Adam Smith Quotes

Whatever your income, always live below your means.

I have always had a reputation for being frugal - less kind people might call me cheap. But my interest in building up a nest egg goes back to those days in Arnhem when I learned that money can grow, just like trees.

I've saved every dime I've made in my life.

Prosperity's right hand is industry and her left hand is frugality.

If you put a ten dollar bill under the rug instead of spending it, that is capital formation. It represents ten dollars' worth of something that might have been immediately consumed, but wasn't.

Those who spend too fast never grow rich.

A miser grows rich by seeming poor; an extravagant man grows poor by seeming rich.

I have a nest egg, and I don't buy above my means.

Cheapness is a great virtue.

Wealth can only be accumulated by the earnings of industry and the savings of frugality.

My parents were born in 1912; they graduated from college into the Depression. They kept notebooks of every nickel they spent, and these habits of frugality from having grown up so poor never left them.

A dollar saved is a quarter earned.

The maxim of buying nothing without the money in our pocket to pay for it, would make our country one of the happiest upon earth.

Frugality is a great revenue.

If there's not enough money in the bank account, you don't spend it.

I saved my money.

I save my money, brother. I don't spend what I don't make.

Even if you have a lot of money, you may not want to spend a lot of it on clothes.

He that, when he should not, spends too much, shall, when he would not, have too little to spend.

I am for economy. After that I am for more economy. At this time and under present conditions that is my conception of serving all the people.

All to whom want is terrible, upon whatever principle, ought to think themselves obliged to learn the sage maxims of our parsimonious ancestors, and attain the salutary arts of contracting expense; for without economy none can be rich, and with it few can be poor.

Qualities not regulated run into their opposites. Economy before competence is meanness after it. Therefore economy is for the poor; the rich may dispense with it.

Those who spend too much will eventually be owned by those who are thrifty.

I thank God, I have been able, by adopting Principles of strict Economy and Frugality, to keep my principal, I mean my Country-Estate, unimpaired.

Expense, and great expense, may be an essential part in true economy. If parsimony were to be considered as one of the kinds of that virtue, there is, however, another and a higher economy. Economy is a distinctive virtue, and consists not in saving, but in selection.