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Thomas Babington Macaulay

142 quotes

“I have been deep in Plato, Aristotle, and Theocritus ever since I left home, and admiring more and more every day the powers of that mighty language which is incomparably the best vehicle both for reasoning and for imagery that mankind have ever discovered, and which is richer both in abstract philosophical terms and poetical expressions than the English, French, and Latin tongues put together.”
Thomas Babington Macaulay (1800–1859) first seen 1807 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Letter to Zachary Macaulay (19? August 1820), quoted in The Letters of Thomas Babington Macaulay, Volume I: 1807–February 1831, ed. Thomas Pinney (1974), p. 145
“What an incalculable debt do we owe to that little speck of land, Greece.—The principles of taste, the finest models of composition, the doctrines and the glorious examples to which we owe political freedom, the arts, the sciences, architecture, sculpture, every thing that is great and splendid in literature and politics, must be considered as ultimately derived from that little peninsula.”
Thomas Babington Macaulay (1800–1859) first seen 1807 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Letter to Zachary Macaulay (8 September 1821), quoted in The Letters of Thomas Babington Macaulay, Volume I: 1807–February 1831, ed. Thomas Pinney (1974), p. 163
“As free constitutions are the strongest supports of governments, social order is the best safeguard of freedom. Liberty has no enemies so pernicious as those misguided friends whose ardour in her cause leads them to outrage the moral sense of mankind, and to arm against her the interests and feelings which are her natural allies. Even the prejudices of nations should be respected.”
Thomas Babington Macaulay (1800–1859) first seen 1822 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: 'Essay on the Life and Character of King William III' (1822), written for the Greaves Historical Prize at Cambridge, quoted in The Times Literary Supplement (1 May 1969), p. 469
“Press where ye see my white plume shine, amidst the ranks of war, And be your oriflamme to-day the helmet of Navarre.”
Thomas Babington Macaulay (1800–1859) first seen 1824 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Ivry: A Song of the Huguenots, l. 29 (1824), quoted in The Works of Lord Macaulay Complete, Vol. VIII, ed. Lady Trevelyan (1866), p. 548
“Oh! wherefore come ye forth, in triumph from the North, With your hands, and your feet, and your raiment all red? And wherefore doth your rout send forth a joyous shout? And whence be the grapes of the wine-press which ye tread?”
Thomas Babington Macaulay (1800–1859) first seen 1824 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: The Battle of Naseby (1824), quoted in The Works of Lord Macaulay Complete, Vol. VIII, ed. Lady Trevelyan (1866), p. 551
“The object of oratory alone is not truth, but persuasion.”
Thomas Babington Macaulay (1800–1859) first seen 1824 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: 'On the Athenian Orators', Knight's Quarterly Magazine (August 1824), quoted in The Miscellaneous Writings of Lord Macaulay, Vol. I (1860), p. 135
“Soon fades the spell, soon comes the night: Say will it not be then the same, Whether we played the black or white, Whether we lost or won the game?”
Thomas Babington Macaulay (1800–1859) first seen 1825 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Sermon in a Churchyard, st. 8 (1825), quoted in The Miscellaneous Writings of Lord Macaulay, Vol. II (1860), p. 390
“Out of his surname they have coined an epithet for a knave, and out of his Christian name a synonym for the Devil.”
Thomas Babington Macaulay (1800–1859) first seen 1827 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: 'Machiavelli', The Edinburgh Review (March 1827), quoted in T. B. Macaulay, Critical and Historical Essays Contributed to The Edinburgh Review, Vol. I (1843), p. 63
Also quoted by: Thomas B. Macaulay
“Every man who has seen the world knows that nothing is so useless as a general maxim.”
Thomas Babington Macaulay (1800–1859) first seen 1827 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: 'Machiavelli', The Edinburgh Review (March 1827), quoted in T. B. Macaulay, Critical and Historical Essays Contributed to The Edinburgh Review, Vol. I (1843), p. 103
“Ye diners-out from whom we guard our spoons.”
Thomas Babington Macaulay (1800–1859) first seen 1828 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Political Georgics (March 1828), quoted in The Miscellaneous Writings of Lord Macaulay, Vol. II (1860), p. 419
Also quoted by: Thomas B. Macaulay
“Our liberty is neither Greek nor Roman; but essentially English. It has a character of its own,—a character which has taken a tinge from the sentiments of the chivalrous ages, and which accords with the peculiarities of our manners and of our insular situation. It has a language, too, of its own, and a language singularly idiomatic, full of meaning to ourselves, scarcely intelligible to strangers.”
Thomas Babington Macaulay (1800–1859) first seen 1828 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: 'History', The Edinburgh Review (May 1828), quoted in The Miscellaneous Writings of Lord Macaulay, Vol. I (1860), pp. 252-253
“The gallery in which the reporters sit has become a fourth estate of the realm.”
Thomas Babington Macaulay (1800–1859) first seen 1828 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: 'Hallam', The Edinburgh Review (September 1828), quoted in T. B. Macaulay, Critical and Historical Essays Contributed to The Edinburgh Review, Vol. I (1843), p. 210
“We know of no great revolution which might not have been prevented by compromise early and graciously made... [I]n all movements of the human mind which tend to great revolutions there is a crisis at which moderate concession may amend, conciliate, and preserve.”
Thomas Babington Macaulay (1800–1859) first seen 1828 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: 'Hallam', The Edinburgh Review (September 1828), quoted in T. B. Macaulay, Critical and Historical Essays Contributed to The Edinburgh Review, Vol. I (1843), p. 216
“That is the best government which desires to make the people happy, and knows how to make them happy.”
Thomas Babington Macaulay (1800–1859) said by 1859 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Also quoted by: Thomas B. Macaulay
“Free trade, one of the greatest blessings which a government can confer on a people, is in almost every country unpopular.”
Thomas Babington Macaulay (1800–1859) said by 1859 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Also quoted by: Thomas B. Macaulay
“Wherever literature consoles sorrow, or assuages pain,—wherever it brings gladness to eyes which fail with wakefulness and tears, and ache for the dark house and the long sleep,—there is exhibited, in its noblest form, the immortal influence of Athens.”
Thomas Babington Macaulay (1800–1859) said by 1859 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Also quoted by: Thomas B. Macaulay
“Our academical Pharisees.”
Thomas Babington Macaulay (1800–1859) said by 1859 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The dust and silence of the upper shelf.”
Thomas Babington Macaulay (1800–1859) said by 1859 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“As civilization advances, poetry almost necessarily declines.”
Thomas Babington Macaulay (1800–1859) said by 1859 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“We hold that the most wonderful and splendid proof of genius is a great poem produced in a civilized age.”
Thomas Babington Macaulay (1800–1859) said by 1859 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Also quoted by: Thomas B. Macaulay
“Perhaps no person can be a poet, or even enjoy poetry, without a certain unsoundness of mind.”
Thomas Babington Macaulay (1800–1859) said by 1859 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Many evils, no doubt, were produced by the civil war. They were the price of our liberty.”
Thomas Babington Macaulay (1800–1859) said by 1859 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“There is only one cure for the evils which newly acquired freedom produces, and that cure is freedom.”
Thomas Babington Macaulay (1800–1859) said by 1859 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Many politicians of our time 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. If men are to wait for liberty till they become wise and good in slavery, they may indeed have to wait forever.”
Thomas Babington Macaulay (1800–1859) said by 1859 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Nobles by the right of an earlier creation, and priests by the imposition of a mightier hand.”
Thomas Babington Macaulay (1800–1859) said by 1859 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Also quoted by: Thomas B. Macaulay
“It seems that the creative faculty, and the critical faculty, cannot exist together in their highest perfection.”
Thomas Babington Macaulay (1800–1859) first seen 1828 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Thomas Babington Macaulay, On John Dryden (1828)
Also quoted by: W. Somerset Maugham (misattributed)
“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.”
Thomas Babington Macaulay (1800–1859) said by 1859 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Also quoted by: Thomas B. Macaulay
“His imagination resembled the wings of an ostrich. It enabled him to run, though not to soar.”
Thomas Babington Macaulay (1800–1859) said by 1859 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Also quoted by: Thomas B. Macaulay
“A man possessed of splendid talents, which he often abused, and of a sound judgment, the admonitions of which he often neglected; a man who succeeded only in an inferior department of his art, but who in that department succeeded pre-eminently.”
Thomas Babington Macaulay (1800–1859) said by 1859 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Also quoted by: Thomas B. Macaulay
“[I]f it is the moral right we are to look at, I say, that on every principle of moral obligation, I hold that the Jew has a right to political power.”
Thomas Babington Macaulay (1800–1859) first seen 1830 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Speech in the House of Commons (5 April 1830) in favour of Robert Grant's Jewish Disabilities Bill
“That wonderful book [The Pilgrim's Progress], while it obtains admiration from the most fastidious critics, is loved by those who are too simple to admire it.”
Thomas Babington Macaulay (1800–1859) first seen 1830 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: 'John Bunyan', The Edinburgh Review (December 1830); in Critical and Historical Essays Contributed to The Edinburgh Review, Vol. I (1843), p. 411
“I have not the Chancellor's encyclopaedic mind. He is indeed a kind of semi-Solomon. He half knows everything from the cedar to the hyssop.”
Thomas Babington Macaulay (1800–1859) first seen 1830 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Letter to Macvey Napier (17 December 1830); in Selection From the Correspondence of the Late Macvey Napier, Esq., ed. Macvey Bapier (1879), pp. 98-99
“It is now time for us to pay a decent, a rational, a manly reverence to our ancestors, not by superstitiously adhering to what they, in other circumstances, did, but by doing what they, in our circumstances, would have done.”
Thomas Babington Macaulay (1800–1859) first seen 1831 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Speech in the House of Commons on the Reform Bill (2 March 1831); in Speeches of the Right Honourable T. B. Macaulay, M.P. (1854), p. 8
“We have seen that the true source of the power of demagogues is the obstinacy of rulers and that a liberal Government makes a conservative people.”
Thomas Babington Macaulay (1800–1859) first seen 1831 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Speech in the House of Commons on the Reform Bill (5 July 1831); in Speeches of the Right Honourable T. B. Macaulay, M.P. (1854), pp. 28-29
“And why were those haughty [French] nobles destroyed with that utter destruction? Why were they scattered over the face of the earth, their titles abolished, their escutcheons defaced, their parks wasted, their palaces dismantled, their heritage given to strangers? Because they had no sympathy with the people, no discernment of the signs of their time; because, in the pride and narrowness of their hearts, they called those whose warnings might have saved them theorists and speculators; because they refused all concession till the time had arrived when no concession would avail.”
Thomas Babington Macaulay (1800–1859) first seen 1831 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Speech in the House of Commons on the Reform Bill (20 September 1831); in Speeches of the Right Honourable T. B. Macaulay, M.P. (1854), p. 50
“What a singular destiny has been that of this remarkable man! To be regarded in his own age as a classic, and in ours as a companion! To receive from his contemporaries that full homage which men of genius have in general received only from posterity! To be more intimately known to posterity than other men are known to their contemporaries!”
Thomas Babington Macaulay (1800–1859) first seen 1831 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: 'Samuel Johnson', The Edinburgh Review (September 1831); in Critical and Historical Essays Contributed to The Edinburgh Review, Vol. I (1843), p. 407
Also quoted by: Thomas B. Macaulay
“In all ages a chief cause of the intestine disorders of states has been that the natural distribution of power and the legal distribution of power have not corresponded with each other.”
Thomas Babington Macaulay (1800–1859) first seen 1832 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Speech in the House of Commons (28 February 1832); in Speeches of the Right Honourable T. B. Macaulay, M.P. (1854), p. 91
“We believe it to be a rule without an exception, that the violence of a revolution corresponds to the degree of misgovemment which has produced that revolution.”
Thomas Babington Macaulay (1800–1859) first seen 1832 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: 'Mirabeau', The Edinburgh Review (July 1832); in The Miscellaneous Writings of Lord Macaulay, Vol. II (1860), pp. 81-82
“A life of action, if it is to be useful, must be a life of compromise. But speculation admits of no compromise. A public-man is often under the necessity of consenting to measures which he dislikes, lest he should endanger the success of measures which he thinks of vital importance.”
Thomas Babington Macaulay (1800–1859) first seen 1833 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: 'War of the Succession in Spain', The Edinburgh Review (January 1833); in Critical and Historical Essays Contributed to The Edinburgh Review, Vol. II (1843), p. 91
“The conformation of his mind was such that whatever was little seemed to him great, and whatever was great seemed to him little. Serious business was a trifle to him, and trifles were his serious business.”
Thomas Babington Macaulay (1800–1859) first seen 1833 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: 'Horace Walpole', The Edinburgh Review (October 1833); in T. B. Macaulay, Critical and Historical Essays Contributed to The Edinburgh Review, Vol. II (1843), p. 99
“It may be that the public mind of India may expand under our system till it has outgrown that system; that by good government we may educate our subjects into a capacity for better government, that, having become instructed in European knowledge, they may, in some future age, demand European institutions. Whether such a day will ever come I know not. But never will I attempt to avert or to retard it. Whenever it comes, it will be the proudest day in English history.”
Thomas Babington Macaulay (1800–1859) first seen 1833 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Speech in the House of Commons (10 July 1833)
“It is our deliberate opinion that the French Revolution, in spite of all its crimes and follies, was a great blessing to mankind.”
Thomas Babington Macaulay (1800–1859) first seen 1835 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: 'Sir James Mackintosh', The Edinburgh Review (July 1835); in Critical and Historical Essays Contributed to The Edinburgh Review, Vol. II (1843), p. 215
“To sum up the whole, we should say that the aim of the Platonic philosophy was to exalt man into a god. The aim of the Baconian philosophy was to provide man with what he requires while he continues to be man. The aim of the Platonic philosophy was to raise us far above vulgar wants. The aim of the Baconian philosophy was to supply our vulgar wants. The former aim was noble; but the latter was attainable.”
Thomas Babington Macaulay (1800–1859) first seen 1837 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: 'Lord Bacon', The Edinburgh Review (July 1837); in Critical and Historical Essays Contributed to The Edinburgh Review, Vol. II (1843), p. 395
“An acre in Middlesex is better than a principality in Utopia. The smallest actual good is better than the most magnificent promises of impossibilities.”
Thomas Babington Macaulay (1800–1859) first seen 1837 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: 'Lord Bacon', The Edinburgh Review (July 1837); in T. B. Macaulay, Critical and Historical Essays Contributed to The Edinburgh Review, Vol. II (1843), p. 396
“He [William Temple] was merely a man of lively parts and quick observation,—a man of the world amongst men of letters,—a man of letters amongst men of the world.”
Thomas Babington Macaulay (1800–1859) first seen 1838 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: 'Life and Writings of Sir William Temple', The Edinburgh Review (October 1838), p. 187
“We know that India cannot have a free Government. But she may have the next best thing,—a firm and impartial despotism.”
Thomas Babington Macaulay (1800–1859) first seen 1838 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Minute (c. 1838), quoted in George Otto Trevelyan, The Life and Letters of Lord Macaulay, Volume I (1876), p. 396
“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.”
Thomas Babington Macaulay (1800–1859) said by 1859 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Men are never so likely to settle a question rightly as when they discuss it freely.”
Thomas Babington Macaulay (1800–1859) said by 1859 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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.”
Thomas Babington Macaulay (1800–1859) said by 1859 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“A single breaker may recede; but the tide is evidently coming in.”
Thomas Babington Macaulay (1800–1859) said by 1859 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source