Thomas Babington Quotes
- American democracy must be a failure because it places the supreme authority in the hands of the poorest and most ignorant part of the society.
- And to say that society ought to be governed by the opinion of the wisest and best, though true, is useless. Whose opinion is to decide who are the wisest and best?
- Men are never so likely to settle a question rightly as when they discuss it freely.
- 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.
- Nothing is so galling to a people not broken in from 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.
- Persecution produced its natural effect on them. It found them a sect; it made them a faction.
- The highest proof of virtue is to possess boundless power without abusing it.
- 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?
- 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.
- 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.
- 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?'
- When some traveller from
- Thank you, madam, the agony is abated.
- 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.
- They [the Nabobs] raised the price of everything in their neighbourhood, from fresh eggs to rotten boroughs.
- Nothing is so useless as a general maxim.
- Thank you, madam, the agony is abated.
'aged 4, having hot coffee spilt over his legs
- And lastly, let us provide in our Constitution for its revision at stated periods
- The measure of a man's character is what he would do if he knew he never would be found out.
- 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?
- Men are never so likely to settle a question rightly as when they discuss it freely.
- And to say that society ought to be governed by the opinion of the wisest and best, though true, is useless. Whose opinion is to decide who are the wisest and best?
- The highest proof of virtue is to possess boundless power without abusing it.
- It has often been found that profuse expenditures, heavy taxation, absurd commercial restrictions, corrupt tribunals, disastrous wars, seditions, persecutions, conflagrations, inundation, have not been able to destroy capital so fast as the exertions of private citizens have been able to create it.
- Nothing is so galling to a people not broken in from 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.
- I have long been convinced that institutions purely democratic must, sooner or later, destroy liberty, or civilization, or both.
- 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.
- Institutions purely democratic must, sooner, or later, destroy liberty or civilization or both.
- Many politicians... 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... who resolved not to go into the water till he had learned to swim.
- American democracy must be a failure because it places the supreme authority in the hands of the poorest and most ignorant part of the society.
- Persecution produced its natural effect on them. It found them a sect; it made them a faction.
- 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. The chance of his being wiser than all his neighbours together is still smaller.
- 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.
- The measure of a man's real character is what he would do if he knew he would never be found out.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
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