34 quotes
Another great evil arising from this desire to be thought rich; or rather, from the desire not to be thought poor, is the destructive thing which has been honoured by the name of “speculation”; but which ought to be called Gambling.
Advice to Young Men (1829)
Nouns of number, or multitude, such as Mob, Parliament, Rabble, House of Commons, Regiment, Court of King's Bench, Den of Thieves, and the like.
A Grammar of the English Language (1818)
Marat was a chemist, Le Bon a lawyer, Collet d'Herbois a player, and not one of them a bull-baiter, I dare be sworn.
Grammar, perfectly understood, enables us, not only to express our meaning fully and clearly, but so to express it as to enable us to defy the ingenuity of man to give to our words any other meaning than that which we ourselves intend them to express.
A Grammar of the English Language (1818)
I was a countryman and a father before I was a writer on political subjects.... Born and bred up in the sweet air myself, I was resolved that [my children] should be bred up in it too.
The Autobiography of William Cobbett (1833)
[T]he very best and most virtuous of all mankind, the agricultural labourers of this land, so favoured by God Almighty, and for so many ages the freest and happiest country in the world!
The ancient nobility and gentry of the kingdom...have been thrust out of all public employment...a race of merchants, and manufacturers and bankers and loan-jobbers and contractors have usurped their place.
The very hirelings of the press, whose trade it is to buoy up the spirits of the people … have uttered falsehoods so long, they have played off so many tricks, that their budget seems, at last, to be quite empty.
I...had strong feelings excited in my mind against Scotland generally (always expressly making great exceptions) by observing that the scoundrelly “feelosofers”, who preached up a doctrine, tending to cause the people of England to be treated like cattle.
It is no small mischief to a boy, that many of the best years of his life should be devoted to the learning of what can never be of any real use to any human being. His mind is necessarily rendered frivolous and superficial by the long habit of attaching importance to words instead of things; to sound instead of sense.
I say...upon this point, what JUDGE BLACKSTONE says; and that is, that the right to resist oppression always exists, but that those who compose the nation at any given time must be left to judge for themselves when oppression has arrived at a pitch to justify the exercise of such right.
If all men were upon an equality in point of means, England would become what the wilds of America are, inhabited by wild men; nobody would work except just to provide food and raiment for the day; and our country would become the most beggarly upon the earth, instead of being what it formerly was (and I hope and trust will be again) the pride of its people and the envy of the world.
When, from the top of any high hill, one looks round the country, and sees the multitude of regularly distributed spires, one not only ceases to wonder that order and religion are maintained, but one is astonished that any such thing as disaffection or irreligion should prevail.
I set out as a sort of self-dependent politician. My opinions were my own. I dashed at all prejudices. I scorned to follow anybody in matter of opinion.... All were, therefore, offended at my presumption, as they deemed it.