Thomas Babington Macaulay Quotes

Nothing can be more hateful than the uncharitableness of the Puritans, who condemn … to eternal torments, even the most inoffensive proselytes to popery.

Prisons are built with stones of Law, brothels with bricks of Religion.

Wild animals never kill for sport. Man is the only one to whom the torture and death of his fellow creatures is amusing in itself.

This people [the Puritans], who in England could not bear being chastised with rods, had no sooner got free from their fetters than they scourged their fellow refugees [Quakers] with scorpions; though the absurdity, as well as the injustice of such a proceeding in them might stare them in the face!

Cram as much pleasure as you can into life, and rail against the pain that you have to suffer as a result.

Growing up, the two things that made my blood boil were religious intolerance and animal cruelty. I’ve never understood it. I can’t stand to have an animal in pain.

'Tis very strange Men should be so fond of being thought wickeder than they are.

Human beings are members of a whole, In creation of one essence and soul. If one member is afflicted with pain, Other members uneasy will remain. If you have no sympathy for human pain, The name of human you cannot retain.

Women to govern men, slaves freemen, are much in the same degree; all being total violations and perversions of the laws of nature and nations.

For sheer cruelty our old Puritan ancestors can hardly be beaten.

The typical Westerner wishes to be the cause of as many changes as possible in his environment; the typical Chinaman wishes to enjoy as much and as delicately as possible.

'The Puritan's idea of hell is a place where everybody has to mind his own business.

Man’s inhumanity to man Makes countless thousands mourn!

Hypocrisy is the universal solvent of social relations.

I suppose that's why we watch dramas: to see the stuff that in real life you'd end up in prison for.

Pleasure can be used to enslave a people just as effectively as pain.

Power is pleasure; and pleasure sweetens pain.

I enter a whorehouse with the same interest as I do the British museum or the Metropolitan - in the same spirit of curiosity. Here are the works of man, here is an art of man, here is the eternal pursuit of gold and pleasure. I couldn't be more sincere. This doesn't mean that if I go to La Scala in Milan to hear Carmen I want to get up on the stage and participate. I do not. Neither do I always participate in a fine representative national whorehouse - but I must see it as a spectacle, an offering, a symptom of a nation.

Are these things good for any other reason except that they end in pleasure, and get rid of and avert pain? Are you looking to any other standard but pleasure and pain when you call them good?

Sometimes it is harder to deprive oneself of a pain than of a pleasure.

You know, we all oppose animal cruelty. But sometimes we forget that animals on farms suffer and feel pain like all other animals. They, too, deserve to be protected from harm and cruelty.

This is the tendency of all living things: to avoid pain and to cling to pleasure.

Men may scoff, and men may pray, But they pay Every pleasure with a pain.

You, and those like you, take your fill of pleasure on earth by making the life of such as me bitter and black with sorrow; and then it is a fine thing, when you have had enough of that, to think of securing your pleasure in heaven by becoming converted!