Some background: Upon my return from Scotland I found the June 2023 issue of the Journal of the History of Economic Thought in my mailbox. Among other things, this issue contains a special “Smith at 300” symposium featuring a number of classic quotations from the works or correspondence of the great Adam Smith. (The editors of JHET had invited scholars “to write short pieces telling us what their favorite Adam Smith [is] and why.” Alas, I somehow missed this call for papers.) In all, no less than 17 Smith scholars ended up contributing to this special symposium. Not surprisingly, most of the quotes singled-out for this symposium issue are from the Scottish philosopher-economist’s magnum opus The Wealth of Nations; below is a complete tally:

A. The first quote — my favorite of all — is from Smith’s private correspondence, a letter to his mother dated 29 November 1743, while Smith was still a student at Oxford: “I am just recovered of a violent fit of laziness, which has confined me to my elbow-chair these three months.” (Shout out to Sarah Skwire for featuring this quote in her contribution to the “Smith at 300” symposium.)

B. Another quote is from Smith’s Lectures on Jurisprudence: “The laws of most countries being made by men generally are very severe on the women …“

C. Two more quotes are from Smith’s Lectures on Rhetoric and Belles Lettres: (1) “Prose is the Stile in which all the common affairs of Life, all Business and Agreements are made. No one ever made a Bargain in verse.” And (2) “We need not be surprised … that the Cartesian philosophy …, though it does not perhaps contain a word of truth, … should nevertheless have been so universally received by all the Learned in Europe at that time …“

D. Three of the quotes are from Smith’s treatise on ethics The Theory of Moral Sentiments, including the opening sentence in Book 1 of this great work: “How selfish soever man may be supposed, there are evidently some principles in his nature, which interest him in the fortune of others, and render their happiness necessary to him, though he derives nothing from it except the pleasure of seeing it.” (The other two quotes are from Books 2 and 7 of Smith’s Theory of Moral Sentiments.)

E. Four-fifths of the featured quotes — ten out of 17, including the immortal words pictured below — are from The Wealth of Nations: seven from Book 1, one from Book 2, and one from Book 5, as well as one quote from the “Early Draft of The Wealth of Nations“.

Postscript: I will share my personal favorite Adam Smith quote in my next post.