He authored only two books, The Theory of Moral Sentiments (1759) and An Inquiry in the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations (1776). Both works, especially the latter, helped transform humanity from a state of almost universal poverty to one of amazing prosperity and human betterment. It might be thought that such lofty rhetoric about Adam Smith is merely an exaggerated instance of poetic license, but if there is any instance of the role and the power of ideas in human events, it is exemplified by the impact of The Wealth of Nations. As economist Thomas Sowell once emphasized:

Adam Smith's The Wealth of Nations was a revolutionary event in 1776 — an intellectual shot heard around the world. It attacked an economic system prevalent throughout European civilization, both in Europe itself and in the Western Hemisphere colonies. The pervasive and minute economic regulations that encrusted the British economy in the eighteenth century were widely disliked and evaded, as were similar "mercantilist" schemes of economic control in other countries. But while many people chafed and complained it was Adam Smith who first convincingly demolished the whole conception behind these regulations and in the process established the new field of economics.