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In the end, they wanted security more than they wanted freedom.

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
Wanted
Courage
Security
Freedom
Ends

More quotes by Edward Gibbon

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Constantinople was the principal seat and fortress of Arianism and, in a long interval of forty years, the faith of the princes and prelates who reigned in the capital of the East was rejected in the purer schools of Rome and Alexandria.
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Our toil is lessened, and our wealth is increased, by our dominion over the useful animals . . .
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Philosophy, with the aid of experience, has at length banished the study of alchymy and the present age, however desirous of riches, is content to seek them by the humbler means of commerce and industry.
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A taste for books, which is still the pleasure and glory of my life.
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A bloody and complete victory has sometimes yielded no more than the possession of the field and the loss of ten thousand men has sometimes been sufficient to destroy, in a single day, the work of ages.
Edward Gibbon
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[Peace] cannot be honorable or secure, if the sovereign betrays a pusillanimous aversion to war.
Edward Gibbon
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[The] noblest of [Arabs] united the love of arms with the profession of merchandise.
Edward Gibbon
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The Gauls derided the hairy and gigantic savages of the North their rustic manners, dissonant joy, voracious appetite, and their horrid appearance, equally disgusting to the sight and to the smell.
Edward Gibbon
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The monastic studies have tended, for the most part, to darken, rather than to dispel, the cloud of superstition.
Edward Gibbon
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[The] emperor of the West, the feeble and dissolute Valentinian, [had] reached his thirty-fifth year without attaining the age of reason or courage.
Edward Gibbon
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Every event, or appearance, or accident, which seems to deviate from the ordinary course of nature has been rashly ascribed to the immediate action of the Deity.
Edward Gibbon
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On the approach of spring, I withdraw without reluctance from the noisy and extensive scene of crowds without company, and dissipation without pleasure.
Edward Gibbon
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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.
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The love of spectacles was the taste, or rather passion, of the Syrians: the most skilful artists were procured form the adjacent cities a considerable share of the revenue was devoted to the public amusements and the magnificence of the games of the theatre and circus was considered as the happiness, and as the glory, of Antioch.
Edward Gibbon
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[Every] hour of delay abates the fame and force of the invader, and multiplies the resources of defensive war.
Edward Gibbon
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Let us read with method, and propose to ourselves an end to which our studies may point. The use of reading is to aid us in thinking.
Edward Gibbon
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The criminal penalties [for suicide] are the production of a later and darker age.
Edward Gibbon
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Where the subject lies so far beyond our reach, the difference between the highest and the lowest of human understandings may indeed be calculated as infinitely small yet the degree of weakness may perhaps be measured by the degree of obstinacy and dogmatic confidence.
Edward Gibbon
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But the power of instruction is seldom of much efficacy, except in those happy dispositions where it is almost superfluous.
Edward Gibbon
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Since the primitive times, the wealth of the popes was exposed to envy, their powers to opposition, and their persons to violence.
Edward Gibbon