Wise words from Adam Smith

Adam Smith (June 5, 1723 – July 17, 1790) was a Scottish philosopher and economist who is widely considered to be one of the fathers of capitalism and economics. He was also a key figure of the Scottish Enlightenment.

Below we list some words of wisdom from Adam Smith.

“The first thing you have to know is yourself. A man who knows himself can step outside himself and watch his own reactions like an observer.”

“On the road from the City of Skepticism, I had to pass through the Valley of Ambiguity.”

“Nothing is more graceful than habitual cheerfulness.”

“Never complain of that of which it is at all times in your power to rid yourself.”

“Individual Ambition Serves the Common Good.”

“Mercy to the guilty is cruelty to the innocent.”

“Happiness never lays its finger on its pulse.”

“What can be added to the happiness of the man who is in health, who is out of debt, and has a clear conscience?”

“It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker, that we expect our dinner, but from regard to their own interest. We address ourselves, not to their humanity but to their self-love, and never talk to them of our own necessities but of their advantages. Nobody but a beggar chooses to depend chiefly upon the benevolence of his fellow citizens.”

“Men of the most robust make, observe that in looking upon sore eyes they often feel a very sensible soreness in their own, which proceeds from the same reason; that organ being in the strongest man more delicate, than any other part of the body is in the weakest.”

“To feel much for others and little for ourselves, that to restrain our selfish, and to indulge our benevolent affections, constitutes the perfection of human nature.”

“In ease of body, peace of mind, all the different ranks of life are nearly upon a level and the beggar who suns himself by the side of the highway, possesses that security which kings are fighting for.”

“The man scarce lives who is not more credulous than he ought to be... The natural disposition is always to believe. It is acquired wisdom and experience only that teach incredulity, and they very seldom teach it enough.”

“The discipline of colleges and universities is in general contrived, not for the benefit of the students, but for the interest, or more properly speaking, for the ease of the masters. Its object is, in all cases, to maintain the authority of the master, and whether he neglects or performs his duty, to oblige the students in all cases to behave toward him as if he performed it with the greatest diligence and ability.”

“We are delighted to find a person who values us as we value ourselves, and distinguishes us from the rest of mankind, with an attention not unlike that with which we distinguish ourselves.”

“Though our brother is upon the rack, as long as we ourselves are at ease, our senses will never inform us of what he suffers. They never did and never can carry us beyond our own persons, and it is by the imagination only that we form any conception of what are his sensations...His agonies, when they are thus brought home to ourselves, when we have this adopted and made them our own, begin at last to affect us, and we then tremble and shudder at the thought of what he feels.”

“Resentment seems to have been given us by nature for a defense, and for a defense only! It is the safeguard of justice and the security of innocence.”

“Problems worthy of attacks, prove their worth by hitting back.”

“This is one of those cases in which the imagination is baffled by the facts.”

Copyright © Scott Petullo, Stephen Petullo