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In every age the vilest specimens of human nature are to be found among demagogues.

Thomas B. Macaulay

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Thomas B. Macaulay
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More quotes by Thomas B. Macaulay

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With respect to the doctrine of a future life, a North American Indian knows just as much as any ancient or modern philosopher.
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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.
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Language, the machine of the poet, is best fitted for his purpose in its rudest state. Nations, like individuals, first perceive, and then abstract. They advance from particular images to general terms. Hence the vocabulary of an enlightened society is philosophical, that of a half-civilized people is poetical.
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Oh, wherefore come ye forth in triumph from the north, With your hands, and your feet, and your raiment all red? And wherefore doth your rout send forth a joyous shout? And whence be the grapes of the wine-press which ye tread?
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Man is so inconsistent a creature that it is impossible to reason from his beliefs to his conduct, or from one part of his belief to another.
Thomas B. Macaulay
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We hardly know an instance of the strength and weakness of human nature so striking and so grotesque as the character of this haughty, vigilant, resolute, sagacious blue-stocking, half Mithridates and half Trissotin, bearing up against a world in arms, with an ounce of poison in one pocket and a quire of bad verses in the other.
Thomas B. Macaulay
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A single breaker may recede but the tide is evidently coming in.
Thomas B. Macaulay
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Nothing except the mint can make money without advertising.
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With the dead there is no rivalry, with the dead there is no change.
Thomas B. Macaulay
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Ambrose Phillips . . . who had the honor of bringing into fashion a species of composition which has been called, after his name, Namby Pamby.
Thomas B. Macaulay
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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
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As freedom is the only safeguard of governments, so are order and moderation generally necessary to preserve freedom.
Thomas B. Macaulay
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What society wants is a new motive, not a new cant.
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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
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A government cannot be wrong in punishing fraud or force, but it is almost certain to be wrong if, abandoning its legitimate function, it tells private individuals that it knows their business better than they know it themselves.
Thomas B. Macaulay
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The good-humor of a man elated with success often displays itself towards enemies.
Thomas B. Macaulay
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In the modern languages there was not, six hundred years ago, a single volume which is now read. The library of our profound scholar must have consisted entirely of Latin books.
Thomas B. Macaulay
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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
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This is the best book ever written by any man on the wrong side of a question of which he is profoundly ignorant.
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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