Thomas Babington Macaulay Quotes

The puritan hated bear baiting, not because it gave pain to the bear, but because it gave pleasure to the spectators.

The real security of Christianity is to be found in its benevolent morality; in its exquisite adaption to the human heart; in the facility with which it accommodates itself to the capacity of every human intellect; in the consolation which it bears to every house of mourning; and in the light with which it brightens the great mystery of the grave. [Christianity]

There is a very pretty Eastern tale, of which the fate of plagiarists often reminds us. The slave of a magician saw his master wave his wand, and heard him give orders to the spirits who arose at the summons. The slave stole the wand, and waved it himself in the air; but he had not observed that his master used the left hand for that purpose. The spirits thus irregularly summoned, tore the thief to pieces instead of obeying his orders.
[Plagiarism]

There is no malice like the malice of the renegade.

There is only one cure for the evils which newly acquired freedom produces, and that cure is freedom.

There were gentlemen and there were seamen in the navy of Charles the Second. But the seamen were not gentlemen; and the gentlemen were not seamen.

Those who seem to lead the public taste, are, in general, merely outrunning it in the direction it is spontaneously pursuing. [Fashion]

To sum up the whole, we should say that the aim of the Platonic philosophy was to exalt man into a god.

To that class we may leave it to refine the vernacular dialects of the country, to enrich those dialects with terms of science borrowed from the Western nomenclature, and to render them by degrees fit vehicles for conveying knowledge to the great mass of the population.

Turn where we may, within, around, the voice of great events is proclaiming to us, Reform, that you may preserve!

We deplore the outrages which accompany revolutions. But the more violent the outrages, the more assured we feel that a revolution was necessary! The violence of these outrages will always be proportioned to the ferocity and ignorance of the people: and the ferocity and ignorance of the people will be proportioned to the oppression and degradation under which they have been accustomed to live.
[Revolution]

We hold that the most wonderful and splendid proof of genius is a great poem produced in a civilized age.

We know no spectacle so ridiculous as the British public in one of its periodical fits of morality.

Your Constitution is all sail and no anchor.