James Mackintosh Quotes

Men are never so good or so bad as their opinions.

A vice utterly at variance with the happiness of him who harbors it, and, as such, condemned by self-love.

The wealth of society is its stock of productive labor.

The powers of a man's mind are directly proportional to the quantity of coffee he drank.

The feminine graces of Madame de Sevigne's genius are exquisitely charming; but the philosophy and eloquence of Madame de Stael are above the distinction of sex.

Every fiction since Homer has taught friendship, patriotism, generosity, contempt of death. These are the highest virtues; and the fictions which taught them were therefore of the highest, though not of unmixed, utility.

Diffused knowledge immortalizes itself.

The Commons, faithful to their system, remained in a wise and masterly inactivity.

The frivolous work of polished idleness.

Those who preached faith, or in other words a pure mind, have always produced more popular virtue than those who preached good acts, or the mere regulation of outward works.

Praise is the symbol which represents sympathy, and which the mind insensibly substitutes for its recollection and language.

Whatever is popular deserves attention.

It is right to be content with what we have, never with what we are.

It is not because we have been free, but because we have a right to be free, that we ought to demand freedom. Justice and liberty have neither birth nor race, youth nor age.

Maxims are the condensed good sense of nations.