Notice: ob_end_flush(): Failed to delete and flush buffer. No buffer to delete or flush in /home1/ntptuqmy/public_html/quotes/includes/header_html.php on line 6
Thomas Babington Macaulay Quotes - IQDb - Internet Quotes Database

Quotes from Thomas Babington Macaulay


Sorted by Popularity


He had a wonderful talent for packing thought close, and rendering it portable.


Persecution produced its natural effect on them. It found them a sect; it made them a faction.


That is the best government which desires to make the people happy, and knows how to make them happy.


None of the modes by which a magistrate is appointed, popular election, the accident of the lot, or the accident of birth, affords, as far as we can perceive, much security for his being wiser than any of his neighbours.


The maxim, that governments ought to train the people in the way in which they should go, sounds well. But is there any reason for believing that a government is more likely to lead the people in the right way than the people to fall into the right way of themselves?


She thoroughly understands what no other Church has ever understood, how to deal with enthusiasts.


Turn where we may, within, around, the voice of great events is proclaiming to us, Reform, that you may preserve!


There is surely no contradiction in saying that a certain section of the community may be quite competent to protect the persons and property of the rest, yet quite unfit to direct our opinions, or to superintend our private habits.


We know no spectacle so ridiculous as the British public in one of its periodical fits of morality.


He was a rake among scholars, and a scholar among rakes.


I shall not be satisfied unless I produce something which shall for a few days supersede the last fashionable novel on the tables of young ladies.


As civilization advances, poetry almost necessarily declines.


An acre in Middlesex is better than a principality in Utopia.


A good constitution is infinitely better than the best despot.


To punish a man because we infer from the nature of some doctrine which he holds, or from the conduct of other persons who hold the same doctrines with him, that he will commit a crime, is persecution, and is, in every case, foolish and wicked.


The knowledge of the theory of logic has no tendency whatever to make men good reasoners.


The gallery in which the reporters sit has become a fourth estate of the realm.


The effect of violent dislike between groups has always created an indifference to the welfare and honor of the state.


Reform, that we may preserve.


Perhaps no person can be a poet, or even enjoy poetry, without a certain unsoundness of mind.