Thomas Babington Macaulay Quotes

Every sect clamors for toleration when it is down… The doctrine which from the very first origin of religious dissensions, has been held by all bigots of all sects, when condensed into a few words, and stripped of rhetorical disguise, is simply this: I am in the right and you are in the wrong. When […]

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

In Plato’s opinion man was made for philosophy, in Bacon’s opinion philosophy was made for man.

Other Irish towns may present more picturesque forms to the eye. But Belfast is the only large Irish town in which the traveller is not disgusted by the loathsome aspect and odour of long lines of human dens far inferior in comfort and cleanliness to the dwellings which, in happier countries, are provided for cattle. […]

No particular man is necessary to the state. We may depend on it that, if we provide the country with popular institutions, those institutions will provide it with great men.

An acre in Middlesex is better than a principality in Utopia.

When we reflect that Sir Thomas More was ready to die for the doctrine of transubstantiation, we cannot but feel some doubt whether the doctrine of transubstantiation may not triumph over the opposition. More was a man of eminent talents. He had all the information on the subject that we have, or that, while the […]

More sinners are cursed at not because we despise their sins but because we envy their success at sinning.

I have long been convinced that institutions purely democratic must, sooner or later, destroy liberty, or civilization, or both.

I have not the smallest doubt that, if we had a purely democratic government here, the effect would be the same. Either the poor would plunder the rich, and civilization would perish; or order and property would be saved by a strong, military government, and liberty would perish.