“A wise man never complains of the destiny of providence, nor thinks the universe in confusion when he is out of order. He does not look upon himself as a whole, separated and detached from every other part of nature, to be taken care of by itself and for itself: he regards himself in the light in which he imagines the great genius of human nature, and of the world, regards him: he enters, if I may say so, into the sentiments of that divine being, and considers himself as an atom, a particle, of an immense and infinite system, which must and ought to be disposed of according to the conveniency of the whole.”

“Justice, on the contrary, is the main pillar that upholds the whole edifice. If it is removed, the great, the immense fabric of human society, that fabric which to raise and support seems in this world, if I may say so, to have been the peculiar and darling care of nature, must in a moment crumble into atoms. In order to enforce the observation of justice, therefore, nature has implanted in the human breast that consciousness of ill-desert, those terrors of merited punishment which attend upon its violation, as the great safe-guards of the association of mankind, to protect the weak, to curb the violent, and to chastise the guilty.”

“Led by an invisible hand to promote an end which was no part of his intention, 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. It is an affectation, indeed, not very common among merchants, and very few words need be employed in dissuading them from it.”

“Initiated by the physiocrats and was finally popularized in Adam Smith’s formula of the invisible hand … making it easy for each man to satisfy his own egoism. Once this idea had become generally accepted capitalism had defeated the attitudes that hindered its early advance. This implies the theoretical negation of the social structure in a radical way since the doctrine of capitalism conceived the economy as a cluster of human molecules related to each other on a purely economic basis.”

“The welfare of human society is best served by the view of people as ‘human molecules’ who, by pursuing their own interests through the market, inevitably promote the general good. There is little need to consider things from the ecological point of view and embrace the notions of interaction, interdependence, community, and the noneconomic relations people enjoy with each other and with the natural world.”

“In 1776, Adam Smith published his Wealth of Nations; which, looking at its ultimate results, is probably the most important book that has ever been written, and is certainly the most valuable contribution ever made by a single man towards establishing the principles on which government should be based. In this great work, the old theory of protection as applied to commerce, was destroyed in nearly all its parts; the doctrine of the balance of trade was not only attacked, but its falsehood was demonstrated; and innumerable absurdities, which had been accumulating for ages, were suddenly swept away.”

— Henry Buckle (1857), History of Civilizations, Volume One (pg. 154)

“Adam Smith inspired belief in the merit of melding the Newtonian physics of the material world with the science of human behavior.”

— Tom Siegfried (2006), A Beautiful Math: John Nash, Game Theory, and the Quest for a Code of Nature [7]

“Wealth, as Hobbes says, is power.”

— Adam Smith (1776), Wealth of Nations (pg. 13)