Thomas Babington Macaulay Quotes

• Many of the greatest men that ever lived have written biography. Boswell was one of the smallest men that ever lived and he has beaten them all.

  Thomas Babington Macaulay

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Men

• From the poetry of Lord Byron they drew a system of ethics, compounded of misanthropy and voluptuousness, a system in which the two great commandments were, to hate your neighbour, and to love your neighbour’s wife.

  Thomas Babington Macaulay

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Poetry

• Mr Robert Montgomery’s genius [is] far too free and aspiring to be shackled by the rules of syntax… [His] readers must take such grammar as they can get and be thankful.

  Thomas Babington Macaulay

  Topics in Genius

• His writing bears the same relation to poetry which a Turkey carpet bears to a picture.

  Thomas Babington Macaulay

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Writing

• History, at least in its ideal state of perfection, is a compound of poetry and philosophy.

  Thomas Babington Macaulay

  Topics in History

• Knowledge advances by steps, and not by leaps.

  Thomas Babington Macaulay

  Topics in Knowledge

• It has lately been brought to my knowledge That the Ministers fully design To suppress each cathedral and college, And eject every learned divine. To assist this detestable scheme Three nuncios from Rome are come over; They left Calais on Monday by steam, And landed to dinner at Dover.

  Thomas Babington Macaulay

  Topics in Knowledge

• Every man who has seen the world knows that nothing is so useless as a general maxim.

  Thomas Babington Macaulay

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in World, Man

• Many politicians of our time 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 learnt to swim. If men are to wait for liberty till they become wise and good in slavery, they may indeed wait for ever.

  Thomas Babington Macaulay

  Topics in Politics

• The men of our time are not to be converted or perverted by quartos.

  Thomas Babington Macaulay

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Men

• Free trade, one of the greatest blessings which a government can confer on a people, is in almost every country unpopular.

  Thomas Babington Macaulay

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Government

• Then, beneath the nine-tailed cat Shall they who use it writhe, sir; And curates lean, and rectors fat, Shall dig the ground they tithe, sir. Down with your Bayleys, and your Bests, Your Giffords, and your Gurneys; We’ll clear the island of the pests, Which mortals name attorneys.

  Thomas Babington Macaulay

  Topics in Uncategorized

• What a blessing it is to love books as I love them;- to be able to converse with the dead, and to live amidst the unreal!

  Thomas Babington Macaulay

  Topics in Love

  Tags in Books, Reading

• Many politicians lay it down as a self evident proposition that no people ought to be free until 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 until he had learned to swim.

  Thomas Babington Macaulay

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Freedom

• To punish a man because we infer from the nature of some doctrine which he holds, or from the conduct of other persons who hold the same doctrines with him, that he will commit a crime, is persecution, and is, in every case, foolish and wicked.

  Thomas Babington Macaulay

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Persecution, Commit, Hold, Foolish

• There is surely no contradiction in saying that a certain section of the community may be quite competent to protect the persons and property of the rest, yet quite unfit to direct our opinions, or to superintend our private habits.

  Thomas Babington Macaulay

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Habits, Property

• The maxim, that governments ought to train the people in the way in which they should go, sounds well. But is there any reason for believing that a government is more likely to lead the people in the right way than the people to fall into the right way of themselves?

  Thomas Babington Macaulay

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Train, Believing

• The highest proof of virtue is to possess boundless power without abusing it.

  Thomas Babington Macaulay

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Boundless, Virtue

• Persecution produced its natural effect on them. It found them a sect; it made them a faction.

  Thomas Babington Macaulay

  Tags in Sect, Faction, Oppression, Persecution

• None of the modes by which a magistrate is appointed, popular election, the accident of the lot, or the accident of birth, affords, as far as we can perceive, much security for his being wiser than any of his neighbours.

  Thomas Babington Macaulay

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Magistrate, Accept, Afford

Thomas Babington Macaulay (81)

Birth:	25th October, 1800
Death:	28th December, 1859
Nationality:	British
Profession:	Historian, Poet, Politician

About

Macaulay was the eldest child of Zachary Macaulay, a Scottish Highlander, who became a colonial governor and abolitionist and Selena Mills who was a former pupil of Hannah More. Thomas Macaulay was born in Leicestershire, England, where he was noted as a child prodigy.

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