Quotes from William Cobbett

Sit down to write what you have thought, and not to think about what you shall write.

Praise the child, and you make love to the mother.

Thousands upon thousands are yearly brought into a state of real poverty by their great anxiety not to be thought poor.

The power which money gives is that of brute force; it is the power of the bludgeon and the bayonet.

Men fail much oftener from want of perseverance than from want of talent

The tendency of taxation is to create a class of persons who do not labor, to take from those who do labor the produce of that labor, and to give it to those who do not labor

I view the tea-drinking as a destroyer of health, an enfeebler of the frome, an engender of effeminacy and laziness, a debaucher of youth and maker of misery for old age

It is by attempting to reach the top in a single leap that so much misery is caused in the world.

Men of integrity are generally pretty obstinate, in adhering to an opinion once adopted.

As to the power which money gives, it is that of brute force, it is the power of the bludgeon and the bayonet, and of the bribed press, tongue and pen.

Sit down to write what you have thought, and not to think what you shall write.

Another great evil arising from this desire to be thought rich; or rather, from the desire not to be thought poor, is the destructive thing which has been honoured by the name of speculation; but which ought to be called Gambling.

Grammar, perfectly understood, enables us, not only to express our meaning fully and clearly, but so to express it as to enable us to defy the ingenuity of man to give to our words any other meaning than that which we ourselves intend them to express.

Good government is known from bad government by this infallible test: that under the former the labouring people are well fed and well clothed, and under the latter, they are badly fed and badly clothed.

Nothing is so well calculated to produce a death-like torpor in the country as an extended system of taxation and a great national debt.

Happiness, or misery, is in the mind. It is the mind that lives.

Women are a sisterhood. They make common cause in behalf of the sex and, indeed, this is natural enough, when we consider the vast power that the law gives us over them.

Never esteem men on account of their riches or their station. Respect goodness, find it where you may.

Another great evil arising from this desire to be thought rich; or rather, from the desire not to be thought poor, is the destructive thing which has been honored by the name of speculation; but which ought to be called Gambling.

Be you in what line of life you may, it will be amongst your misfortunes if you have not time properly to attend to pecuniary [monetary] matters. Want of attention to these matters has impeded the progress of science and of genius itself.

Perhaps there are none more lazy, or more truly ignorant, than your everlasting readers.

The very hirelings of the press, whose trade it is to buoy up the spirits of the people. have uttered falsehoods so long, they have played off so many tricks, that their budget seems, at last, to be quite empty.

To be poor and independent is very nearly an impossibility.

To suppose such a thing possible as a society, in which men, who are able and willing to work, cannot support their families, and ought, with a great part of the women, to be compelled to lead a life of celibacy, for fear of having children to be starved; to suppose such a thing possible is monstrous.