An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations
1776
The book that invented economics. Published in 1776 during the American Revolution, Adam Smith's masterwork dissected how nations accumulate wealth, and it reads like it was written yesterday. Through observations of pin factories, merchant guilds, and global trade, Smith arrived at his revolutionary insight: that individuals pursuing their own self-interest, through competition and voluntary exchange, inadvertently serve the greater good. This became the "invisible hand," perhaps the most consequential metaphor in Western thought. But Smith was no uncritical optimist. He savages merchants who conspire against the public, warns against monopolies, and insists that labor, not gold, creates genuine wealth. Dense, sprawling, occasionally savage, this is ultimately a book about human nature and the systems we build. Whether you want to understand globalization, inequality, or where our economic world came from, you cannot avoid this text. It is the foundation upon which two centuries of policy, debate, and ideology have been built.
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“Science is the great antidote to the poison of enthusiasm and superstition.””
— Adam Smith
“The man whose whole life is spent in performing a few simple operations, of which the effects are perhaps always the same, or very nearly the same, has no occasion to exert his understanding or to exercise his invention in finding out expedients for removing difficulties which never occur. He naturally loses, therefore, the habit of such exertion, and generally becomes as stupid and ignorant as it is possible for a human creature to become. ””
— Adam Smith
“In regards to the price of commodities, the rise of wages operates as simple interest does, the rise of profit operates like compound interest. Our merchants and masters complain much of the bad effects of high wages in raising the price and lessening the sale of goods. They say nothing concerning the bad effects of high profits. They are silent with regard to the pernicious effects of their own gains. They complain only of those of other people.””
— Adam Smith
“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.””
— Adam Smith
“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. The affluence of the rich excites the indignation of the poor, who are often both driven by want, and prompted by envy, to invade his possessions.””
— Adam Smith
“Wherever there is great property, there is great inequality.””
— Adam Smith
“Man is an animal that makes bargains: no other animal does this - no dog exchanges bones with another.””
— Adam Smith
“Nobody ever saw a dog make a fair and deliberate exchange of one bone for another with another dog. Nobody ever saw one animal by its gestures and natural cries signify to another, this is mine, that yours; I am willing to give this for that....But man has almost constant occasion for the help of his brethren, and it is in vain for him to expect it from their benevolence only. He will be more likely to prevail if he can interest their self-love in his favour, and show them that it is for their own advantage to do for him what he requires of them. Whoever offers to another a bargain of any kind, proposes to do this. Give me that which I want, and you shall have this which you want, is the meaning of every such offer; and it is in this manner that we obtain from one another the far greater part of those good offices which we stand in need of.””
— Adam Smith
“The value of any commodity, therefore, to the person who possesses it, and who means not to use or consume it himself, but to exchange it for other commodities, is equal to the quantity of labour which it enables him to purchase or command. Labour, therefore, is the real measure of the exchangeable value of all commodities. The real price of everything, what everything really costs to the man who wants to acquire it, is the toil and trouble of acquiring it.””
— Adam Smith
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Smith, Adam. An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations. Lex, lex-books.com/book/an-inquiry-into-the-nature-and-causes-of-the-wealth-of-nations-4885eb66-3121-4c1f-b33a-d3ef60e9059b.Smith, A. (1776). An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations. Lex. https://lex-books.com/book/an-inquiry-into-the-nature-and-causes-of-the-wealth-of-nations-4885eb66-3121-4c1f-b33a-d3ef60e9059bSmith, Adam. An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations. Lex. https://lex-books.com/book/an-inquiry-into-the-nature-and-causes-of-the-wealth-of-nations-4885eb66-3121-4c1f-b33a-d3ef60e9059b.
