Quotes from Edward Gibbon

In reality, Rome had grown too big for lots of people to handle its vast affairs any longer by committee.  

The same language, even in the camp of the Huns, was used by his ambassador Apollonius, whose bold refusal to deliver the presents, till he had been admitted to a personal interview, displayed a sense of dignity, and a contempt of danger, which Attila was not prepared to expect from the degenerate Romans.

Attila, my lord, and thy lord, commands thee to provide a palace for his immediate reception.

The fortunate ?tius, who was immediately promoted to the rank of patrician, and thrice invested with the honors of the consulship, assumed, with the title of master of the cavalry and infantry, the whole military power of the state;

By the specious professions of gratitude and voluntary attachment, the patrician might disguise his apprehensions of the Scythian conqueror, who pressed the two empires with his innumerable armies.

Yet his dexterous policy prolonged the advantages of a salutary peace; and a numerous army of Huns and Alani, whom he had attached to his person, was employed in the defence of Gaul.

The clam of peace and prosperity was once more experienced in the provinces;

Let us read with method, and to propose to ourselves an to which our studies may point. The use of reading is to aid us in thinking.

Bigotry and national aversion are powerful magnifiers of every object of dispute;

might perhaps be more conducive to the virtue, as well as happiness, of mankind, if all possessed the necessaries, and none the superfluities

Our sympathy is cold to the relation of distant misery.

Corruption, the most infallible symptom of constitutional liberty.

The principles of a free constitution are irrecoverably lost, when the legislative power is nominated by the executive.

Religion is a mere question of geography.

The various modes of worship which prevailed in the Roman world were all considered by the people as equally true by the philosopher as equally false and by the magistrate as equally useful.

Rational confidence [is] the just result of knowledge and experience.

The author himself is the best judge of his own performance; none has so deeply meditated on the subject; none is so sincerely interested in the event.

The laws of probability, so true in general, so fallacious in particular.

I have but one lamp by which my feet are guided, and that is the lamp of experience. I know no way of judging of the future but by the past.

Ignorant of the arts of luxury, the primitive Romans had improved the science of government and war.

But the desire of obtaining the advantages, and of escaping the burdens, of political society, is a perpetual and inexhaustible source of discord.

Our ignorance is God; what we know is science.

It was among the ruins of the capitol that I first conceived the idea of a work which has amused and exercised nearly twenty years of my life.

I never make the mistake of arguing with people for whose opinions I have no respect.