Since Adam Smith is set to be immortalized on Britain’s £20 bill, it’s worth turning to him for a quote of the day. Most people know of his praise for the division of labour, but he had some rather scathing criticisms, too:

“The man whose whole life is spent in performing a few simple operations, of which the effects are, perhaps, always the same, or very nearly the same, has no occasion to exert his understanding, or to exercise his invention in finding out expedients for removing difficulties which never occur. He naturally loses, therefore, the habit of such exertion, and generally becomes as stupid and ignorant as it is possible for human creature to become.”

And just for free, I’ll throw in my other favourite second quote: “All for ourselves and nothing for other people, seems, in every age of the world, to have been the vile maxim of the masters of mankind.” Adam Smith would probably be a bit perplexed to see that things haven’t changed much today.