Adam Smith Quotes About Authority

Quotes about: Authority

• The discipline of colleges and universities is in general contrived, not for the benefit of the students, but for the interest, or more properly speaking, for the ease of the masters. Its object is, in all cases, to maintain the authority of the master, and whether he neglects or performs his duty, to oblige the students in all cases to behave toward him as if he performed it with the greatest diligence and ability.

  Adam Smith

  College, Discipline, Benefits

  'Wealth of Nations' (1776)

• The statesman who should attempt to direct private people in what manner they ought to employ their capitals would not only load himself with most unnecessary attention but assume an authority which could safely be trusted to no council and senate whatever, and which would nowhere be so dangerous as in the hands of man who have folly and presumption enough to fancy himself fit to exercise it.

  Adam Smith

  Exercise, Men, Hands

  Adam Smith, Bruce Mazlish (2003). “The Wealth of Nations: Representative Selections”, p.167, Courier Corporation

• It is the interest of every man to live as much at his ease as he can; and if his emoluments are to be precisely the same, whether he does or does not perform some very laborious duty, it is certainly his interest, at least as interest is vulgarly understood, either to neglect it altogether, or, if he is subject to some authority which will not suffer him to do this, to perform it in as careless and slovenly a manner as that authority will permit.

  Adam Smith

  Men, Suffering, Doe

  Adam Smith (2007). “The Wealth of Nations: An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations”, p.494, Harriman House Limited

• To hinder, besides, the farmer from selling his goods at all times to the best market, is evidently to sacrifice the ordinary laws of justice to an idea of public utility, to a sort of reasons of state; an act of legislative authority which ought to be exercised only, which can be pardoned only in cases of the most urgent necessity.

  Adam Smith

  Sacrifice, Law, Ideas

  Adam Smith, William Playfair (1811). “An inquiry into the nature and causes of the wealth of nations”, p.26

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