Quote

This is the best book ever written by any man on the wrong side of a question of which he is profoundly ignorant.

Thomas B. Macaulay

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Thomas B. Macaulay
Language
Best
Profoundly
Ever
Ignorant
Book
Side
Men
Question
Sides
Written
Wrong

More quotes by 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
Even Holland and Spain have been positively, though not relatively, advancing.
Thomas B. Macaulay
Image
What proposition is there respecting human nature which is absolutely and universally true? We know of only one,--and that is not only true, but identical,--that men always act from self-interest.
Thomas B. Macaulay
Image
We must judge of a form of government by it's general tendency, not by happy accidents
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
Mere negation, mere Epicurean infidelity, as Lord Bacon most justly observes, has never disturbed the peace of the world. It furnishes no motive for action it inspires no enthusiasm it has no missionaries, no crusades, no martyrs.
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
There is only one cure for the evils which newly acquired freedom produces, and that cure is freedom.
Thomas B. Macaulay
Image
There were gentlemen and there were seamen in the navy of Charles the Second. But the seamen were not gentlemen and the gentlemen were not seamen.
Thomas B. Macaulay
Image
The Church is the handmaid of tyranny and the steady enemy of liberty.
Thomas B. Macaulay
Image
Cut off my head, and singular I am, Cut off my tail, and plural I appear Although my middle's left, there's nothing there! What is my head cut off? A sounding sea What is my tail cut off? A rushing river And in their mingling depths I fearless play, Parent of sweetest sounds, yet mute forever.
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
In employing fiction to make truth clear and goodness attractive, we are only following the example which every Christian ought to propose to himself.
Thomas B. Macaulay
Image
A beggarly people, A church and no steeple.
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
And to say that society ought to be governed by the opinion of the wisest and best, though true, is useless. Whose opinion is to decide who are the wisest and best?
Thomas B. Macaulay
Image
A Grecian history, perfectly written should be a complete record of the rise and progress of poetry, philosophy, and the arts.
Thomas B. Macaulay
Image
Every political sect has its esoteric and its exoteric school--its abstract doctrines for the initiated its visible symbols, its imposing forms, its mythological fables, for the vulgar.
Thomas B. Macaulay
Image
The great cause of revolutions is this, that while nations move onward, constitutions stand still.
Thomas B. Macaulay
Image
Highest among those who have exhibited human nature by means of dialogue stands Shakespeare. His variety is like the variety of nature,--endless diversity, scarcely any monstrosity.
Thomas B. Macaulay