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Truth, naked, unblushing truth, the first virtue of all serious history, must be the sole recommendation of this personal narrative.
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
Virtue
Recommendation
History
Recommendations
Truth
Autobiography
Firsts
Sole
First
Narrative
Must
Naked
Personal
Serious
More quotes by Edward Gibbon
Europe is secure from any future irruptions of Barbarians since, before they can conquer, they must cease to be barbarous.
Edward Gibbon
Yet the experience of four thousand years should enlarge our hopes, and diminish our apprehensions: we cannot determine to what height the human species may aspire in their advances towards perfection but it may safely be presumed, that no people, unless the face of nature is changed, will relapse into their original barbarism.
Edward Gibbon
But a wild democracy . . . too often disdains the essential principles of justice.
Edward Gibbon
In the second century of the Christian era, the empire of Rome comprehended the fairest part of the earth, and the most civilized portion of mankind.
Edward Gibbon
All that is human must retrograde if it does not advance.
Edward Gibbon
In the end, they wanted security more than they wanted freedom.
Edward Gibbon
[The] discretion of the judge is the first engine of tyranny . . .
Edward Gibbon
The active cavalry of Scythia is always followed, in their most distant and rapid incursions, by an adequate number of spare horses, who may be occasionally used, either to redouble the speed, or to satisfy the hunger, of the barbarians. Many are the resources of courage and poverty.
Edward Gibbon
There exists in human nature a strong propensity to depreciate the advantages, and to magnify the evils, of the present times.
Edward Gibbon
History should be to the political economist a wellspring of experience and wisdom.
Edward Gibbon
But the sages of Greece and Rome turned aside from the awful spectacle, and, pursuing the ordinary occupations of life and study, appeared unconscious of any alterations in the moral of physical government of the world.
Edward Gibbon
The monastic studies have tended, for the most part, to darken, rather than to dispel, the cloud of superstition.
Edward Gibbon
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
The pains and pleasures of the body, howsoever important to ourselves, are an indelicate subject of conversation
Edward Gibbon
In a distant age and climate, the tragic scene of the death of Hosein will awaken the sympathy of the coldest reader.
Edward Gibbon
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.
Edward Gibbon
Hope, the best comfort of our imperfect condition, was not denied to the Roman slave and if he had any opportunity of rendering himself either useful or agreeable, he might very naturally expect that the diligence and fidelity of a few years would be rewarded with the inestimable gift of freedom.
Edward Gibbon
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
It was here that I suspended my religious inquiries (aged 17).
Edward Gibbon
It has always been my practice to cast a long paragraph in a single mould, to try it by my ear, to deposit it in my memory, but to suspend the action of the pen till I had given the last polish to my work.
Edward Gibbon