Q0420

Adam Smith

A verified English rendering from the curated archive.

English

How selfish soever man may be supposed, there are evidently some principles in his nature which interest him in the fortune of others.
Thinker Adam Smith
School Scottish Enlightenment
Source The Theory of Moral Sentiments
Theme Philosophy
Another quotation More from this thinker

Source context

This English passage is associated with The Theory of Moral Sentiments, within the tradition of Scottish Enlightenment. The wording below is a verified rendering prepared for careful reading rather than a claim of unique translation authority.

A short reading

Read in the register of philosophy, the sentence asks the reader to test an assumption rather than to collect a slogan. In Adam Smith's wider work, similar claims are usually offered as prompts for judgment: what would have to be true for the sentence to hold, and what would follow if it did?

How to cite this quotation

APA: Adam Smith. (n.d.). How selfish soever man may be supposed, there are evidently some principles in his nature which interest him in the fortune of others. In Philosophy Blind Box. https://www.philosophydef.com/quotes/q0420

MLA: Adam Smith. “How selfish soever man may be supposed, there….” Philosophy Blind Box, https://www.philosophydef.com/quotes/q0420.

Chicago: Adam Smith. “How selfish soever man may be supposed, there….” Philosophy Blind Box. Accessed 2026. https://www.philosophydef.com/quotes/q0420.

Same thinker

More from Adam Smith

  1. Man naturally desires, not only to be loved, but to be lovely.

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Same theme

More on philosophy

  1. It is through wonder that people both now begin and first began to philosophize.
  2. A person's character is their destiny.
  3. What is opposed brings together; from what differs comes the finest harmony.
  4. Death is nothing to us: for what has been dissolved has no sensation, and what has no sensation is nothing to us.
  5. Pleasure is the beginning and end of the happy life — not the pleasures of profligates, but freedom from pain in the body and from disturbance in the soul.

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