87 quotes
History provides neither compensation for suffering nor penalties for wrong.
History is not a web woven with innocent hands. Among all the causes which degrade and demoralize men, power is the most constant and the most active.
No obstacle has been so constant, or so difficult to overcome, as uncertainty and confusion touching the nature of true liberty.
The History of Freedom in Antiquity (1877)
Patriotism is in political life what faith is in religion, and it stands to the domestic feelings and to home-sickness as faith to fanaticism and to superstition.
Nationality (1862)
We must not pursue science for ends independent of science. It must be pursued for its own sake, and must lead to its own results.
Private journal (1858)
A government which cannot be reformed does not merit to be preserved.
A generous spirit prefers that his country should be poor, and weak, and of no account, but free, rather than powerful, prosperous, and enslaved.
The History of Freedom in Antiquity (1877)
I do think that, of the three greatest Liberals, Burke is equally good in speaking and writing; Macaulay better in writing, and Mr. Gladstone better in speaking.
Constantine declared his own will equivalent to a canon of the Church … the empire employed its refined civilization …to make the Church serve as a gilded crutch of absolutism.
The Protestants never occupied a more triumphant position, and their prospects were never brighter, than in the summer of 1572.
The Massacre Of St. Bartholomew (1869)
I have reached the end of my time, and have hardly come to the beginning of my task.
The History of Freedom in Christianity (1877)
The principles which discriminate in politics between good and evil, and make states worthy to last, were not yet found.
The History of Freedom in Christianity (1877)
Liberty is the prevention of control by others. This requires self-control and, therefore, religious and spiritual influences; education, knowledge, well-being.
Faith in Freedom : Libertarian Principles and Psychiatric Practices (2004)
The danger is not that a particular class is unfit to govern. Every class is unfit to govern. The law of liberty tends to abolish the reign of race over race, of faith over faith, of class over class.
Letter to Mary Gladstone (1881)
What one hears in Ranke. The whisper of statecraft. Not the tramp of democracy's earthquake feet. Not the dull roar of surging opinion.
Reformation. Scotland is the only kingdom in which the change was accomplished in spite of the crown. Ireland the only country where it was prevented in spite of the crown.
The one pervading evil of democracy is the tyranny of the majority, or rather of that party, not always the majority, that succeeds, by force or fraud, in carrying elections.
Review of Democracy in Europe (1878)
In Italy, where the life of a heretic was cheap, their wholesale destruction was confessed a highly politic and ingenious act.
The Massacre Of St. Bartholomew (1869)
The man who prefers his country before every other duty shows the same spirit as the man who surrenders every right to the State. They both deny that right is superior to authority.
Nationality (1862)
Judge not according to the orthodox standard of a system religious, philosophical, political, but according as things promote, or fail to promote the delicacy, integrity, and authority of Conscience.