How Adam Smith Can Change Your Life: An Unexpected Guide to Human Nature and Happiness

Behaving with propriety is the ability to conform to the expectations of those around us, and they in turn conform to our expectations.

Hayek thought that extending the norms of the family to society at large would put us on the road to tyranny.

The prudent man is genuine. He is modest about his skills and successes. A simpler way to capture Smith’s advice is “Say little, do much.”

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

When we earn the admiration of others honestly by being respectable, honorable, blameless, generous, and kind, the end result is true happiness.

By justice, Smith means the virtue of not injuring or harming others. By prudence, Smith means the virtue of taking care of oneself using both foresight—looking down the road to assess the consequences of our action—and self-control, the ability to give up something today in return for a greater gain in the future:

is so much easier to live in a world where we can trust without having to spend too much time, money, and energy verifying the trust we place in others.

economics is the study of how to get the most out of life.

we want people to like us, respect us, and care about us. We want to be appreciated, desired, praised, and cherished. We want people to pay attention to us and take us seriously. We want them to want our presence, to enjoy our company.