Thomas Babington Macaulay Quotes
Knowledge advances by steps, and not by leaps.
1st Baron Macaulay
Thomas Babington Macaulay, 1800-1859, British Historian & Secretary of War (Liberal), Member of Parliament, Essays and Biographies, “History,” Edinburgh Review
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By “arts” Jefferson meant the mechanical arts—inventions and engineering. Jefferson Extrapolated the science and technology progress at the time to the future in a way that few others did at that time.
Sir Humphry was a religious man, and yet he focused on one of the great differences between science and religion. The latter is presumed true and eternal by its faithful, while science is never such. No truth is eternal in science and rarely does a scientific “truth” last 100 years without modification, elaboration or additional complexity. This is one of the reasons that scientists make poor witnesses at Congressional hearings. They are never certain of anything if they are good scientists. Witnesses from other fields testify with much more certainty as they are motivated by self interest or ideology where doubt is unacceptable.
This was published just after his death.
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.
