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Thomas Babington Macaulay (1800 – 1859)


Nineteenth century British poet, historian and Whig politician.
Thomas Babington Macaulay
That is the best government which desires to make the people happy, and knows how to make them happy.
Macaulay quotes
"Copyright is monopoly, and produces all the effects which the general voice of mankind attributes to monopoly. [...] Monopoly is an evil. For the sake of the good we must submit to the evil; but the evil ought not to last a day longer than is necessary for the purpose of securing the good."
Macaulay
He [Richard Steele] was a rake among scholars, and a scholar among rakes.




The highest proof of virtue is to possess boundless power without abusing it.
Macaulay Thomas Babington
There you [Sir Robert Peel] sit, doing penance for the disingenuousness of years.
As civilization advances, poetry almost necessarily declines.
Thomas Babington Macaulay
It seems that the creative faculty and the critical faculty cannot exist together in their highest perfection.
Those who compare the age in which their lot has fallen with a golden age which exists only in imagination, may talk of degeneracy and decay; but no man who is correctly informed as to the past, will be disposed to take a morose or desponding view of the present.
Macaulay
Temple was a man of the world amongst men of letters, a man of letters amongst men of the world.
Macaulay Thomas Babington
Lars Porsena of Closium
By the Nine Gods he swore
That the great house of Tarquin
Should suffer wrong no more.
By the Nine Gods he swore it,
And named a trysting day,
And bade his messengers ride forth,
East and west and south and north,
To summon his array.
Thomas Babington Macaulay
"Oh, Tiber! Father Tiber!
To whom the Romans pray,
A Roman's life, a Roman's arms,
Take thou in charge this day!"
So he spake, and speaking sheathed
The good sword by his side,
And with his harness on his back,
Plunged headlong in the tide.




I have travelled across the length and breadth of India and I have not seen one person who is a beggar, who is a thief. Such wealth I have seen in the country, such high moral values, people of such caliber, that I do not think we would conquer this country, unless we break the very backbone of this nation, which is her spiritual and cultural heritage, and therefore, I propose that we replace her old and ancient education system, her culture, for if the Indians think that all that is foreign and English is good and greater than their own, they will lose their self esteem, their native culture and they will become what we want them, a truly dominated nation.
Thomas Babington Macaulay
Press where ye see my white plume shine, amidst the ranks of war,
And be your oriflamme today the helmet of Navarre.
Macaulay quotes
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.
Macaulay Thomas Babington
That wonderful book, while it obtains admiration from the most fastidious critics, is loved by those who are too simple to admire it.
Forget all feuds, and shed one English tear
O'er English dust. A broken heart lies here.
Thomas Babington Macaulay
Ye diners-out from whom we guard our spoons.
Such night in England ne'er had been, nor ne'er again shall be.
Thomas Babington Macaulay
She [the Roman Catholic Church] may still exist in undiminished vigour when some traveller from New Zealand shall, in the midst of a vast solitude, take his stand on a broken arch of London Bridge to sketch the ruins of St. Paul’s.
Macaulay Thomas Babington
He had a head which statuaries loved to copy, and a foot the deformity of which the beggars in the streets mimicked.


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