Thomas B. Macaulay Quotes

A good constitution is infinitely better than the best despot.
Thomas B. Macaulay

A single breaker may recede; but the tide is evidently coming in.
Thomas B. Macaulay

An acre in Middlesex is better than a principality in Utopia.
Thomas B. Macaulay

And how can man die better than facing fearful odds, for the ashes of his fathers, and the temples of his Gods?
Thomas B. Macaulay

As civilization advances, poetry almost necessarily declines.
Thomas B. Macaulay

Few of the many wise apothegms which have been uttered have prevented a single foolish action.
Thomas B. Macaulay

He had a wonderful talent for packing thought close, and rendering it portable.
Thomas B. Macaulay

He was a rake among scholars, and a scholar among rakes.
Thomas B. Macaulay

I shall cheerfully bear the reproach of having descended below the dignity of history if I can succeed in placing before the English of the nineteenth century a true picture of the life of their ancestors.
Thomas B. Macaulay

I shall not be satisfied unless I produce something which shall for a few days supersede the last fashionable novel on the tables of young ladies.
Thomas B. Macaulay

I would rather be poor in a cottage full of books than a king without the desire to read.
Thomas B. Macaulay

Many politicians are in the habit of laying it down as a self-evident proposition that no people ought to be free till they are fit to use their freedom. The maxim is worthy of the fool in the old story who resolved not to go into the water till he had learned to swim.
Thomas B. Macaulay

Nothing except the mint can make money without advertising.
Thomas B. Macaulay

Nothing is so galling to a people not broken in from the birth as a paternal, or, in other words, a meddling government, a government which tells them what to read, and say, and eat, and drink and wear.
Thomas B. Macaulay

Nothing is so useless as a general maxim.
Thomas B. Macaulay

People crushed by law have no hopes but from power. If laws are their enemies, they will be enemies to laws.
Thomas B. Macaulay

Perhaps no person can be a poet, or even enjoy poetry, without a certain unsoundness of mind.
Thomas B. Macaulay

Reform, that we may preserve.
Thomas B. Macaulay

She thoroughly understands what no other Church has ever understood, how to deal with enthusiasts.
Thomas B. Macaulay

Such night in England ne'er had been, nor ne'er again shall be.
Thomas B. Macaulay