Thomas Babington Macaulay, 1st Baron Macaulay (1800–59) was an English historian, essayist, philanthropist, and Whig politician. He was a civil servant in India, where he founded a system of education and a new criminal code before returning to Britain and dedicating himself to literature and politics.
Born in Rothley Temple, Leicestershire, and educated at Trinity College-Cambridge, Macaulay was called to the Bar in 1826. He then mixed his legal career with writing. His article on John Milton in the August 1825 issue of the Edinburgh Review had gained him recognition. For nearly 20 years, he was one of the magazine’s most prolific and popular writers. He became MP for the borough of Caine in 1830 and took part in the Reform Bill debates.
Macaulay was a legal adviser to the Supreme Council of India (1834–38.) He is considered primarily responsible for introducing the British education system in India. Upon his return in 1839, Macaulay became MP for Edinburgh and later secretary of war under Home Secretary William Lamb, 2nd Viscount Melbourne.
Macaulay wrote extensively on contemporary and historical sociopolitical subjects. His History of England from the Accession of James II (5 vols., 1848–61) enjoyed unprecedented popularity for a work of its kind. Its literary style has remained an object of praise since its publication.
More: Wikipedia • READ: Works by Thomas Babington Macaulay, 1st Baron Macaulay
He had a wonderful talent for packing thought close, and rendering it portable.
—Thomas Babington Macaulay, 1st Baron Macaulay
Topics: Proverbial Wisdom
By poetry we mean the art of employing words in such a manner as to produce an illusion on the imagination; the art of doing by means of words, what the painter does by means of colors.
—Thomas Babington Macaulay, 1st Baron Macaulay
Topics: Poetry
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, 1st Baron Macaulay
Topics: History, Historians
He who, in an enlightened and literary society, aspires to be a great poet, must first become a little child.
—Thomas Babington Macaulay, 1st Baron Macaulay
Topics: Poetry
The real object of the drama is the exhibition of the human character.
—Thomas Babington Macaulay, 1st Baron Macaulay
A few more days, and this essay will follow the Defensio Populi to the dust and silence of the upper shelf… For a month or two it will occupy a few minutes of chat in every drawing-room, and a few columns in every magazine; and it will then be withdrawn, to make room for the forthcoming novelties.
—Thomas Babington Macaulay, 1st Baron Macaulay
Topics: Popularity
Both in individuals, and in masses, violent excitement is always followed by remission, and often by reaction. We are all inclined to depreciate what we have over-praised, and, on the other hand, to show undue indulgence where we have shown undue rigor.
—Thomas Babington Macaulay, 1st Baron Macaulay
If the Sunday had not been observed as a day of rest during the last three centuries, I have not the slightest doubt that we should have been at this moment a poorer people and less civilized.
—Thomas Babington Macaulay, 1st Baron Macaulay
Perhaps no person can be a poet, or can even enjoy poetry, without a certain unsoundness of mind.
—Thomas Babington Macaulay, 1st Baron Macaulay
Topics: Poetry, Poets
Time advances: facts accumulate; doubts arise. Faint glimpses of truth begin to appear, and shine more and more unto the perfect day. The highest intellects, like the tops of mountains, are the first to catch and to reflect the dawn. They are bright, while the level below is still in darkness. But soon the light, which at first illuminated only the loftiest eminences, descends on the plain, and penetrates to the deepest valley. First come hints, then fragments of systems, then defective systems, then complete and harmonious systems. The sound opinion, held for a time by one bold speculator, becomes the opinion of a small minority, of a strong minority, of a majority of mankind. Thus, the great progress goes on.
—Thomas Babington Macaulay, 1st Baron Macaulay
Topics: Progress
As in every human character so in every transaction there is a mixture of good and evil: a little exaggeration, a little suppression, a judicious use of epithets, a watchful and searching skepticism with respect to the evidence on one side, a convenient credulity with respect to every report or tradition on the other, may easily make a saint of Laud, or a tyrant of Henry the Fourth.
—Thomas Babington Macaulay, 1st Baron Macaulay
Topics: History
If any person had told the Parliament which met in terror and perplexity after the crash of 1720 that in 1830 the wealth of England would surpass all their wildest dreams, that the annual revenue would equal the principal of that debt which they considered an intolerable burden, that for one man of
—Thomas Babington Macaulay, 1st Baron Macaulay
Topics: Progress
Oh, wherefore come ye forth in triumph from the north, With your hands, and your feet, and your raiment all red? And wherefore doth your rout send forth a joyous shout? And whence be the grapes of the wine-press which ye tread?
—Thomas Babington Macaulay, 1st Baron Macaulay
Topics: Wine
The object of oratory alone in not truth, but persuasion.
—Thomas Babington Macaulay, 1st Baron Macaulay
Topics: Persuasion
He alone reads history aright, who, observing how powerfully circumstances influence the feelings and opinions of men, how often vices pass into virtues, and paradoxes into axioms, learns to distinguish what is accidental and transitory in human nature from what is essential and immutable.
—Thomas Babington Macaulay, 1st Baron Macaulay
Topics: History
A great writer is the friend and benefactor of his readers.
—Thomas Babington Macaulay, 1st Baron Macaulay
Those who seem to lead the public taste, are, in general, merely outrunning it in the direction it is spontaneously pursuing.
—Thomas Babington Macaulay, 1st Baron Macaulay
Topics: Fashion
Will without power is like children playing at soldiers.
—Thomas Babington Macaulay, 1st Baron Macaulay
Topics: One liners
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.
—Thomas Babington Macaulay, 1st Baron Macaulay
Topics: Education
Your Constitution is all sail and no anchor.
—Thomas Babington Macaulay, 1st Baron Macaulay
To punish a man because he has committed a crime, or because he is believed, though unjustly, to have committed a crime, is not persecution. 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.
—Thomas Babington Macaulay, 1st Baron Macaulay
Topics: Prejudice
A page digested is better than a volume hurriedly read.
—Thomas Babington Macaulay, 1st Baron Macaulay
Topics: Reading
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, 1st Baron Macaulay
Men are never so likely to settle a question rightly, as when they discuss it freely.
—Thomas Babington Macaulay, 1st Baron Macaulay
He was a rake among scholars, and a scholar among rakes.
—Thomas Babington Macaulay, 1st Baron Macaulay
The effect of violent dislike between groups has always created an indifference to the welfare and honor of the state.
—Thomas Babington Macaulay, 1st Baron Macaulay
Topics: Welfare, Conflict
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, 1st Baron Macaulay
Topics: History
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, 1st Baron Macaulay
Topics: Religion, Christians, Christianity
Many politicians lay 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 in the old story, who resolved not to go into the water till he had learned to swim.
—Thomas Babington Macaulay, 1st Baron Macaulay
Topics: Politics, Politicians, Freedom
Few of the many wise apothegms which have been uttered from the time of the seven sages of Greece to that of poor Richard, have prevented a single foolish action.
—Thomas Babington Macaulay, 1st Baron Macaulay
In Plato’s opinion, man was made for philosophy; in Bacon’s opinion, philosophy was made for man.
—Thomas Babington Macaulay, 1st Baron Macaulay
Topics: Philosophers, Philosophy, Science
The best portraits are those in which there is a slight mixture of caricature.
—Thomas Babington Macaulay, 1st Baron Macaulay
Topics: Painters, Painting, Art
The opinion of the great body of the reading public, is very materially influenced even by the unsupported assertions of those who assume a right to criticise.
—Thomas Babington Macaulay, 1st Baron Macaulay
Topics: Criticism
History has its foreground and its background, and it is principally in the management of its perspective that one artist differs from another. Some events must be represented on a large scale, others diminished; the great majority will be lost in the dimness of the horizon, and a general idea of their joint effect will be given by a few slight touches.
—Thomas Babington Macaulay, 1st Baron Macaulay
Topics: History
We know no spectacle so ridiculous as the British public in one of its periodic fits of morality.
—Thomas Babington Macaulay, 1st Baron Macaulay
Topics: Humanity, Britain
Men naturally sympathize with the calamities of individuals; but they are inclined to look on a fallen party with contempt rather than with pity.
—Thomas Babington Macaulay, 1st Baron Macaulay
Topics: Party
The English Bible: a book which, if everything else in our language should perish, would alone suffice to show the whole extent of its beauty and power.
—Thomas Babington Macaulay, 1st Baron Macaulay
Topics: Bible, Religion
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, 1st Baron Macaulay
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, 1st Baron Macaulay
Man is so inconsistent a creature that it is impossible to reason from his beliefs to his conduct, or from one part of his belief to another.
—Thomas Babington Macaulay, 1st Baron Macaulay
Topics: Beliefs