Thomas B. Macaulay Quotes

Reform, that we may preserve.

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

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.

In Plato's opinion, man was made for philosophy; in Bacon's opinion, philosophy was made for man.

A church is disaffected when it is persecuted, quiet when it is tolerated, and actively loyal when it is favored and cherished.

History begins in novel and ends in essay.

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

How well Horatius kept the bridge In the brave days of old.

The whole history of Christianity proves that she has little indeed to fear from persecution as a foe, but much to fear from persecution as an ally.

He [Charles II] was utterly without ambition. He detested business, and would sooner have abdicated his crown than have undergone the trouble of really directing the administration.

A system in which the two great commandments are to hate your neighbor and to love your neighbor's wife.

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

The English doctrine that all power is a trust for the public good.

We must judge of a form of government by it's general tendency, not by happy accidents

No man in the world acts up to his own standard of right.

Genius is subject to the same laws which regulate the production of cotton and molasses.

The real object of the drama is the exhibition of human character.

The sweeter sound of woman's praise.

Even the law of gravitation would be brought into dispute were there a pecuniary interest involved.

Books are becoming everything to me. If I had at this moment any choice in life, I would bury myself in one of those immense libraries...and never pass a waking hour without a book before me.

We never could clearly understand how it is that egotism, so unpopular in conversation, should be so popular in writing.

Nobles by the right of an earlier creation, and priests by the imposition of a mightier hand.

More sinners are cursed at not because we despise their sins but because we envy their success at sinning.

As freedom is the only safeguard of governments, so are order and moderation generally necessary to preserve freedom.

Our estimate of a character always depends much on the manner in which that character affects our own interests and passions.

Knowledge advances by steps, and not by leaps.

Free trade, one of the greatest blessings which a government can confer on a people, is in almost every country unpopular.

The history of nations, in the sense in which I use the word, is often best studied in works not professedly historical.

If the Sunday had not been observed as a day of rest during the last three centuries, I have not the slightest doubt that we should have been at this moment a poorer people and less civilized.

The Saviour of mankind Himself, in whose blameless life malice could find no act to impeach, has been called in question for words spoken.

Man is so inconsistent a creature that it is impossible to reason from his beliefs to his conduct, or from one part of his belief to another.

No man who is correctly informed as to the past will be disposed to take a morose or desponding view of the present.

Men naturally sympathize with the calamities of individuals; but they are inclined to look on a fallen party with contempt rather than with pity.

Great minds do indeed react on the society which has made them what they are; but they only pay with interest what they have received.

No particular man is necessary to the state. We may depend on it that, if we provide the country with popular institutions, those institutions will provide it with great men.

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

In after-life you may have friends--fond, dear friends; but never will you have again the inexpressible love and gentleness lavished upon you which none but a mother bestows.

I am always nearest to myself," says the Latin proverb.

The upper current of society presents no pertain criterion by which we can judge of the direction in which the under current flows.

Every political sect has its esoteric and its exoteric school--its abstract doctrines for the initiated; its visible symbols, its imposing forms, its mythological fables, for the vulgar.

The perfect disinterestedness and self-devotion of which men seem incapable, but which is sometimes found in women.

In the plays of Shakespeare man appears as he is, made up of a crowd of passions which contend for the mastery over him, and govern him in turn.

We are free, we are civilised, to little purpose, if we grudge to any portion of the human race an equal measure of freedom and civilisation.

With the dead there is no rivalry, with the dead there is no change.

It may be laid as an universal rule that a government which attempts more than it ought will perform less.

I wish I was as sure of anything as he is of everything.

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

The great cause of revolutions is this, that while nations move onward, constitutions stand still.

Power, safely defied, touches its downfall.

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