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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

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Thomas B. Macaulay
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More quotes by 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.
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Perhaps no person can be a poet, or can even enjoy poetry, without a certain unsoundness of mind.
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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 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
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Even Holland and Spain have been positively, though not relatively, advancing.
Thomas B. Macaulay
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Our estimate of a character always depends much on the manner in which that character affects our own interests and passions.
Thomas B. Macaulay
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There are countries in which it would be as absurd to establish popular governments as to abolish all the restraints in a school or to unite all the strait-waistcoats in a madhouse.
Thomas B. Macaulay
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This is the highest miracle of genius, that things which are not should be as though they were, that the imaginations of one mind should become the personal recollections of another.
Thomas B. Macaulay
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Free trade, one of the greatest blessings which a government can confer on a people, is in almost every country unpopular.
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We do not think it necessary to prove that a quack medicine is poison let the vender prove it to be sanative.
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Grief, which disposes gentle natures to retirement, to inaction, and to meditation, only makes restless spirits more restless.
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Was none who would be foremost To lead such dire attack But those behind cried Forward! And those before cried Back!
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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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The Puritan hated bear-baiting, not because it gave pain to the bear, but because it gave pleasure to the spectators.
Thomas B. Macaulay
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The perfect disinterestedness and self-devotion of which men seem incapable, but which is sometimes found in women.
Thomas B. Macaulay
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Parent of sweetest sounds, yet mute forever.
Thomas B. Macaulay
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We know no spectacle so ridiculous as the British public in one of its periodical fits of morality.
Thomas B. Macaulay
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Complete self-devotion is woman's part.
Thomas B. Macaulay
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Then none was for a party Than all were for the state Then the great man helped the poor, And the poor man loved the great: Then lands were fairly portioned Then spoils were fairly sold: The Romans were like brothers In the brave days of old.
Thomas B. Macaulay
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With the dead there is no rivalry, with the dead there is no change.
Thomas B. Macaulay