Selected quotes from Adam Smith's 'Wealth of Nations'
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The first edition of The Wealth of Nations, written in 1776 by Scottish philosopher and economist Adam Smith, on display at the University of Glasgow Library, Glasgow, Scotland, Britain February 26, 2026. REUTERS/Lesley Martin
LONDON, March 8 (Reuters) - Adam Smith's "Wealth of Nations", the foundational text of classical economics, marks its 250th anniversary on March 9.
Still widely read and debated, it is most known for its arguments in favour of free trade, its fierce attacks on monopolies and its descriptions of how to optimise production by the division of labour into small, separate tasks.
Here is some of its best-known quotes:
ON MONOPOLIES
"A monopoly granted either to an individual or to a trading company has the same effect as a secret in trade or manufactures."
ON THE BENEFITS OF TRADE
"By means of glasses, hotbeds, and hotwalls, very good grapes can be raised in Scotland, and very good wine too can be made of them at about thirty times the expense for which at least equally good can be brought from foreign countries."
ON SELF-INTEREST
"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."
ON GOVERNMENT
"Civil government, so far as it is instituted for the security of property, is in reality instituted for the defence of the rich against the poor, or of those who have some property against those who have none at all."
ON WEALTH AND INEQUALITY
"Wherever there is great property, there is great inequality. For one very rich man, there must be at least five hundred poor, and the affluence of the few supposes the indigence of the many."
"All for ourselves, and nothing for other people, seems, in every age of the world, to have been the vile maxim of the masters of mankind."
ON TAXATION
"It is not very unreasonable that the rich should contribute to the public expense, not only in proportion to their revenue, but something more than in that proportion."
ON SOCIETY
"No society can surely be flourishing and happy, of which the far greater part of the members are poor and miserable."
(Compiled by Mark John; Editing by Pravin Char)
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