# Quote — Adam Smith, The Theory of Moral Sentiments

> When the happiness or misery of others depends in any respect upon our conduct, we dare not, as self–love might suggest to us, prefer the interest of one to that of many. The man within immediately calls to us, that we value ourselves too much and other people too little, and that, by doing so, we render ourselves the proper object of the contempt and indignation of our brethren. Neither is this sentiment confined to men of extraordinary magnanimity and virtue. It is deeply impressed upon every tolerably good soldier, who feels that he would become the scorn of his companions, if he could be supposed capable of shrinking from danger, or of hesitating, either to expose or to throw away his life, when the good of the service required it.

- Author: [Adam Smith](https://www.leafyquotes.com/adam-smith.md)
- Book: [The Theory of Moral Sentiments](https://www.leafyquotes.com/adam-smith/the-theory-of-moral-sentiments.md)
- Source: [Wikiquote](https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Adam_Smith#Part_III) ([CC BY-SA 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/))
- Quote page: https://www.leafyquotes.com/adam-smith/the-theory-of-moral-sentiments/when-the-happiness

## More from this book

> We are delighted to find a person who values us as we value ourselves, and distinguishes us from the rest of mankind, with an attention not unlike that with which we distinguish ourselves.

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/adam-smith/the-theory-of-moral-sentiments/we-are-delighted.md)

> How many people ruin themselves by laying out money on trinkets of frivolous utility? What pleases these lovers of toys is not so much the utility, as the aptness of the machines which are fitted to promote it. All their pockets are stuffed with little conveniences. They contrive new pockets, unknown in the clothes of other people, in order to carry a greater number. They walk about loaded with a multitude of baubles, in weight and sometimes in value not inferior to an ordinary Jew's-box, some of which may sometimes be of some little use, but all of which might at all times be very well spared, and of which the whole utility is certainly not worth the fatigue of bearing the burden.

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/adam-smith/the-theory-of-moral-sentiments/how-many-people.md)

> There is not a negro from the coast of Africa who does not, in this respect, possess a degree of magnanimity which the soul of his sordid master is too often scarce capable of conceiving. Fortune never exerted more cruelly her empire over mankind, than when she subjected those nations of heroes to the refuse of the jails of Europe, to wretches who possess the virtues neither of the countries which they come from, nor of those which they go to, and whose levity, brutality, and baseness, so justly expose them to the contempt of the vanquished.

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/adam-smith/the-theory-of-moral-sentiments/there-is-not.md)