. It engages the mechanisms of reciprocal altruism, as the evolutionary biologists call it, as opposed to raw dominance.

The propensity to truck, barter and exchange one thing for another is common to all men, and to be found in no other race of animals.

If you treat me fairly, I'll give you all my goods.

Trade is a social act.

That's at the root of the human interaction: fair trade.

Everyone lives by selling something.

Money is the best rule of commerce.

Thence results, for science as well as for industry, the necessity of the division and association of labor. I receive and I give - such is human life. Each directs and is directed in his turn.

Dogs are the only mammals that will actually stare and look into a human's eyes.

What goes around comes around in business, and it's better to help people out rather than bill them every time you speak to them.

Put two Yankees in a room together, and in an hour they will each have gained ten dollars from the other.

Exchange is creation.

Trade is nothing else but a Commutation of Superfluities; for instance: I give mine, what I can spare, for somewhat of yours, which I want, and you can spare.

No collection without compensation.

We are all born with an innate understanding of interpersonal equity - the idea that if you lend me your rake today, I'll respond in kind when you come to borrow my shovel tomorrow. Or nearly all of us are born with that. Psychopaths aren't.

Everybody trades off in some sense or another.

Money is not, properly speaking, one of the subjects of commerce; but only the instrument which men have agreed upon to facilitate the exchange of one commodity for another

The old idea of a good bargain was a transaction in which one man got the better of another. The new idea of a good contract is a transaction which is good for both parties to it..

If you treat people right they will treat you right — ninety percent of the time.

Money performs but a momentary function … when the transaction is finally closed, it will always be found, that one kind of commodity has been exchanged for another