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Art
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The best portraits are those in which there is a slight mixture of caricature.
-Thomas Babington Macaulay
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Character
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The measure of a man's real character is what he would do if he knew he would never be found out.
-Thomas Babington Macaulay
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Christianity
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The real security of Christianity is to be found in its benevolent morality, in its exquisite adaptation to the human heart, in the facility with which its scheme accommodates itself to the capacity of every human intellect, in the consolation which it bears to the house of mourning, in the light with which it brightens the great mystery of the grave.
-Thomas Babington Macaulay
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Conflict
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The effect of violent dislike between groups has always created an indifference to the welfare and honor of the state.
-Thomas Babington Macaulay
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Constitution
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Your Constitution is all sail and no anchor.
-Thomas Babington Macaulay
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A good constitution is infinitely better than the best despot.
-Thomas Babington Macaulay
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Death
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Then out spake brave Horatius,
The Captain of the Gate:
To every man upon this earth
Death cometh soon or late.
And how can man die better
Than facing fearful odds,
For the ashes of his fathers,
And the temples of his Gods.
-Thomas Babington Macaulay, Horatius Lays of Ancient Rome
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Education
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It is impossible for us, with our limited means, to attempt to educate the body of the people. We must at present do our best to form a class who may be interpreters between us and the millions whom we govern; a class of persons, Indian in blood and colour, but English in taste, in opinions, in morals, and in intellect. 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.
Macaulay's minute on education arguing for the use of English in India
-Thomas Babington Macaulay
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Empire
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The reluctant obedience of distant provinces generally costs more than it The Territory is worth. Empires which branch out widely are often more flourishing for a little timely pruning.
-Thomas Babington Macaulay
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Ethics
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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 neighbor and to love your neighbor's wife.
-Thomas Babington Macaulay, On Moore's Life of Lord Byron, 1831
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Generalize, Generalizations
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Generalization is necessary to the advancement of knowledge; but particularly is indispensable to the creations of the imagination. In proportion as men know more and think more they look less at individuals and more at classes. They therefore make better theories and worse poems.
-Thomas Babington Macaulay
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Government
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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 Babington Macaulay
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We must judge a government by its general tendencies and not by its happy accidents.
-Thomas Babington Macaulay
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Our rulers will best promote the improvement of the nation by strictly confining themselves to their own legitimate duties, by leaving capital to find its most lucrative course, commodities their fair price, industry and intelligence their natural reward, idleness and folly their natural punishment, by maintaining peace, by defending property, by diminishing the price of law, and by observing strict economy in every department of the state. Let the Government do this: the People will assuredly do the rest.
-Thomas Babington Macaulay
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Heroes/Heroism
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And how can man die better than facing fearful odds, for the ashes of his fathers, and the temples of his Gods?
-Thomas Babington Macaulay
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History
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History, is made up of the bad actions of extraordinary men and woman. All the most noted destroyers and deceivers of our species, all the founders of arbitrary governments and false religions have been extraordinary people; and nine tenths of the calamities that have befallen the human race had no other origin than the union of high intelligence with low desires.
-Thomas Babington Macaulay
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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.
-Thomas Babington Macaulay
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Image
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Logicians may reason about abstractions. But the great mass of men must have images. The strong tendency of the multitude in all ages and nations to idolatry can be explained on no other principle.
-Thomas Babington Macaulay
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Knowledge
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Charles V. said that a man who knew four languages was worth four men; and Alexander the Great so valued learning, that he used to say he was more indebted to Aristotle for giving him knowledge that, than his father Philip for giving him life.
-Thomas Babington Macaulay
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Language
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Language, the machine of the poet, is best fitted for his purpose in its rudest state. Nations, like individuals, first perceive, and then abstract. They advance from particular images to general terms. Hence the vocabulary of an enlightened society is philosophical, that of a half-civilized people is poetical.
-Thomas Babington Macaulay
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Life
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Every generation enjoys the use of a vast hoard bequeathed to it by antiquity, and transmits that hoard, augmented by fresh acquisitions, to future ages.
-Thomas Babington Macaulay, History of England
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Military, the
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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.
-Thomas Babington Macaulay
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Morals
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We know no spectacle so ridiculous as the British public in one of its periodical fits of morality.
-Thomas Babington Macaulay
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Persuasion
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The object of oratory alone in not truth, but persuasion.
-Thomas Babington Macaulay
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Philosophy
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In Plato's opinion, man was made for philosophy; in Bacon's opinion, philosophy was made for man.
-Thomas Babington Macaulay
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Books by and about Thomas Babington Macaulay