18th-century Politician Quotes

Let this sad tale of death never be told without a tear: let every parent tell the shameful story to his listening children, till tears of pity glisten in their eyes, or boiling passion shakes their tender frames.

A minister who moves about in society is in a position to read the signs of the times even in a festive gathering, but one who remains shut up in his office learns nothing.

Duc de Choiseul

Madam, if a thing is possible, consider it done; the impossible? that will be done.

Charles Alexandre de Calonne

The boldness of impiety is often mistaken for knowledge, founded on an independent spirit, and thereby saps the necessary defense of a simple innocence and unsuspecting modesty.

I have always perceived, or nearly so, the defects of those I love; and such defects are the only ones I can see clearly. But for the want of archangels, we must love imperfect creatures.

Honoré Gabriel Riqueti, comte de Mirabeau

"It is more than a crime; it is a political fault," —words which I record, because they have been repeated and attributed to others.

Of France:

A nation of monkeys with the throat of parrots.

Emmanuel-Joseph Sieyès

The Dutch Company, actuated solely by the spirit of gain, and viewing their [Javan] subjects, with less regard or consideration than a West India planter formerly viewed a gang upon his estate, because the latter had paid the purchase money of human property, which the other had not, employed all the existing machinery of despotism to squeeze from the people their utmost mite of contribution, the last dregs of their labor, and thus aggravated the evils of a capricious and semi-barbarous Government, by working it with all the practised ingenuity of politicians, and all the monopolizing selfishness of traders.

Stamford Raffles

To say that a bad government must be established for fear of anarchy is really saying that we should kill ourselves for fear of dying.

Richard Henry Lee

The Empire of China is an old, crazy, first-rate Man of War, which a fortunate succession of able and vigilant officers have contrived to keep afloat for these hundred and fifty years past, and to overawe their neighbours merely by her bulk and appearance. But whenever an insufficient man happens to have the command on deck, adieu to the discipline and safety of the ship. She may, perhaps, not sink outright; she may drift some time as a wreck, and will then be dashed to pieces on the shore; but she can never be rebuilt on the old bottom.

George Macartney

If any man will draw up his case, and put his name at the foot of the first page, I will give him an immediate reply. Where he compels me to turn over the sheet, he must wait my leisure.

John Montagu, 4th Earl of Sandwich

He was uniformly of an opinion which, though not a popular one, he was ready to aver, that the right of governing was not property, but a trust.

Charles James Fox

The real truth is, the number of convicts is too overwhelming for the means of proper and effectual punishment. I despair of any remedy but that which I wish I could hope for - a great reduction in the amount of crime.

English physicians kill you, the French let you die.

William Lamb, 2nd Viscount Melbourne

I have got an infamous army, very weak and ill-equipped, and a very inexperienced staff.

Arthur Wellesley, 1st Duke of Wellington

It is hard to say which is the greatest fool: he who tells the whole truth, or he who tells no truth at all. Character is as necessary in business as in trade. No man can deceive often in either.

Philip Stanhope, 4th Earl of Chesterfield

Oppression makes wise men mad; but the distemper is still the madness of the wise, which is better than the sobriety of fools.

Nothing short of absolute independence in both government and commerce will satisfy us. This we shall have or cease to live.

Henri Christophe

Compañeros, this old man is my father. He has come to offer me rewards in the name of the Spaniards. I have always respected my father but my country comes first.

Vicente Guerrero

He thinks nothing more absurd than the common notion of Instruction, as if Science were to be poured into the Mind, like water into a cistern, that passively waits to receive all that comes.

James Harris (grammarian)

To be told that mathematics is good training for the mind does not insure either the intelligent or ardent pursuit of this branch of science.

Grateful to Almighty God for the blessings which, through Jesus Christ Our Lord, He had conferred on my beloved country in her emancipation and on myself in permitting me, under circumstances of mercy, to live to the age of 89 years, and to survive the fiftieth year of independence, adopted by Congress on the 4th of July 1776...

Charles Carroll of Carrollton

No man in America ever strove more, and more successfully first to bring about a Congress in 1765, and then to support it ever afterwards than myself.

Christopher Gadsden

The dread of death seems implanted in the nature of human kind as a peculiar curse, since no other species of created beings are capable of it.

Richard Annesley, 6th Earl of Anglesey

I consider this Negro [Benjamin Banneker] as fresh proof that the powers of the mind are disconnected with the colour of the skin or in other words, a striking contradiction to Mr. Hume's doctrine that "the Negroes are naturally inferior to the whites and unsusceptible of attainments in arts and sciences.