Quote

We must judge a government by its general tendencies and not by its happy accidents.

Thomas B. Macaulay

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Thomas B. Macaulay
General
Happy
Government
Must
Tendencies
Accidents
Judge
Judging

More quotes by Thomas B. Macaulay

Image
People who take no pride in the noble achievements of remote ancestors will never achieve anything worthy to be remembered with pride by remote descendants.
Thomas B. Macaulay
Image
In truth it may be laid down as an almost universal rule that good poets are bad critics.
Thomas B. Macaulay
Image
The English doctrine that all power is a trust for the public good.
Thomas B. Macaulay
Image
Logicians may reason about abstractions. But the great mass of men must have images. The strong tendency of the multitude in all ages and nations to idolatry can be explained on no other principle.
Thomas B. Macaulay
Image
It may be laid as an universal rule that a government which attempts more than it ought will perform less.
Thomas B. Macaulay
Image
To sum up the whole, we should say that the aim of the Platonic philosophy was to exalt man into a god.
Thomas B. Macaulay
Image
There is only one cure for the evils which newly acquired freedom produces, and that cure is freedom.
Thomas B. Macaulay
Image
As freedom is the only safeguard of governments, so are order and moderation generally necessary to preserve freedom.
Thomas B. Macaulay
Image
He [Charles II] was utterly without ambition. He detested business, and would sooner have abdicated his crown than have undergone the trouble of really directing the administration.
Thomas B. Macaulay
Image
With respect to the doctrine of a future life, a North American Indian knows just as much as any ancient or modern philosopher.
Thomas B. Macaulay
Image
I shall not be satisfied unless I produce something which shall for a few days supersede the last fashionable novel on the tables of young ladies.
Thomas B. Macaulay
Image
Parent of sweetest sounds, yet mute forever.
Thomas B. Macaulay
Image
We do not think it necessary to prove that a quack medicine is poison let the vender prove it to be sanative.
Thomas B. Macaulay
Image
The great cause of revolutions is this, that while nations move onward, constitutions stand still.
Thomas B. Macaulay
Image
Nothing is so galling to a people not broken in from birth as a paternal, or, in other words, a meddling government, a government which tells them what to read, and say, and eat, and drink and wear.
Thomas B. Macaulay
Image
The Spartan, smiting and spurning the wretched Helot, moves our disgust. But the same Spartan, calmly dressing his hair, and uttering his concise jests, on what the well knows to be his last day, in the pass of Thermopylae, is not to be contemplated without admiration.
Thomas B. Macaulay
Image
No man who is correctly informed as to the past will be disposed to take a morose or desponding view of the present.
Thomas B. Macaulay
Image
The merit of poetry, in its wildest forms, still consists in its truth-truth conveyed to the understanding, not directly by the words, but circuitously by means of imaginative associations, which serve as its conductors.
Thomas B. Macaulay
Image
Free trade, one of the greatest blessings which a government can confer on a people, is in almost every country unpopular.
Thomas B. Macaulay
Image
The end of government is the happiness of the people.
Thomas B. Macaulay