Quotes and text excerpts about "Adam Smith"

“ Thus Adam Smith says, “The man who, not from frivolous fancy, but from proper motives, has performed a generous action, when he looks forward to those whom he has served, feels himself to be the natural object of their love and gratitude, and by sympathy with them, of the esteem and approbation of all mankind. And when he looks backward to the motive from which he acted, and surveys it in the light in which the indifferent spectator will survey it, he still continues to enter into it, and applauds himself by sympathy with the approbation of this supposed impartial judge. ”

“ A subtler doctrine, and one much closer to the facts of human nature, is that of Adam Smith (1723–1790) . He has observed how large a part sympathy plays in our ordinary affairs. If I am near a person when he is moved by any feeling, that feeling tends to jump across and to become mine also. Such identification of myself and him gives pleasure to us both. We all have experienced how sympathy heightens enjoyment and diminishes distress. In sympathy two sets of feelings become so nearly identified that the result can be called neither egoistic nor altruistic. ”

“ Some of the work of old Adam Smith had gone as far as Jerusalem. Dickon felt occasionally that if he were a spear-head or a dagger, he would stand more chance of seeing the world than he did as the son of his father.
Adam was secretly proud of the lad who at thirteen could do nearly as much as he himself could. That was saying more than a little, for Adam Smith had the knack of making every blow count by putting it in exactly the right place. A man who can do that will double his strength. ”

“ The principle of free trade may, as far as Englishmen are concerned, be treated as the doctrine of Adam Smith. The reasons in its favor never have been, nor will, from the nature of things, be mastered by the majority of any people. The apology for freedom of commerce will always present, from one point of view, an air of paradox. Every man feels or thinks that protection would benefit his own business, and it is difficult to realize that what may be a benefit for any man taken alone may be of no benefit to a body of men looked at collectively. ”

“ The tax, in its essence and positive destiny, is the form of distribution among that species of functionaries which Adam Smith has designated by the word UNPRODUCTIVE, although he admits as much as any one the utility and even the necessity of their labor in society. By this adjective, UNPRODUCTIVE, Adam Smith, whose genius dimly foresaw everything and left us to do everything, meant that the product of these laborers is NEGATIVE, which is a very different thing from null, and that consequently distribution so far as they are concerned follows a method other than exchange. ”

“ Leaving the dust and glory of revolutions, let us spend a moment of quiet with Adam Smith. I was glad to find that a man's ideas upon the subject of protection and free trade depend almost entirely upon the country in which he lives, or the business in which he happens to be engaged, and that, after all, each man regards the universe as a circumference of which he is the center. ”

“ No poison is more subtly destructive of the democratic State than paternalism; and the release of the creative impulses of men must always be the coping-stone of public policy. Adam Smith is the supreme representative of a tradition which saw that release effected by individual effort. Where each man cautiously pursued the good as he saw it, the realization was bound, in his view, to be splendid. A population each element of which was active and alert to its economic problems could not escape the achievement of greatness. ”

“ When Adam Smith wrote things were very different from what they are now. He stood in no fear of consequences, and therefore followed out the natural results of his own thought. Nowadays, every non-socialist economist has the dread of Socialism before his eyes, and, consequently, feels bound to caution in the statement of conclusions. For instance, the doctrine that labor is the basis of value seems to the ordinary economist to remove any theoretic justification in the nature of things for the independent function of the capitalist. ”

“ Smith’s empirical presumption of equality of potential of different human beings is stated most explicitly in The Wealth of Nations:
The difference of natural talents in different men is, in reality, much less than we are aware of; and the very different genius which appears to distinguish men of different professions, when grown up to maturity, is not upon many occasions so much the cause as the effect of the division of labour. ”

“ The charm about the man consists, for those who do not regard him with the special interest of the political7 economist, in his literary method, which exhibits his personality so attractively and makes his works so thoroughly his own, rather than in any facts about his eminency among Scotchmen. You bring away from your reading of Adam Smith a distinct and attractive impression of the man himself, such as you can get from the writings of no other author in the same field, and such as makes you wish to know still more of him. ”

“ The word Adam used in these legends for the first human being is evidently not a proper name, but is only used as a term for mankind. Adam appears as a proper name in Genesis, but certainly in some passages is only used in the same sense as the Assyrian word, and we are told on the creation of human beings (Genesis, v. 1) : "In the day that God created man, in the likeness of God made he him; male and female created he them; and blessed them, and called their name Adam, in the day when they were created." ”

“ Early in the sixteenth century, the famous astronomer and mathematician, Copernicus, wrote a treatise on the coining of money, again based on the principles of Aristotle; and toward the end of the century modern economic science began to take shape in the great mercantile theory which held sway more or less almost until the days of Adam Smith. Before his time there were, however, isolated writers who attacked with more or less perspicuity the fallacies of this theory, and had glimpses, in some cases not inconsiderable, of the more scientific doctrines developed in later times. ”

“ Why is it that men must repent and be baptized in water? And the Lord said unto Adam: Behold I have forgiven thee thy transgression in the Garden of Eden.
54 Hence came the saying abroad among the people, that the Son of God hath atoned for original guilt, wherein the sins of the parents cannot be answered upon the heads of the children, for they are whole from the foundation of the world. ”

“ The retired merchant is as fond of tulips as ever was Dutchman during the famous mania. The author finds a garden the best place to think out his thought. In the disabled statesman every restless throb of regret or ambition is stilled when he looks upon his blossomed apple-trees. Is the fancy too far brought that this love for gardens is a reminiscence haunting the race of that remote time in the world's dawn when but two persons existed,—a gardener named Adam, and a gardener's wife called Eve? ”

“ I say, that this is the man that receiveth salvation, through the atonement which was prepared from the foundation of the world, for all mankind, which ever was ever since the fall of Adam, or which is or which ever shall be, even unto the end of the world; and this is the means whereby salvation cometh. And there is none other salvation, save this which hath been spoken of; neither is there any conditions whereby man can be saved, except the conditions which I have told you. Believe in God; believe that he is, and that he created all things, both in Heaven and in Earth ”

“ Were it not for our transgression we never should have had seed, and never should have known good and evil, and the joy of our redemption, and the eternal life which God giveth unto all the obedient. 12 And Adam and Eve blessed the name of God, and they made all things known unto their sons and their daughters.
13 And Satan came among them, saying: I am also a son of God; and he commanded them, saying: Believe it not; and they believed it not, and they loved Satan more than God. And men began from that time forth to be carnal, sensual, and devilish. ”

“ Incontinently my thought moves like a slow-paced hearse with sable nodding plumes. Two rustic lovers, whispering between the darkening hedges, is as potent to project my mind into the tender passion as if I had seen Romeo touch the cheek of Juliet in the moon-light garden. Seeing a curly-headed child asleep in the sunshine before a cottage door is sufficient excuse for a discourse on childhood; quite as good as if I had seen infant Cain asleep in the lap of Eve with Adam looking on. A lark cannot rise to heaven without raising as many thoughts as there are notes in its song. ”

“ Professor Robertson Smith has contrasted the central importance which Haggai attached to the Temple with the attitude of Isaiah and Jeremiah, to whom “the religion of Israel and the holiness of Jerusalem have little to do with the edifice of the Temple. The city is holy because it is the seat of Jehovah’s sovereignty on earth, exerted in His dealings with and for the state of Judah and the kingdom of David.” ”

“ Ricardo's great service consisted in pointing out that wealth, whether in the form of capital or otherwise, is merely the accumulated product of labor, and in enforcing Adam Smith's position that labor is the sole basis of value, with its corollary that the "natural price" of a commodity expresses the total amount of embodied social labor it contains. ”

“ Robertson Smith, Religion of Semites, I. 203) ; in Arabic ball is to weaken a strong liquid with water, while balbal is to be confused, disordered. The Syriac balal is to mix. Some have taken Hosea's יתבלל as if from בליל (Isa. xxx. 24; Job vi. 5) , usually understood as a mixed crop of wheat and inferior vegetables for fodder; but there is reason to believe בליל means rather fresh corn. The derivation from בלה to grow old, does not seem probable. ”

“ For behold, he judgeth, and his judgment is just, and the infant perisheth not, that dieth in his infancy; but men drinketh damnation to their own souls, except they humble themselves, and become as little children, and believeth that salvation was, and is, and is to come, in and through the atoning blood of Christ, the Lord Omnipotent: for the natural man is an enemy of God, and has been, from the fall of Adam, and will be, forever and ever ”

“ Since preparing the above for the press there has come into my hands Professor Cheyne's "Introduction" to the new edition of Robertson Smith's The Prophets of Israel, in which (p. xix.) he reaches with regard to Hosea xiv. 2-10 conclusions entirely opposite to those reached above. Professor Cheyne denies the passage to Hosea on the grounds that it is akin in language and imagery and ideas to writings of the age which begins with Jeremiah, and which among other works includes the Song of Songs. ”

“ Surely Zion shall dwell in safety forever. But the Lord said unto Enoch: Zion have I blessed, but the residue of the people have I cursed. 21 And it came to pass that the Lord showed unto Enoch all the inhabitants of the earth; and he beheld, and lo, Zion, in process of time, was taken up into heaven. And the Lord said unto Enoch: Behold mine abode forever.
22 And Enoch also beheld the residue of the people which were the sons of Adam; and they were a mixture of all the seed of Adam save it was the seed of Cain, for the seed of Cain were black, and had not place among them. ”

“ Duhm was the first to publish reasons for rejecting the passage (Theol. der Propheten, 1875, p. 119) , but Wellhausen had already reached the same conclusion (Kleine Propheten, p. 71) . Oort and Stade adhere. On the other side see Robertson Smith, Prophets of Israel, 398, and Kuenen, who adheres to Smith's arguments (Onderzoek) .
[260] "It is plain that Amos could not have excepted Judah from the universal ruin which he saw to threaten the whole land; or at all events such exception would have required to be expressly made on special grounds."—Robertson Smith, Prophets, 398. ”

“ In P Sinai is the Mount of the Law. To the above may be added segullah, iii. 17, which is found in the Pentateuch only outside P and in Psalm cxxxv. 4. All these resemblances between “Malachi” and Deuteronomy and “Malachi’s” divergences from P are given in Robertson Smith’s Old Test. in the Jewish Church, 2nd ed., 425 ff.: cf. 444 ff.
[979] Lev. xvii.—xxvi. From this and Ezekiel he received the conception of the profanation of the sanctuary by the sins of the people—ii. 11: cf. also ii. 2, iii. 3, 4, for traces of Ezekiel’s influence. ”

“ Sacred Tree, or Grove, with attendant Cherubim, from Assyrian Cylinder. the serpent, eat of the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge, and so by disobedience brought sin into the world. These details are also lost in the cuneiform text, which opens again where the gods are cursing the dragon and the Adam or man for this transgression, corresponding to the passage, Genesis, iii. ”

“ But if God’s answer to His people’s prayer be in the past, so must His jealousy and pity. All these verbs are in the same sequence of time. Merx proposes to change the vowel-points of the verbs and turn them into futures. But see above, p. 395. ver. 21 shows that Jehovah’s action is past, and Nowack points out the very unusual character of the construction that would follow from Merx’s emendation. Ewald, Hitzig, Kuenen, Robertson Smith, Davidson, Robertson, Steiner, Wellhausen, Driver, Nowack, etc., all take the verbs in the past. ”