Thomas Babington Macaulay Quotes
A church is disaffected when it is persecuted, quiet when it is tolerated, and actively loyal when it is favored and cherished.
Macaulay, Thomas Babington. The History of England from the Accession of James the Second. Vol. 3, Longman, Brown, Green, and Longmans, 1855, p. 550.
In one of the historical ironies of the 12th century, a Christian sect preferred the rule of the Muslims than their Christian brethren—on the grounds of religious tolerance. It illustrates the changes that take place over time. By the 21st century, it was the Christians who were thought of as tolerant and the Muslims as the opposite.
He is a Greek Orthodox Christian, and he correctly observes that the Islamic world was considerably more tolerant than the Christian until the 18th century when Islam had become less tolerant in the Middle East while the Christians were modernizing and going through a cultural and intellectual enlightenment and societal modernization while the Muslims, became less tolerant than they were in earlier years leading to the modern situation.
Thomas Babington Macaulay, 1st Baron Macaulay, FRS FRSE PC was a British historian and Whig politician. He wrote extensively as an essayist, on contemporary and historical sociopolitical subjects, and as a reviewer. His The History of England was a seminal and paradigmatic example of Whig historiography, and its literary style has remained an object of praise since its publication, including subsequent to the widespread condemnation of its historical contentions which became popular in the 20th century.