Thomas B. Macaulay Quotes (44 Quotes)

To sum up the whole, we should say that the aim of the Platonic philosophy was to exalt man into a god.

I shall cheerfully bear the reproach of having descended below the dignity of history if I can succeed in placing before the English of the nineteenth century a true picture of the life of their ancestors.

The English Bible - a book which, if everything else in our language should perish, would alone suffice to show the whole extent of its beauty and power.

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

As civilization advances, poetry almost necessarily declines.

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

To that class we may leave it to refine the vernacular dialects of the country, to enrich those dialects with terms of science borrowed from the Western nomenclature, and to render them by degrees fit vehicles for conveying knowledge to the great mass of the population.

This is the best book ever written by any man on the wrong side of a question of which he is profoundly ignorant.

Many politicians are in the habit of laying it down as a self-evident proposition that no people ought to be free till they are fit to use their freedom. The maxim is worthy of the fool in the old story who resolved not to go into the water till he had learned to swim.

A few more days, and this essay will follow the Defensio Populi to the dust and silence of the upper shelf... For a month or two it will occupy a few minutes of chat in every drawing-room, and a few columns in every magazine and it will then be withdrawn, to make room for the forthcoming novelties.

The measure of a man's real character is what he would do if he knew he would never be found out.

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

People crushed by law have no hopes but from power. If laws are their enemies, they will be enemies to laws.

Such night in England ne'er had been, nor ne'er again shall be.

Temple was a man of the world amongst men of letters, a man of letters amongst men of the world.

There is only one cure for the evils which newly acquired freedom produces, and that cure is freedom.

Nothing is so galling to a people not broken in from the birth as a paternal, or, in other words, a meddling government, a government which tells them what to read, and say, and eat, and drink and wear.

A good constitution is infinitely better than the best despot.

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

There were gentlemen and there were seamen in the navy of Charles the Second. But the seamen were not gentlemen; and the gentlemen were not seamen.

I would rather be poor in a cottage full of books than a king without the desire to read.

Nothing is so useless as a general maxim.

Generalization is necessary to the advancement of knowledge, but particularly is indispensable to the creations of the imagination.

The puritan hated bear baiting, not because it gave pain to the bear, but because it gave pleasure to the spectators.

We hold that the most wonderful and splendid proof of genius is a great poem produced in a civilized age.

A single breaker may recede; but the tide is evidently coming in.

The object of oratory alone in not truth, but persuasion.

Logicians may reason about abstractions. But the great mass of men must have images. The strong tendency of the multitude in all ages and nations to idolatry can be explained on no other principle.

And how can man die better than facing fearful odds, for the ashes of his fathers, and the temples of his Gods?

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

Reform, that we may preserve.

Your Constitution is all sail and no anchor.

The best portraits are those in which there is a slight mixture of caricature.

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.

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

Few of the many wise apothegms which have been uttered have prevented a single foolish action.

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

Nothing except the mint can make money without advertising.

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

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

We must judge a government by its general tendencies and not by its happy accidents.

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

Time advances facts accumulate doubts arise. Faint glimpses of truth begin to appear, and shine more and more unto the perfect day. The highest intellects, like the tops of mountains, are the first to catch and to reflect the dawn. They are bright, while the level below is still in darkness. But soon the light, which at first illuminated only the loftiest eminences, descends on the plain, and penetrates to the deepest valley. First come hints, then fragments of systems, then defective systems, then complete and harmonious systems. The sound opinion, held for a time by one bold speculator, becomes the opinion of a small minority, of a strong minority, of a majority of mankind. Thus, the great progress goes on.

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