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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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Thomas B. Macaulay
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It is the age that forms the man, not the man that forms the age.
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Both in individuals and in masses violent excitement is always followed by remission, and often by reaction. We are all inclined to depreciate whatever we have overpraised, and, on the other hand, to show undue indulgence where we have shown undue rigor.
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A few more years will destroy whatever yet remains of that magical potency which once belonged to the name of Byron.
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The Church is the handmaid of tyranny and the steady enemy of liberty.
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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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Finesse is the best adaptation of means to circumstances.
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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.
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The reluctant obedience of distant provinces generally costs more than it - The Territory is worth. Empires which branch out widely are often more flourishing for a little timely pruning.
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Knowledge advances by steps, and not by leaps.
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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.
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The effective strength of sects is not to be ascertained merely by counting heads.
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[I can] scarcely write upon mathematics or mathematicians. Oh for words to express my abomination of the science.
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I have not the smallest doubt that, if we had a purely democratic government here, the effect would be the same. Either the poor would plunder the rich, and civilisation would perish or order and property would be saved by a strong military government, and liberty would perish.
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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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The perfect disinterestedness and self-devotion of which men seem incapable, but which is sometimes found in women.
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The English doctrine that all power is a trust for the public good.
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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 kind of semi-Solomon, half-knowing everything, from the cedar to the hyssop.
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It is impossible for us, with our limited means, to attempt to educate the body of the people. We must at present do our best to form a class who may be interpreters between us and the millions whom we govern.
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