Quotes from Thomas Babington Macaulay

Nothing except the mint can make money without advertising.

The highest intellects, like the tops of mountains, are the first to catch and to reflect the dawn.

The object of oratory alone is not truth, but persuasion.

She thoroughly understands what no other Church has ever understood, how to deal with enthusiasts.

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.

History begins in novel and ends in essay.

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.

A history in which every particular incident may be true may on the whole be false.

Every man who has seen the world knows that nothing is so useless as a general maxim.... If, like those of Rochefoucault, it be sparkling and whimsical, it may make an excellent motto for an essay. But few, indeed, of the many wise apophthegms which have been uttered from the time of the Seven Sages of Greece to that of Poor Richard have prevented a single foolish action.

The measure of a man's real character is what he would do if he knew he never would be found out.

American democracy must be a failure because it places the supreme authority in the hands of the poorest and most ignorant part of the society.

And to say that society ought to be governed by the opinion of the wisest and best, though true, is useless. Whose opinion is to decide who are the wisest and best?

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.

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.

What a blessing it is to love books as I love them;- to be able to converse with the dead, and to live amidst the unreal!

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. I would rather be a poor man in a garret with plenty of books than a king who did not love reading.

Nothing is so useless as a general maxim.

LARS Porsena of Clusium By the Nine Gods he swore That the great house of Tarquin Should suffer wrong no more. By the Nine Gods he swore it, And named a trysting day, And bade his messengers ride forth, East and west and south and north, To summon his array.

Pour, varlet, pour the water The water steaming hot! A spoonful for each man of us Another for the pot!

First, a man of sense would have known that a single experiment is not sufficient to establish a general rule even in sciences much less complicated than the science of government; that, since the beginning of the world, no two political experiments were ever made of which all the conditions were exactly alike; and that the only way to learn civil prudence from history is to examine and compare an immense number of cases.

with that very large part of mankind who have religion enough to make them uneasy when they do wrong, and not religion enough to keep them from doing wrong, he followed a very different system.

The more carefully we examine the history of the past, the more reason shall we find to dissent from those who imagine that our age has been fruitful of new social evils. The truth is that the evils are, with scarcely an exception, old. That which is new is the intelligence which discerns and the humanity which remedies them.

The interests of large classes had been unfavourably affected by the establishment of the new diligences; and, as usual, many persons were, from mere stupidity and obstinacy, disposed to clamour against the innovation, simply because it was an innovation. It

To every man upon this earth Death cometh soon or late. And how can man die better Than facing fearful odds, For the ashes of his fathers, And the temples of his gods.