Thank you Adam Smith

It's a busy week. This week also marks the 250th anniversary of Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations, the first in-depth exploration and explanation of (in PJ O'Rourke's words) why some nations are prosperous and wealthy and other places just suck.In honour of the anniversary, here are several of Adam Smith’s most insightful observations:

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 necessities but of their advantages. [The Wealth Of Nations, Book I, Chapter II]

It is the great multiplication of the productions of all the different arts, in consequence of the division of labour, which occasions, in a well-governed society, that universal opulence which extends itself to the lowest ranks of the people. [The Wealth Of Nations, Book I, Chapter I]

Little else is requisite to carry a state to the highest degree of opulence from the lowest barbarism, but peace, easy taxes, and a tolerable administration of justice: all the rest being brought about by the natural course of things. [Lecture in 1755, quoted in Dugald Stewart, Account Of The Life And Writings Of Adam Smith LLD, Section IV, 25]

It is the maxim of every prudent master of a family, never to attempt to make at home what it will cost him more to make than to buy. [The Wealth Of Nations, Book IV Chapter I]

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. Would it be a reasonable law to prohibit the importation of all foreign wines, merely to encourage the making of claret and burgundy in Scotland? [The Wealth Of Nations, Book IV, Chapter II]

Consumption is the sole end and purpose of all production; and the interest of the producer ought to be attended to, only so far as it may be necessary for promoting that of the consumer. [The Wealth Of Nations, Book IV Chapter VIII]

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…. 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. [The Wealth Of Nations, Book IV Chapter VIII]

To widen the market and to narrow the competition, is always the interest of the dealers…The proposal of any new law or regulation of commerce which comes from this order, ought always to be listened to with great precaution... It comes from an order of men, whose interest is never exactly the same with that of the public, who have generally an interest to deceive and even oppress the public, and who accordingly have, upon many occasions, both deceived and oppressed it. [The Wealth Of Nations, Book I, Chapter XI]

It is the highest impertinence and presumption… in kings and ministers, to pretend to watch over the economy of private people, and to restrain their expense... They are themselves always, and without any exception, the greatest spendthrifts in the society. [The Wealth Of Nations, Book II, Chapter III]

There is no art which one government sooner learns of another than that of draining money from the pockets of the people. [The Wealth Of Nations, Book V Chapter II Part II] 

Every individual... neither intends to promote the public interest, nor knows how much he is promoting it... he intends only his own security; and by directing that industry in such a manner as its produce may be of the greatest value, 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 no part of his intention.
    Nor is it always the worse for the society that it was no part of it. By pursuing his own interest he frequently promotes that of the society more effectually than when he really intends to promote it. I have never known much good done by those who affected to trade for the public good. [The Wealth Of Nations, Book IV, Chapter II]

What improves the circumstances of the greater part can never be regarded as an inconveniency to the whole. No society can surely be flourishing and happy, of which the far greater part of the members are poor and miserable. [The Wealth Of Nations, Book I Chapter VIII]

Mercy to the guilty is cruelty to the innocent. [From his 1759 work, The Theory of Moral Sentiments]

The man of system…is apt to be very wise in his own conceit; and is often so enamoured with the supposed beauty of his own ideal plan of government, that he cannot suffer the smallest deviation from any part of it… He seems to imagine that he can arrange the different members of a great society with as much ease as the hand arranges the different pieces upon a chess-board. He does not consider that in the great chess-board of human society, every single piece has a principle of motion of its own, altogether different from that which the legislature might choose to impress upon it. [The Theory Of Moral Sentiments, Part VI, Section II, Chapter II]