Quote

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.

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
Well
Freedom
Empty
Nothing
Sound
Quiet
Feel
Idea
Nobody
Secured
Feels
Means
Economy
Liberalism
Mean
Else
Full
Enjoyment
Thing
May
Wisdom
Abstract
Ideas
Politics
Slave
Wells
Call
Property

More quotes by William Cobbett

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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
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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.
William Cobbett
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Protestations of impartiality I shall make none. Theyare always useless and are besides perfect nonsense, when used bya news-monger.
William Cobbett
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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
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WESTBURY, a nasty odious rotten-borough, a really rotten place.
William Cobbett
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Men fail much oftener from want of perseverance than from want of talent.
William Cobbett
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DEAL is a most villainous place. It is full of filthy-looking people.Great desolationof abomination has beengoing on here.
William Cobbett
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Happiness, or misery, is in the mind. It is the mind that lives.
William Cobbett
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He who writes badly thinks badly
William Cobbett
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A full belly to the labourer was, in my opinion, the foundation of public morals and the only source of real public peace.
William Cobbett
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Be you in what line of life you may, it will be amongst your misfortunes if you have not time properly to attend to [money management] for. ... want of attention to pecuniary matters ... has impeded the progress of science and of genius itself.
William Cobbett
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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
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I was a countryman and a father before I was a writer on political subjects... Born and bred up in the sweet air myself, I was resolved that my children should be bred up in it too.
William Cobbett
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The smallness of our desires may contribute reasonably to our wealth.
William Cobbett
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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.
William Cobbett
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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.
William Cobbett
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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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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
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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
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Good government is known from bad government by this infallible test: that under the former the labouring people are well fed and well clothed, and under the latter, they are badly fed and badly clothed.
William Cobbett