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It is the first care of a reformer to prevent any future reformation.

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
Prevent
Future
Care
Firsts
First
Reformer
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Reformation

More quotes by Edward Gibbon

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History should be to the political economist a wellspring of experience and wisdom.
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 principles of a free constitution are irrecoverably lost, when the legislative power is nominated by the executive.
Edward Gibbon
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The patient and active virtues of a soldier are insensibly nursed in the habits and discipline of a pastoral life.
Edward Gibbon
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Religion is a mere question of geography.
Edward Gibbon
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[In] the national and religious conflict of the [Byzantine and Saracen] empires, peace was without confidence, and war without mercy.
Edward Gibbon
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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
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History, which undertakes to record the transactions of the past, for the instruction of future ages, would ill deserve that honourable office if she condescended to plead the cause of tyrants, or to justify the maxims of persecution.
Edward Gibbon
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The possession and the enjoyment of property are the pledges which bind a civilised people to an improved country.
Edward Gibbon
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While the Romans languished under the ignominious tyranny of eunuchs and bishops, the praises of Julian were repeated with transport in every part of the empire, except in the palace of Constantius.
Edward Gibbon
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Vicissitudes of fortune, which spares neither man nor the proudest of his works, which buries empires and cities in a common grave.
Edward Gibbon
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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
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The simple circumstantial narrative (did such a narrative exist) of the ruin of a single town, of the misfortunes of a single family, might exhibit an interesting and instructive picture of human manners but the tedious repetition of vague and declamatory complaints would fatigue the attention of the most patient reader.
Edward Gibbon
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Corruption, the most infallible symptom of constitutional liberty, was successfully practised honours, gifts, and immunities were offered and accepted as the price of an episcopal vote and the condemnation of the Alexandrian primate was artfully represented as the only measure which could restore the peace and union of the catholic church.
Edward Gibbon
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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
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It was Rome, on the fifteenth of October, 1764, as I sat musing amidst the ruins of the Capitol, while the barefooted friars were singing vespers in the Temple of Jupiter, that the idea of writing the decline and fall of the city first started to my mind.
Edward Gibbon
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In everyage and country, the wiser, or at least the stronger, ofthetwosexes, hasusurped thepowers ofthe state, and confined the other to the cares and pleasures of domestic life.
Edward Gibbon
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The progress of despotism tends to disappoint its own purpose.
Edward Gibbon
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But a wild democracy . . . too often disdains the essential principles of justice.
Edward Gibbon
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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.
Edward Gibbon