Adam Smith Quotes About Justice

Quotes about: Justice

• 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.

  Adam Smith

  Peace, Justice, Littles

  Adam Smith, comte Germain Garnier, Dugald Stewart (1835). “An Inquiry Into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations”, p.96

• 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. It is impossible indeed to prevent such meetings, by any law which either could be executed, or would be consistent with liberty or justice. 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.

  Adam Smith

  Law, Justice, People

  An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations vol. 1, bk. 1, ch. 10 (1776)

• Resentment seems to have been given us by nature for a defense, and for a defense only! It is the safeguard of justice and the security of innocence.

  Adam Smith

  Nature, Hate, Justice

  Adam Smith (1948). “Adam Smith's moral and political philosophy”

• To found a great empire for the sole purpose of raising up a people of customers, may at first sight appear a project fit only for a nation of shopkeepers. It is, however, a project altogether unfit for a nation of shopkeepers; but extremely fit for a nation whose government is influenced by shopkeepers.

  Adam Smith

  Government, Sight, People

  An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations vol. 2, bk. 4, ch. 7 (1776). Other quotation compilations have this ending with "whose government is influenced by shopkeepers," but the first edition reads as above. See Napoleon 5; Josiah Tucker 1

• Justice, however, never was in reality administered gratis in any country. Lawyers and attornies, at least, must always be paid by the parties; and, if they were not, they would perform their duty still worse than they actually perform it.

  Adam Smith

  Country, Party, Reality

  Adam Smith (1778). “An Inquiry Into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations”, p.326

• 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

• The man who barely abstains from violating either the person, or the estate, or the reputation of his neighbours, has surely very little positive merit. He fulfils, however, all the rules of what is peculiarly called justice, and does every thing which his equals can with propriety force him to do, or which they can punish him for not doing. We may often fulfil all the rules of justice by sitting still and doing nothing.

  Adam Smith

  Men, Sitting Still, Justice

  Adam Smith (2016). “The Essays on Philosophical Subjects: the Great Master”, p.92, VM eBooks

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