In 1776 the Scottish economist and moral philosopher Adam Smith (1723-1790) published his magnum opus – An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations. Better known as The Wealth of Nations it can be considered a seminal work in economics, and the benefits of free trade. Like many great works it is more frequently referred to than read, so as an encouragement to read it (long but in very plain and digestible English) here are some interesting and still pertinent quotes.

‘No society can surely be flourishing and happy, of which the far greater part of the members are poor and miserable.’

‘The interest of [businessmen] is always in some respects different from, and even opposite to, that of the publick … The proposal of any new law or regulation of commerce which comes from this order … ought never to be adopted till after having been long and carefully examined … with the most suspicious attention. It comes from an order of men … who have generally an interest to deceive and even to oppress the publick…’     

‘The greatest improvement in the productive powers of labour, and the greater part of the skill, dexterity, and judgement with which it is any where directed, or applied, seem to have been the effects of the division of labour.’

‘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. 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.’

‘But the amount of the metal pieces which circulate in a society, can never be equal to the revenue of all its members. As the same guinea which pays the weekly pension of one man to-day, may pay that of another tomorrow, and that of a third the day thereafter, the amount of the metal pieces which annually circulate in any country, must always be of much less value than the whole money pensions annually paid with them…..That revenue, therefore, cannot consist in those metal pieces, of which the amount is so much inferior to its value, but in the power of purchasing, in the goods which can successively be bought with them as they circulate from hand to hand

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.’     

‘Science is the great antidote to the poison of enthusiasm and superstition;…’     

‘Whatever part of his stock a man employs as a capital, he always expects is to be replaced to him with a profit. He employs it, therefore, in maintaining productive hands only; and after having served in the function of a capital to him, it constitutes a revenue to them.’

‘Whatever a person saves from his revenue he adds to his capital, and either employs it himself in maintaining an additional number of productive hands, or enables some other person to do so, by lending it to him for an interest, that is, for a share of the profits. As the capital of an individual can be increased only by what he saves from his annual revenue or his annual gains, so the capital of a society, which is the same with that of all the individuals who compose it, can be increased only in the same manner.’