… is from page 473 of the 11th (2006) edition of one of greatest economics textbooks of all time: Paul Heyne’s, Peter Boettke’s, and David Prychitko’s The Economic Way of Thinking:
Adam Smith was no admirer of people who keep track of a nation’s exports and imports. He thought their activities lent themselves to “absurd speculations,” and he ridiculed those who measured national prosperity by the excess of a nation’s exports over its imports.