Wealth of Nations Quotes

Ask me not, 'Are you rightwing,' but ask me 'Are you a committed believer in individual freedom, the values of the enlightenment?' Then, yeah, if being rightwing means believing Adam Smith was right, both in the 'Wealth of Nations' and the 'Theory of Moral Sentiments,' then I'm rightwing.

Let's take Adam Smith, the patron-saint of capitalism, what did he think? He thought the main human instinct was sympathy. In fact, take a look at the word "invisible hand." Which, of course, you learned about, or you think you've learned about. Take a look at the actual way in which he used the phrase. There is almost no relation to what is claimed.

The key insight of Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations is misleadingly simple: if an exchange between two parties is voluntary, it will not take place unless both believe they will benefit from it. Most economic fallacies derive from the neglect of this simple insight, from the tendency to assume that there is a fixed pie, that one party can gain only at the expense of another.

Adam Smith and Malthus and Ricardo ! There is something about these three figures to evoke more than ordinary sentiments from us their children in the spirit.

The celebrated Adam Smith was the first to point out the immense increase of production, and the superior perfection of products referable to this division of labour.

We're supposed to worship Adam Smith but you're not supposed to read him. That's too dangerous.

Adam Smith is misread as being amoral precisely because people don't read his first book, because they don't read 'The Theory of Moral Sentiments.'

Where are we to look for the consumption required but among the unproductive labourers of Adam Smith?.

Adam Smith's huge failure was the fact that he did not foresee the industrial revolution.

Some time ago a little-known Scottish philosopher wrote a book on what makes nations succeed and what makes them fail. The Wealth of Nations is still being read today. With the same perspicacity and with the same broad historical perspective, Daron Acemoglu and James Robinson have retackled this same question for our own times. Two centuries from now our great-great- . . . -great grandchildren will be, similarly, reading Why Nations Fail.

Economists must leave to Adam Smith alone the glory of the Quarto, must pluck the day, fling pamphlets into the wind, write always sub specie temporis , and achieve immortality by accident, if at all.

It is important to remember when reading Adam Smith or even when just thinking about Smith that the era that he lived in, we're not talking about poverty in a day when it meant not enough bedrooms for the kids, an old car, a black and white television. We're talking about a whole world where poverty meant not enough to eat.

I do think one success of Northern Europe, which the United States came from, was its willingness to accept innovation in business practices like Adam Smith and the whole Enlightenment. It essentially made the merchant class free instead of controlled by the king and aristocracy. That was essential.

Adam Smith pointed out that there were three things that make us more prosperous, in a general sort of way: freedom to pursue our own self-interest; specialization, which he called division of labor; and freedom of trade.

The annual labour of every nation is the fund which originally supplies it with all the necessaries and conveniencies of life which it annually consumes, and which consist always either in the immediate produce of that labour, or in what is purchased with that produce from other nations.

I am a believer in Adam Smith, who says that if you look at something that really contributes value to society, and you can deliver it at a reasonable price, then society will recognise that at some point because rational behaviour will come into play.

You're never going to read 'The Wealth of Nations,' and you shouldn't, really. It's 900 pages.

The natural price, therefore, is, as it were, the central price, to which the prices of all commodities are continually gravitating.