Quotes by Cobbett, William

"It is not the greatness of a man's means that makes him independent, so much as the smallness of his wants."

Cobbett, William on desire   

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"It is no small mischief to a boy, that many of the best years of his life should be devoted to the learning of what can never be of any real use to any human being. His mind is necessarily rendered frivolous and superficial by the long habit of attaching importance to words instead of things; to sound instead of sense."

Cobbett, William on education   

"Happiness, or misery, is in the mind. It is the mind that lives."

Cobbett, William on happiness   

"The very hirelings of the press, whose trade it is to buoy up the spirits of the people. have uttered falsehoods so long, they have played off so many tricks, that their budget seems, at last, to be quite empty."

Cobbett, William on media   

"It is by attempting to reach the top in a single leap that so much misery is produced in the world."

Cobbett, William on patience
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"To suppose such a thing possible as a society, in which men, who are able and willing to work, cannot support their families, and ought, with a great part of the women, to be compelled to lead a life of celibacy, for fear of having children to be starved; to suppose such a thing possible is monstrous."

Cobbett, William on poverty and the poor   

"Another great evil arising from this desire to be thought rich; or rather, from the desire not to be thought poor, is the destructive thing which has been honored by the name of speculation; but which ought to be called Gambling."

Cobbett, William on speculation   

"Perhaps there are none more lazy, or more truly ignorant, than your everlasting readers."

Cobbett, William on books - reading   

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"Nothing is so well calculated to produce a death-like torpor in the country as an extended system of taxation and a great national debt."

Cobbett, William on taxes and taxation   

"Women are a sisterhood. They make common cause in behalf of the sex; and, indeed, this is natural enough, when we consider the vast power that the law gives us over them."

Cobbett, William on women
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