Quote

The truth is that the fall of Napoleon is the hardest blow that our taxing system ever felt. It is now impossible to make people believe that immense fleets and armies are necessary.

William Cobbett

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

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
Believe
Necessary
Fleets
Make
Military
Taxing
People
System
Napoleon
Impossible
Armies
Fall
Immense
Felt
Hardest
Truth
Blow
Ever
Army

More quotes by William Cobbett

Image
The ancient nobility and gentry of the kingdom... have been thrust out of all public employment... a race of merchants, and manufacturers and bankers and loan-jobbers and contractors have usurped their place.
William Cobbett
Image
Patience is the most necessary quality for business, many a man would rather you heard his story than grant his request. It is by attempting to reach the top in a single leap that so much misery is produced in the world.
William Cobbett
Image
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.
William Cobbett
Image
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
Image
Learning consists of ideas, and not of the noise that is made by the mouth.
William Cobbett
Image
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.
William Cobbett
Image
Women are a sisterhood. They make common cause in behalf of the sex and, indeed, this is natural enough, when we consider the vast power that the law gives us over them.
William Cobbett
Image
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.
William Cobbett
Image
I defy you to agitate any fellow with a full stomach.
William Cobbett
Image
Never esteem men on account of their riches or their station. Respect goodness, find it where you may.
William Cobbett
Image
If the people of Sheffield could only receive a tenth part of what their knives sell for by retail in America, Sheffield might pave its streets with silver.
William Cobbett
Image
Men fail much oftener from want of perseverance than from want of talent.
William Cobbett
Image
He who writes badly thinks badly
William Cobbett
Image
Dancing is at once rational & healthful: it gives animal spirits it is the natural amusement of young people, & such it has been from the days of Moses.
William Cobbett
Image
Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, and Canada are the horns, the head, the neck, the shins, and the hoof of the ox, and the United States are the ribs, the sirloin, the kidneys, and the rest of the body.
William Cobbett
Image
Happiness, or misery, is in the mind. It is the mind that lives.
William Cobbett
Image
Another great evil arising from this desire to be thought rich or rather, from the desire not to be thought poor, is the destructive thing which has been honored by the name of speculation but which ought to be called Gambling.
William Cobbett
Image
Norwich is a very fine city, and the castle, which stands in the middle of it, on a hill, is truly majestic.
William Cobbett
Image
All my plans in private life all my pursuits all my designs, wishes, and thoughts, have this one great object in view: the overthrow of the ruffian Boroughmongers. If I write grammars if I write on agriculture if I sow, plant, or deal in seeds whatever I do has first in view the destruction of those infamous tyrants.
William Cobbett
Image
Nothing is so well calculated to produce a death-like torpor in the country as an extended system of taxation and a great national debt.
William Cobbett