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Finally, under which of the old tyrannical governments of Europe is every sixth man a slave, whom his fellow-creatures may buy and sell and torture?

— Sydney Smith

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Source and credibility

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Source: Referring to the lack of established culture and the established institution of slavery in the United States, in "Review of Seybert's Annals of the United States", The Edinburgh Review (1820), pp. 79-80
Source quality: Precise citation Points to a specific work with a page, chapter, date or similar locator, so you can look it up.

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Economy, in the estimation of common minds, often means the absence of all taste and comfort.

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Life is to be fortified by many friendships. To love, and to be loved, is the greatest happiness of existence.

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The Smiths never had any arms, and have invariably sealed their letters with their thumbs.

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It requires a surgical operation to get a joke well into a Scotch understanding.

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You find people ready enough to do the Samaritan, without the oil and twopence.

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Never give way to melancholy; resist it steadily, for the habit will encroach.

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As the French say, there are three sexes — men, women, and clergymen.

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Avoid shame, but do not seek glory: nothing so expensive as glory.

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Topics

Government

More quotes by Sydney Smith

It is the greatest of all mistakes to do nothing because you can only do little.

Elementary Sketches of Moral Philosophy (1849)

Let onion atoms lurk within the bowl
And, scarce suspected, animate the whole.

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Great men hallow a whole people and lift up all who live in their time.

The object of preaching is, constantly to remind mankind of what mankind are constantly forgetting; not to supply the defects of human intelligence, but to fortify the feebleness of human resolutions.

It is always right that a man should be able to render a reason for the faith that is within him.

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Ill can he rule the great, that cannot reach the small.

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The essence of Government is power; and power, lodged as it must be in human hands, will ever be liable to abuse.

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Bureaucracy and social harmony are inversely proportional to each other.

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There is danger from all men. The only maxim of a free government ought to be to trust no man living with power to endanger the public liberty.

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Attribution

Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: Sydney Smith (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.