Skip to content

It is not for its own sake that men desire money, but for the sake of what they can purchase with it.

— Adam Smith The Wealth of Nations (1776)

Another quote →

Topics

Money

More quotes by Adam Smith

Nothing but the most exemplary morals can give dignity to a man of small fortune.

The Wealth of Nations (1776)

A merchant, it has been said very properly, is not necessarily the citizen of any particular country.

The Wealth of Nations (1776)

No fixed capital can yield any revenue but by means of a circulating capital.

The Wealth of Nations (1776)

In the long-run the workman may be as necessary to his master as his master is to him, but the necessity is not so immediate.

The Wealth of Nations (1776)

Hatred and anger are the greatest poison to the happiness of a good mind.

The Theory of Moral Sentiments (1759)

All Adam Smith quotes →

You may also like

Men accept servility in order to acquire wealth; as if they could acquire anything of their own when they cannot even assert that they belong to themselves.

Étienne de La Boétie Discourse on Voluntary Servitude (1548)

Health is the greatest gift, contentment is the greatest wealth, a trusted friend is the best relative, Nibbana is the greatest bliss.

Gautama Buddha

Opulence is always the result of theft, if not committed by the actual possessor, then by his predecessor.

Jerome The Cry for Justice (1915)

Bourgeois society is ruled by equivalence. It makes the dissimilar comparable by reducing it to abstract quantities. To the Enlightenment, that which does not reduce to numbers, and ultimately to the one, becomes illusion.

Max Horkheimer Dialektik der Aufklärung [Dialectic of Enlightenment (1944)

Attribution

Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: Adam Smith (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.