Thomas Babington Macaulay - Government Quotes

8 Sourced Quotes

View all Thomas Babington Macaulay Quotes
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
Free trade, one of the greatest blessings which a government can confer on a people, is in almost every country unpopular.

Thomas Babington Macaulay
That is the best government which desires to make the people happy, and knows how to make them happy.

Thomas Babington Macaulay
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?

Thomas Babington Macaulay
There are countries in which it would be as absurd to establish popular governments as to abolish all the restraints in a school or to unite all the strait-waistcoats in a madhouse.

Thomas Babington Macaulay
As freedom is the only safeguard of governments, so are order and moderation generally necessary to preserve freedom.

Thomas Babington Macaulay
A government cannot be wrong in punishing fraud or force, but it is almost certain to be wrong if, abandoning its legitimate function, it tells private individuals that it knows their business better than they know it themselves.

Thomas Babington Macaulay
It is certain that satirical poems were common at Rome from a very early period. The rustics, who lived at a distance from the seat of government, and took little part in the strife of factions, gave vent to their petty local animosities in coarse Fescennine verse.

Thomas Babington Macaulay