Adam Smith Quotes About Labor

Quotes about: Labor

• Labour was the first price, the original purchase - money that was paid for all things. It was not by gold or by silver, but by labour, that all wealth of the world was originally purchased.

  Adam Smith

  Money, Labour Movement, Labor Day

  Adam Smith (1827). “An Inquiry Into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations”, p.13

• Every individual necessarily labors to render the annual revenue of society as great as he can. He generally neither intends to promote the public interest, nor knows how much he is promoting it. 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 not part of his intention.

  Adam Smith

  Hands, Invisible Hand, Liberty

  An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations vol. 2, bk. 4, ch. 2 (1776) See Adam Smith 1

• Labor was the first price, the original purchase - money that was paid for all things.

  Adam Smith

  Labour Movement, Labor Day, Firsts

  1776 An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, bk.1, ch.5.

• We rarely hear, it has been said, of the combinations [that is, unions or colluding organizations] of masters, though frequently of those of workmen. But whoever imagines, upon this account, that masters rarely combine, is as ignorant of the world as of the subject. Masters are always and everywhere in a sort of tacit, but constant and uniform combination, not to raise the wages of labor above their actual price.

  Adam Smith

  Organization, Ignorant, World

• Among civilized and thriving nations, on the contrary, though a great number of people do no labor at all, many of whom consume the produce of ten times, frequently of a hundred times more labour than the greater part of those who work; yet the produce of the whole labour of the society is so great, that all are often abundantly supplied, and a workman, even of the lowest and poorest order, if he is frugal and industrious, may enjoy a greater share of the necessaries and conveniencies of life than it is possible for any savage to acquire.

  Adam Smith

  Order, Numbers, People

  "The Wealth of Nations" by Adam Smith, (Introduction and Plan of the Work, p. 2), 1776.

• Masters are always and everywhere in a sort of tacit, but constant and uniform combination, not to raise the wages of labor.

  Adam Smith

  Wages, Uniforms, Economics

  Adam Smith (1843). “An Inquiry Into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations With a Life of the Author: Also a View of the Doctrine of Smith, Compared with that of the French Economists, with a Method of Facilitating the Study of His Works, from the French of M. Jariner”, p.28

• The liberal reward of labor, therefore, as it is the necessary effect, so it is the natural symptom of increasing national wealth. The scanty maintenance of the laboring poor, on the other hand, is the natural symptom that things are at a stand, and their starving condition that they going backwards fast.

  Adam Smith

  Hands, Rewards, Maintenance

  Adam Smith, Bruce Mazlish (2003). “The Wealth of Nations: Representative Selections”, p.74, Courier Corporation

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