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The tendency of taxation is, to create a class of persons, who do not labour: to take from those who do labour the produce of that labour, and to give it to those who do not labour.

William Cobbett

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William Cobbett
Age: 72 †
Born: 1763
Born: March 9
Died: 1835
Died: June 18
Biographer
Farmer
Journalist
Pamphleteer
Political Writer
Politician
Farnham
Surrey
Dick Retort
Peter Porcupine
Create
Class
Taxation
Give
Tendency
Persons
Tendencies
Take
Labour
Giving
Labor
Produce
Liberty

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Men fail much oftener from want of perseverance than from want of talent.
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Grammar, perfectly understood, enables us not only to express our meaning fully and clearly, but so to express it as to enable us to defy the ingenuity of man to give to our words any other meaning than that which we ourselves intend them to express.
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All Middlesex is ugly, notwithstanding the millions upon millionswhichit iscontinuallysucking up fromtherestof the kingdom.
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Learning consists of ideas, and not of the noise that is made by the mouth.
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The town of GUILDFORD, which (taken with its environs) I, who have seen so many, many towns, think the prettiest, and, taken all together, the most agreeable and most happy-looking, that I ever saw in my life.
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I defy you to agitate any fellow with a full stomach.
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Freedom is not an empty sound it is not an abstract idea it is not a thing that nobody can feel. It means, - and it means nothing else, - the full and quiet enjoyment of your own property. If you have not this, if this be not well secured to you, you may call yourself what you will, but you are a slave.
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To suppose such a thing possible as a society, in which men, who are able and willing to work, cannot support their families, and ought, with a great part of the women, to be compelled to lead a life of celibacy, for fear of having children to be starved to suppose such a thing possible is monstrous.
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The very hirelings of the press, whose trade it is to buoy up the spirits of the people... have uttered falsehoods so long, they have played off so many tricks, that their budget seems, at last, to be quite empty.
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Please your eye and plague your heart.
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Before I dismiss this affair of eating and drinking, let me beseech you to resolve to free yourselves from the slavery of the tea and coffee and other slop-kettle, if, unhappily, you have been bred up in such slavery.
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Protestations of impartiality I shall make none. Theyare always useless and are besides perfect nonsense, when used bya news-monger.
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It is by attempting to reach the top at a single leap that so much misery is caused in the world.
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Poverty is, except where there is an actual want of food and raiment, a thing much more imaginary than real. The shame of poverty--the shame of being thought poor--it is a great and fatal weakness, though arising in this country, from the fashion of the times themselves.
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Sit down to write what you have thought, and not to think what you shall write.
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From a very early age I had imbibed the opinion that it was every man's duty to do all that lay in his power to leave his country as good as he had found it.
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It is no small mischief to a boy, that many of the best years of his life should be devoted to the learning of what can never be of any real use to any human being. His mind is necessarily rendered frivolous and superficial by the long habit of attaching importance to words instead of things to sound instead of sense.
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He who writes badly thinks badly
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You never know what you can do till you try.
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