Adam Smith Quotes About Liberty

We have collected for you the TOP of Adam Smith's best quotes about Liberty! Here are collected all the quotes about Liberty starting from the birthday of the Philosopher – June 5, 1723! We hope you will be inspired to new achievements with our constantly updated collection of quotes. At the moment, this page contains 11 sayings of Adam Smith about Liberty. We will be happy if you share our collection of quotes with your friends on social networks!
  • People of the same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment and diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public, or in some contrivance to raise prices. It is impossible indeed to prevent such meetings, by any law which either could be executed, or would be consistent with liberty or justice. But though the law cannot hinder people of the same trade from sometimes assembling together, it ought to do nothing to facilitate such assemblies; much less to render them necessary.

    People  
    An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations vol. 1, bk. 1, ch. 10 (1776)
  • Every individual necessarily labors to render the annual revenue of society as great as he can. He generally neither intends to promote the public interest, nor knows how much he is promoting it. He intends only his own gain, and he is, in this, as in many other cases, led by an invisible hand to promote an end which was not part of his intention.

    An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations vol. 2, bk. 4, ch. 2 (1776) See Adam Smith 1
  • Every tax, however, is to the person who pays it a badge, not of slavery but of liberty. It denotes that he is a subject to government, indeed, but that, as he has some property, he cannot himself be the property of a master.

    Adam Smith (1827). “An Inquiry Into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations”, p.362
  • It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest.

    An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations vol. 1, bk. 1, ch. 2 (1776)
  • Are you in earnest resolved never to barter your liberty for the lordly servitude of a court, but to live free, fearless, and independent? There seems to be one way to continue in that virtuous resolution; and perhaps but one. Never enter the place from whence so few have been able to return; never come within the circle of ambition; nor ever bring yourself into comparison with those masters of the earth who have already engrossed the attention of half mankind before you.

    Adam Smith, Robert L. Heilbroner, Laurence J. Malone (1987). “The Essential Adam Smith”, p.85, W. W. Norton & Company
  • To subject every private family to the odious visits and examination of the tax-gatherers ... would be altogether inconsistent with liberty.

    Adam Smith, Dugald Stewart (1843). “An Inquiry Into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations”, p.405
  • Such regulations may, no doubt, be considered as in some respect a violation of natural liberty. But those exertions of the natural liberty of a few individuals, which might endanger the security of the whole society, are, and ought to be, restrained by the laws of all governments; of the most free, as well as or the most despotical. The obligation of building party walls, in order to prevent the communication of fire, is a violation of natural liberty, exactly of the same kind with the regulations of the banking trade which are here proposed.

    Adam Smith (1801). “An Inquiry Into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations”, p.323
  • There is no art which government sooner learns of another than that of draining money from the pockets of the people.

    'Wealth of Nations' (1776)
  • Nobody but a beggar chooses to depend chiefly upon the benevolence of his fellow-citizens.

    Adam Smith, James R. Otteson (2004). “Adam Smith: Selected Philosophical Writings”, p.100, Imprint Academic
  • 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.

    Adam Smith (1817). “An inquiry into the nature and causes of the wealth of nations0: With a life of the author : Also a view of the doctrine of Smith, compared with that of the french economists ...”, p.19
  • The natural effort of every individual to better his own condition is so powerful that it is alone, and without any assistance, capable not only of carrying on the society to wealth and prosperity, but of surmounting 100 impertinent obstructions with which the folly of human laws too often encumbers its operations.

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