It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest.
No society can surely be flourishing and happy, of which the far greater part of the members are poor and miserable.
Every man is rich or poor according to the degree in which he can afford to enjoy the necessaries, conveniences, and amusements of human life.
Show me the incentive and I will show you the outcome.
The exchangeable value of all commodities rises as the difficulties of their production increase.
Under a system of perfectly free commerce, each country naturally devotes its capital and labour to such employments as are most beneficial to each.
The interest of the landlord is always opposed to the interest of every other class in the community.
There is no way of keeping profits up but by keeping wages down.
If we look to the comparative advantage of any one country, we shall perceive that what it gains by trade is not wealth, but a superior distribution of industry.
Profits depend on high or low wages, wages on the price of necessaries, and the price of necessaries chiefly on the price of food.
Gold and silver, like other commodities, have an intrinsic value, which is not arbitrary.
The opinions which Milton, Locke, and others have so ably sustained, I firmly believe to be correct.
The curious task of economics is to demonstrate to men how little they really know about what they imagine they can design.
If socialists understood economics, they wouldn't be socialists.
In the long run we are all dead.
The market can stay irrational longer than you can stay solvent.
Practical men, who believe themselves to be quite exempt from any intellectual influences, are usually the slaves of some defunct economist.
Capitalism is the astounding belief that the most wickedest of men will do the most wickedest of things for the greatest good of everyone.
The production of too many useful things results in too many useless people.
There is no such thing as a free lunch.
The most important single central fact about a free market is that no exchange takes place unless both parties benefit.
The great virtue of a free market system is that it does not care what color people are; it does not care what their religion is; it only cares whether they can produce something you want to buy.
Inflation is always and everywhere a monetary phenomenon.
Human action is purposeful behavior.
The most important thing to remember is that inflation is not an act of God. Inflation is a policy.
The fundamental social phenomenon is the division of labor and its counterpart human cooperation.
There is no means of avoiding the final collapse of a boom brought about by credit expansion.
Money is gold, and nothing else.
Every individual necessarily labours to render the annual revenue of the society as great as he can. He generally neither intends to promote the public interest, nor knows how much he is promoting it.
Incentives are the cornerstone of modern life. And understanding them — or, often, ferreting them out — is the key to solving just about any riddle.
Morality represents the way that people would like the world to work, whereas economics represents how it actually does work.
