Thomas B. Macaulay Quotes - Page 3

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

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

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

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.

If anybody would make me the greatest king that ever lived, with palaces, and gardens and fine dinners, and wine, and coaches, and beautiful clothes, and hundreds of servants, on condition that I would not read books, I would not be a king.

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

History distinguishes what is accidental and transitory in human nature from what is essential and immutable.

The best portraits are perhaps those in which there is a slight mixture of caricature; and we are not certain that the best histories are not those in which a little of the exaggeration of fictitious narrative is judiciously employed. Something is lost in accuracy; but much is gained in effect. The fainter lines are neglected; but the great characteristic features are imprinted on the mind forever.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

Nothing is so galling to a people not broken in from 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.

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

A man who should act, for one day, on the supposition that all the people about him were influenced by the religion which they professed would find himself ruined by night.

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

We deplore the outrages which accompany revolutions. But the more violent the outrages, the more assured we feel that a revolution was necessary.

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

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

Men of great conversational powers almost universally practise a sort of lively sophistry and exaggeration which deceives for the moment both themselves and their auditors.

Everybody's business is nobody's business.

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

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

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.