Adam Smith Quotes on Justice
Adam Smith was an 18th-century Scottish moral philosopher and political economist, a leading figure of the Scottish Enlightenment, and the founder of modern economics. This page collects quotes attributed to Adam Smith on the topic of justice, drawn from across the philosopher's works.
Quotes
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“All for ourselves and nothing for other people seems, in every age of the world, to have been the vile maxim of the masters of mankind.”
Chapter IV, p. 448. -
“No society can surely be flourishing and happy, of which the far greater part of the members are poor and miserable.”
Chapter VIII, p. 94. -
“Mercy to the guilty is cruelty to the innocent.”
Section II, Chap. III. -
“To desire you to read my book over and mark all the corrections you would wish me to make...would oblige me greatly: I know how much I shall be benefitted and I shall at the same time preserve the pretious right of private judgement for the sake of which our forefathers kicked out the Pope and the Pretender. I believe you to be much more infalliable than the Pope, but as I am a Protestant my conscience makes me scruple to submit to any unscriptural authority.”
Letter to William Strahan (4 April 1760), quoted in Adam Smith, The Correspondence of Adam Smith , eds. E. C. Mossner and I. S. Ross (1987), pp. 67–68 -
“I perfectly agree with your Lordship too, that to crush the Industry of so great and so fine a province of the empire, in order to favour the monopoly of some particular towns in Scotland or England, is equally unjust and impolitic. The general opulence and improvement of Ireland might certainly, under proper management, afford much greater resources to the Government, than can ever be drawn from a few mercantile or manufacturing towns.”
Letter to Henry Dundas (1 November 1779), quoted in Adam Smith, The Correspondence of Adam Smith , eds. E. C. Mossner and I. S. Ross (1987), p. 241