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Their poverty secured their freedom, since our desires and our possessions are the strongest fetters of despotism.

Edward Gibbon

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Edward Gibbon
Age: 56 †
Born: 1737
Born: May 8
Died: 1794
Died: January 16
Classical Scholar
Historian
Politician
Writer
Gibbon
Possession
Poverty
Liberty
Fetters
Since
Secured
Freedom
Despotism
Desire
Possessions
Strongest
Desires

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The history of empires is the record of human misery the history of the sciences is that of the greatness and happiness of mankind.
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The fierce and partial writers of the times, ascribing all virtue to themselves, and imputing all guilt to their adversaries, have painted the battle of the angels and the demons.
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The courage of a soldier is found to be the cheapest and most common quality of human nature.
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If we are more affected by the ruin of a palace than by the conflagration of a cottage, our humanity must have formed a very erroneous estimate of the miseries of human life.
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To a philosophic eye, the vices of the clergy are far less dangerous than their virtues.
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It was [Totila's] constant theme, that national vice and ruin are inseparably connected that victory is the fruit of moral as well as military virtue and that the prince, and even the people, are responsible for the crimes which they neglect to punish.
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As for this young Ali, one cannot but like him. A noble-minded creature, as he shows himself, now and always afterwards full of affection, of fiery daring. Something chivalrous in him brave as a lion yet with a grace, a truth and affection worthy of Christian knighthood.
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[Peace] cannot be honorable or secure, if the sovereign betrays a pusillanimous aversion to war.
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Our sympathy is cold to the relation of distant misery.
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Every person has two educations, one which he receives from others, and one, more important, which he gives to himself.
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The progress of despotism tends to disappoint its own purpose.
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In this primitive and abject state [of hunters and gatherers], which ill deserves the name of society, the human brute, without arts or laws, almost without sense or language, is poorly distinguished from the rest of the animal creation.
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War, in its fairest form, implies a perpetual violation of humanity and justice.
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Rational confidence [is] the just result of knowledge and experience.
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The theologian may indulge the pleasing task of describing Religion as she descended from Heaven, arrayed in her native purity. A more melancholy duty is imposed on the historian. He must discover the inevitable mixture of error and corruption which she contracted in a long residence upon Earth, among a weak and degenerate race of beings.
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So natural to man is the practice of violence that our indulgence allows the slightest provocation, the most disputable right, as a sufficient ground of national hostility.
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[The] operation of the wisest laws is imperfect and precarious. They seldom inspire virtue, they cannot always restrain vice.
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So long as mankind shall continue to lavish more praise upon its destroyers than upon its benefactors war shall remain the chief pursuit of ambitious minds.
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The mathematics are distinguished by a particular privilege, that is, in the course of ages, they may always advance and can never recede.
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The separation of the Arabs from the rest of mankind has accustomed them to confound the ideas of stranger and enemy.
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