Henry Brougham, 1st Baron Brougham and Vaux Quotes

16 Sourced Quotes

Not a step can we take in any direction without perceiving the most extraordinary traces of design; and the skill everywhere conspicuous is calculated in so vast a proportion of instances to promote the happiness of living creatures, and especially of ourselves, that we feel no hesitation in concluding that, if we knew the whole scheme of Providence, every part would appear to be in harmony with a plan of absolute benevolence.

Henry Brougham, 1st Baron Brougham and Vaux
The Sovereign can only act by advisers, and through the instrumentality of those who are neither infallible nor impeccable— answerable, indeed, for all that the irresponsible Sovereign may do, but liable to err through undue influence, and to be swayed by improper motives.

Henry Brougham, 1st Baron Brougham and Vaux
Education makes a people easy to lead, but difficult to drive; easy to govern but impossible to enslave.

Henry Brougham, 1st Baron Brougham and Vaux
What is valuable is not new, and what is new is not valuable.

Henry Brougham, 1st Baron Brougham and Vaux
The judicial ought to be kept entirely distinct from the legislative and executive power in the State. This separation is necessary both to secure the independence of the judicial functions and to prevent their being influenced by the interests of party or by the voice of the people.

Henry Brougham, 1st Baron Brougham and Vaux
The same Being that fashioned the insect, whose existence is only discerned by a microscope, and gave that invisible speck a system of ducts and other organs to perform its vital functions, created the enormous mass of the planet thirteen hundred times larger than our earth, and launched it in its course round the sun, and the comet, wheeling with a velocity that would carry it round our globe in less than two minutes of time, and yet revolving through so prodigious a space that it takes near six centuries to encircle the sun!

Henry Brougham, 1st Baron Brougham and Vaux
Do you think that a reporter has a right to supply or suppress any part of a judgment?

Henry Brougham, 1st Baron Brougham and Vaux
There have been periods when the country heard with dismay that "the soldier was abroad." That is not the case now. Let the soldier be abroad; in the present age he can do nothing. Let the soldier be abroad if he will, he can do nothing in this age. There is another personage,—a personage less imposing in the eyes of some, perhaps insignificant. The schoolmaster is abroad, and I trust to him, armed with his primer, against the soldier in full military array, for upholding and extending the liberties of his country.

Henry Brougham, 1st Baron Brougham and Vaux
In my mind, he was guilty of no error, he was chargeable with no exaggeration, he was betrayed by his fancy into no metaphor, who once said, that all we see about us, Kings, Lords, and Commons, the whole machinery of the State, all the apparatus of the system, and its varied workings, end in simply bringing twelve good men into a box.

Henry Brougham, 1st Baron Brougham and Vaux
The Judge has not organs to know and to deal with the text of the foreign law, and therefore requires the assistance of a foreign lawyer who knows how to interpret it.

Henry Brougham, 1st Baron Brougham and Vaux
Real knowledge never promoted either turbulence or unbelief; but its progress is the forerunner of liberality and enlightened toleration.

Henry Brougham, 1st Baron Brougham and Vaux
Equity has not relieved against gross improvidence.

Henry Brougham, 1st Baron Brougham and Vaux
Make sobriety a habit, and intemperance will be hateful; make prudence a habit, and reckless profligacy will be as contrary to the nature of the child, grown or adult, as the most atrocious crimes, are to any of us.

Henry Brougham, 1st Baron Brougham and Vaux
A mere theory... is the unmanly and unfruitful pleasure of a boyish and prurient imagination, or the gratification of a corrupted and depraved appetite.

Henry Brougham, 1st Baron Brougham and Vaux
What individual can so well assess the amount of damages which a plaintiff ought to recover for an injury he has received than an intelligent jury?

Henry Brougham, 1st Baron Brougham and Vaux
A discovery in mathematics, or a successful induction of facts, when once completed, cannot be too soon given to the world. But... an hypothesis is a work of fancy, useless in science, and fit only for the amusement of a vacant hour.

Henry Brougham, 1st Baron Brougham and Vaux