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The vain, inconstant, rebellious disposition of the people [of Armorica], was incompatible either with freedom or servitude.

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
Incompatible
Servitude
Rebellious
Disposition
Vain
Either
Freedom
People
Inconstant

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Rational confidence [is] the just result of knowledge and experience.
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The urgent consideration of the public safety may undoubtedly authorize the violation of every positive law. How far that or any other consideration may operate to dissolve the natural obligations of humanity and justice, is a doctrine of which I still desire to remain ignorant.
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Active valour may often be the present of nature but such patient diligence can be the fruit only of habit and discipline.
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A Locrian, who proposed any new law, stood forth in the assembly of the people with a cord round his neck, and if the law was rejected, the innovator was instantly strangled.
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Freedom is the first wish of our heart freedom is the first blessing of nature and unless we bind ourselves with voluntary chains of interest or passion, we advance in freedom as we advance in years
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On the slightest touch the unsupported fabric of their pride and power fell to the ground. The expiring senate displayed a sudden lustre, blazed for a moment, and was extinguished for ever.
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I darted a contemptuous look at the stately models of superstition.
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History is indeed little more than the register of the crimes, follies, and misfortunes of mankind.
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[In] the national and religious conflict of the [Byzantine and Saracen] empires, peace was without confidence, and war without mercy.
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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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The value of money has been settled by general consent to express our wants and our property, as letters were invented to express our ideas and both these institutions, by giving a more active energy to the powers and passions of human nature, have contributed to multiply the objects they were designed to represent.
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Our sympathy is cold to the relation of distant misery.
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Man has much more to fear from the passions of his fellow-creatures, than from the convulsions of the elements.
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The pains and pleasures of the body, howsoever important to ourselves, are an indelicate subject of conversation
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Language is the leading principle which unites or separates the tribes of mankind.
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The subject, however various and important, has already been so frequently, so ably, and so successfully discussed, that it is now grown familiar to the reader, and difficult to the writer.
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Europe is secure from any future irruptions of Barbarians since, before they can conquer, they must cease to be barbarous.
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My early and invincible love of reading I would not exchange for all the riches of India.
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In the end, they wanted security more than they wanted freedom.
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