Guess quote

Thomas Babington Macaulay [1800-1859] British

Rank: 101
Poet, Former Secretary at War

Thomas Babington Macaulay, 1st Baron Macaulay, PC was a British historian and Whig politician. He wrote extensively as an essayist and reviewer; his books on British history have been hailed as literary masterpieces.

Freedom, Poetry, Society, Alone, Beauty, Death, Failure, Government, History, Knowledge, Money, Politics, Science, Wisdom

Quote	Tags	Rank
The measure of a man's real character is what he would do if he knew he would never be found out.		101
Nothing except the mint can make money without advertising.	Money	102
And how can man die better than facing fearful odds, for the ashes of his fathers, and the temples of his Gods?	Death	103
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.	Failure, Society	104
I shall cheerfully bear the reproach of having descended below the dignity of history if I can succeed in placing before the English of the nineteenth century a true picture of the life of their ancestors.	History	105
The best portraits are those in which there is a slight mixture of caricature.		106
Few of the many wise apothegms which have been uttered have prevented a single foolish action.	Wisdom	107
Your Constitution is all sail and no anchor.		108
To sum up the whole, we should say that the aim of the Platonic philosophy was to exalt man into a god.		109
There is only one cure for the evils which newly acquired freedom produces, and that cure is freedom.	Freedom	110
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.	Government	111
I would rather be poor in a cottage full of books than a king without the desire to read.		112
Many politicians 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.	Freedom, Politics	113
There were gentlemen and there were seamen in the navy of Charles the Second. But the seamen were not gentlemen; and the gentlemen were not seamen.		114
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.	Alone, Beauty	115
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?	Society	116
To that class we may leave it to refine the vernacular dialects of the country, to enrich those dialects with terms of science borrowed from the Western nomenclature, and to render them by degrees fit vehicles for conveying knowledge to the great mass of the population.	Knowledge, Science	117
He had a wonderful talent for packing thought close, and rendering it portable.		118
The object of oratory alone in not truth, but persuasion.		119
Temple was a man of the world amongst men of letters, a man of letters amongst men of the world.		120
We hold that the most wonderful and splendid proof of genius is a great poem produced in a civilized age.		121
The knowledge of the theory of logic has no tendency whatever to make men good reasoners.		122
The effect of violent dislike between groups has always created an indifference to the welfare and honor of the state.		123
Men are never so likely to settle a question rightly as when they discuss it freely.		124
To punish a man because we infer from the nature of some doctrine which he holds, or from the conduct of other persons who hold the same doctrines with him, that he will commit a crime, is persecution, and is, in every case, foolish and wicked.		125
The gallery in which the reporters sit has become a fourth estate of the realm.		126
Reform, that we may preserve.		201
Perhaps no person can be a poet, or even enjoy poetry, without a certain unsoundness of mind.	Poetry	202
People crushed by law have no hopes but from power. If laws are their enemies, they will be enemies to laws.		203
Nothing is so useless as a general maxim.		204
A single breaker may recede; but the tide is evidently coming in.		205
A good constitution is infinitely better than the best despot.		206
The puritan hated bear baiting, not because it gave pain to the bear, but because it gave pleasure to the spectators.		207
He was a rake among scholars, and a scholar among rakes.		208
None of the modes by which a magistrate is appointed, popular election, the accident of the lot, or the accident of birth, affords, as far as we can perceive, much security for his being wiser than any of his neighbours.		209
The maxim, that governments ought to train the people in the way in which they should go, sounds well. But is there any reason for believing that a government is more likely to lead the people in the right way than the people to fall into the right way of themselves?		210
The highest proof of virtue is to possess boundless power without abusing it.		211
Persecution produced its natural effect on them. It found them a sect; it made them a faction.		212
We know no spectacle so ridiculous as the British public in one of its periodical fits of morality.		213
That is the best government which desires to make the people happy, and knows how to make them happy.		214
Such night in England ne'er had been, nor ne'er again shall be.		215
I shall not be satisfied unless I produce something which shall for a few days supersede the last fashionable novel on the tables of young ladies.		216
An acre in Middlesex is better than a principality in Utopia.		217
As civilization advances, poetry almost necessarily declines.	Poetry	218
Turn where we may, within, around, the voice of great events is proclaiming to us, Reform, that you may preserve!		219
She thoroughly understands what no other Church has ever understood, how to deal with enthusiasts.		220
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.		221

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