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The opinion of the great body of the reading public is very materially influenced even by the unsupported assertions of those who assume a right to criticize.

Thomas B. Macaulay

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Thomas B. Macaulay
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More quotes by 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.
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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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If anybody would make me the greatest king that ever lived, with palaces, and gardens and fine dinners, and wine, and coaches, and beautiful clothes, and hundreds of servants, on condition that I would not read books, I would not be a king.
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A Grecian history, perfectly written should be a complete record of the rise and progress of poetry, philosophy, and the arts.
Thomas B. Macaulay
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Language is the machine of the poet.
Thomas B. Macaulay
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That is the best government which desires to make the people happy, and knows how to make them happy.
Thomas B. Macaulay
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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.
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It is, I believe, no exaggeration to say that all the historical information which has been collected in the Sanskrit language is less valuable than what may be found in the paltry abridgements used at preparatory schools in England.
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It may be laid as an universal rule that a government which attempts more than it ought will perform less.
Thomas B. Macaulay
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The Church is the handmaid of tyranny and the steady enemy of liberty.
Thomas B. Macaulay
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What a singular destiny has been that of this remarkable man!-To be regarded in his own age as a classic, and in ours as a companion! To receive from his contemporaries that full homage which men of genius have in general received only from posterity to be more intimately known to posterity than other men are known to their contemporaries!
Thomas B. Macaulay
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Thus, then, stands the case. It is good, that authors should be remunerated and the least exceptionable way of remunerating them is by a monopoly. Yet monopoly is an evil. For the sake of the good we must submit to the evil but the evil ought not to last a day longer than is necessary for the purpose of securing the good.
Thomas B. Macaulay
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It is the age that forms the man, not the man that forms the age.
Thomas B. Macaulay
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No man in the world acts up to his own standard of right.
Thomas B. Macaulay
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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
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The impenetrable stupidity of Prince George (son-in-law of James II) served his turn. It was his habit, when any news was told him, to exclaim, Est il possible?-Is it possible?
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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Shakespeare has had neither equal nor second.
Thomas B. Macaulay
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In the plays of Shakespeare man appears as he is, made up of a crowd of passions which contend for the mastery over him, and govern him in turn.
Thomas B. Macaulay
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A kind of semi-Solomon, half-knowing everything, from the cedar to the hyssop.
Thomas B. Macaulay