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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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Thomas B. Macaulay
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More quotes by 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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By poetry we mean the art of employing of words in such a manner as to produce an illusion on the imagination the art of doing by means of words, what the painter does by means of colors.
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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In truth it may be laid down as an almost universal rule that good poets are bad critics.
Thomas B. Macaulay
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It has often been found that profuse expenditures, heavy taxation, absurd commercial restrictions, corrupt tribunals, disastrous wars, seditions, persecutions, conflagrations, inundation, have not been able to destroy capital so fast as the exertions of private citizens have been able to create it.
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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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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In order that he might rob a neighbour whom he had promised to defend, black men fought on the coast of Coromandel and red men scalped each other by the great lakes of North America.
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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Generalization is necessary to the advancement of knowledge but particularity is indispensable to the creations of the imagination.
Thomas B. Macaulay
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Byron owed the vast influence which he exercised over his contemporaries at least as much to his gloomy egotism as to the real power of his poetry.
Thomas B. Macaulay
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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.
Thomas B. Macaulay
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Parent of sweetest sounds, yet mute forever.
Thomas B. Macaulay
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Only imagine a man acting for one single day on the supposition that all his neighbors believe all that they profess, and act up to all that they believe!
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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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.
Thomas B. Macaulay
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He who, in an enlightened and literary society, aspires to be a great poet, must first become a little child.
Thomas B. Macaulay
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Knowledge advances by steps, and not by leaps.
Thomas B. Macaulay
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Our judgment ripens our imagination decays. We cannot at once enjoy the flowers of the Spring of life and the fruits of its Autumn.
Thomas B. Macaulay
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With the dead there is no rivalry, with the dead there is no change.
Thomas B. Macaulay