Adam Smith Quotes

Trade is a social act.

Self-interest leads to honing your skills, the better to trade with.

Exchange is creation.

Trade is nothing else but a Commutation of Superfluities; for instance: I give mine, what I can spare, for somewhat of yours, which I want, and you can spare.

The universal basis of co-operation is the proportioning of benefits received to services rendered.

… the woman whose husband makes twelve hundred dollars a year may have a couple of hours a day which she could sell in return for some service which she wishes to buy. There ought to be a reciprocity exchange in every town of any size where these exchanges could be arranged for. Nothing more than an extension of the old community way of living when everybody got together for barn raisings, and husking bees and each individual's special talent was called upon and everyone earned in one way or another what they got.

Reciprocity is a deep instinct; it is the basic currency of social life.

Thence results, for science as well as for industry, the necessity of the division and association of labor. I receive and I give - such is human life. Each directs and is directed in his turn.

Man is an animal that makes bargains: no other animal does this - no dog exchanges bones with another.

The bird a nest, the spider a web, man friendship.

We're social animals. We've got to get along together. It's in our nature. We're hardwired that way.

Fundamentally, American society is composed of individuals who don't go out of their way to do each other favours.

Once you have become permanently startled, as I am, by the realization that we are a social species, you tend to keep an eye out for the pieces of evidence that this is, by and large, good for us.

If you want it, you've got to give it.

Even if the members of different communities find each other physically and/or behaviorally strange, irritating, or annoying, and do not want to associate as neighbors, they may still engage in mutually beneficial trade if they reside spatially separated from each other.

We live in an interdependent world. We depend on one another for prosperity.

Nobody ever saw a dog make a fair and deliberate exchange of one bone for another with another dog.

For a relationship between two countries to be sustainable, it must be mutually beneficial.

You cannot just exercise your rights and get away without performing your responsibilities. Understand that it should not be about 'me' but rather 'us.'

My success, literally, is your success figuratively.

Integration is a give and take.

I'm a firm believer in the circle of commerce.

People live, work, walk, play, shop, study, and eat with other people. There are few desert dwellers who live alone without depending in some way on people.

Hospitality is always an act that benefits the host even more than the guest. The concept of hospitality arose in ancient times when the reciprocity was easier to see: in nomadic cultures, the food and shelter one gave to a stranger yesterday is the food and shelter one hopes to receive from a stranger tomorrow. By offering hospitality, one participates in the endless reweaving of a social fabric on which all can depend-thus the gift of sustenance for the guest becomes a gift of hope for the host.

Life can be so good if you let it. But you must trade with life. You give something and you get something, then you give something of yourself again and you receive something again. Life goes bad when people try to take from it without giving. Then they came away empty-handed, and they grab harder and more often, growing more disappointed and disillusioned each time.