Cobbett Quotes & Sayings

From a very early age I had imbibed the opinion that it was every man's duty to do all that lay in his power to leave his country as good as he had found it. — William Cobbett

Sit down to write what you have thought, and not to think about what you shall write. — William Cobbett

Without bread all is misery. — William Cobbett

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. — William Cobbett

But I do not remember ever having seen a newspaper in the house; and, most certainly, that privation did not render us less industrious, happy, or free. — William Cobbett

Men of integrity are generally pretty obstinate, in adhering to an opinion once adopted. — William Cobbett

But what is to be the fate of the great wen of all? The monster, called, by the silly coxcombs of the press, "the metropolis of the empire"? — William Cobbett

I defy you to agitate any fellow with a full stomach. — William Cobbett

Never esteem men on account of their riches or their station. Respect goodness, find it where you may. — William Cobbett

Men fail much oftener from want of perseverance than from want of talent. — William Cobbett

However roguish a man may be, he always loves to deal with an honest man. — William Cobbett

Good government is known from bad government by this infallible test: that under the former the labouring people are well fed and well clothed, and under the latter, they are badly fed and badly clothed. — William Cobbett

I set out as a sort of self-dependent politician. My opinions were my own. I dashed at all prejudices. I scorned to follow anybodyin matter of opinion ... All were, therefore, offended at my presumption, as they deemed it. — William Cobbett

A full belly to the labourer was, in my opinion, the foundation of public morals and the only source of real public peace. — William Cobbett

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. — William Cobbett

Happiness, or misery, is in the mind. It is the mind that lives. — William Cobbett

The truth is that the fall of Napoleon is the hardest blow that our taxing system ever felt. It is now impossible to make people believe that immense fleets and armies are necessary. — William Cobbett

WESTBURY, a nasty odious rotten-borough, a really rotten place. — William Cobbett

I cannot ... perceive any ground for hoping that any practical good would, while the funding system exists in its present extent, result from the adoption of any of those projects, which have professed to have in view what is called Parliamentary Reform ... when the funding system, from whatever cause, shall cease to operate upon civil and political liberty, there will be no need of projects for parliamentary reform. The parliament will, as far as shall be necessary, then reform itself. — William Cobbett

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

Free yourself from the slavery of tea and coffee and other slop kettles! — William Cobbett

Dancing is at once rational & healthful: it gives animal spirits; it is the natural amusement of young people, & such it has been from the days of Moses. — William Cobbett

DEAL is a most villainous place. It is full of filthy-looking people.Great desolationof abomination has beengoing on here. — William Cobbett

It is by attempting to reach the top at a single leap that so much misery is caused in the world. — William Cobbett

Be you in what line of life you may, it will be amongst your misfortunes if you have not time properly to attend to [money management]; for ... want of attention to pecuniary matters ... has impeded the progress of science and of genius itself. — William Cobbett

I agree with the late William Cobbett about picking a wife. See that she chews her food well and sets her foot down firmly on the ground when she walks, and you're all right. Selina Goby was all right in both these respects, which was one reason for marrying her. I had another reason, likewise, entirely of my own discovering. Selina, being a single woman, made me pay so much a week for her board and services. Selina, being my wife, couldn't charge for her board, and would have to give me her services for nothing. That was the point of view I looked at it from. Economy - with a dash of love. — Wilkie Collins

All Middlesex is ugly, notwithstanding the millions upon millionswhichit iscontinuallysucking up fromtherestof the kingdom. — William Cobbett

You may twist the word freedom as long as you please, but at last it comes to quiet enjoyment of your own property, or it comes to nothing. Why do men want any of those things that are called political rights and privileges? Why do they, for instance, want to vote at elections for members of parliament? Oh! Because they shall then have an influence over the conduct of those members. And of what use is that? Oh! Then they will prevent the members from doing wrong. — William Cobbett

The Christian religion, then, is not an affair of preaching, or prating, or ranting, but of taking care of the bodies as well as the souls of people; not an affair of belief and of faith and of professions, but an affair of doing good, and especially to those who are in want; not an affair of fire and brimstone, but an affair of bacon and bread, beer and a bed. — William Cobbett

Grammar, perfectly understood, enables us not only to express our meaning fully and clearly, but so to express it as to enable us to defy the ingenuity of man to give to our words any other meaning than that which we ourselves intend them to express. — William Cobbett

I view tea drinking as a destroyer of health, an enfeebler of the frame, an en-genderer of effeminancy and laziness, a debaucher of youth and maker of misery for old age. Thus he makes that miserable progress towards that death which he finds ten or fifteen years sooner than he would have found it if he had made his wife brew beer instead of making tea. — William Cobbett

The town of GUILDFORD, which (taken with its environs) I, who have seen so many, many towns, think the prettiest, and, taken all together, the most agreeable and most happy-looking, that I ever saw in my life. — William Cobbett

It was the task of industrial society to destroy all of that. All that "community" implies -- self-sufficiency, mutual aid, morality in the marketplace, stubborn tradition, regulation by custom, organic knowledge instead of mechanistic science -- had to be steadily and systematically disrupted and displaced. All of the practices that kept the individual from being a consumer had to be done away with so that the cogs and wheels of an unfettered machine called "the economy" could operate without interference, influenced merely by invisible hands and inevitable balances and all the rest of that benevolent free-market system guided by what Cobbett called, his lip curled toward Hume and James Steuart and Adam Smith, "Scotch Feelosophy. — Kirkpatrick Sale

Learning consists of ideas, and not of the noise that is made by the mouth. — William Cobbett

The ancient nobility and gentry of the kingdom ... have been thrust out of all public employment ... a race of merchants, and manufacturers and bankers and loan-jobbers and contractors have usurped their place. — William Cobbett

Protestations of impartiality I shall make none. Theyare always useless and are besides perfect nonsense, when used bya news-monger. — William Cobbett

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. — William Cobbett

Please your eye and plague your heart. — William Cobbett

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. — William Cobbett

The Norfolk people are quick and smart in their motions and their speaking. Very neat and trim in all their farming concerns and very skilful. Their land is good, their roads are level, and the bottom of their soil is dry, to be sure; and these are great advantages; but they are diligent and make the most of everything. — William Cobbett

You never know what you can do till you try. — William Cobbett

Poverty is, except where there is an actual want of food and raiment, a thing much more imaginary than real. The shame of poverty
the shame of being thought poor
it is a great and fatal weakness, though arising in this country, from the fashion of the times themselves. — William Cobbett

All my plans in private life; all my pursuits; all my designs, wishes, and thoughts, have this one great object in view: the overthrow of the ruffian Boroughmongers . If I write grammars; if I write on agriculture; if I sow, plant, or deal in seeds; whatever I do has first in view the destruction of those infamous tyrants. — William Cobbett

Having still in my recollection so many excellent men, to whose grandfathers, upon the same spots, my grandfather had yielded cheerful obedience and reverence, it is not without sincere sorrow that I have beheld many of the sons of these men driven from their fathers' mansions, or holding them as little better than tenants or stewards, while the swarms of Placemen, Pensioners, Contractors, and Nabobs ... have usurped a large part of the soil. — William Cobbett

Norwich is a very fine city, and the castle, which stands in the middle of it, on a hill, is truly majestic. — William Cobbett

The smallness of our desires may contribute reasonably to our wealth. — William Cobbett

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. — William Cobbett

Praise the child, and you make love to the mother. — William Cobbett

Freedom is not an empty sound; it is not an abstract idea; it is not a thing that nobody can feel. It means, - and it means nothing else, - the full and quiet enjoyment of your own property. If you have not this, if this be not well secured to you, you may call yourself what you will, but you are a slave. — William Cobbett

If the people of Sheffield could only receive a tenth part of what their knives sell for by retail in America, Sheffield might pave its streets with silver. — William Cobbett

I never saw the face of Cobbett ... I should not know him if I met him in my porridge dish. — John Adams

Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, and Canada are the horns, the head, the neck, the shins, and the hoof of the ox, and the United States are the ribs, the sirloin, the kidneys, and the rest of the body. — William Cobbett

I was a countryman and a father before I was a writer on political subjects ... Born and bred up in the sweet air myself, I was resolved that [my children] should be bred up in it too. — William Cobbett

A couple of flitches of bacon are worth fifty thousand Methodist sermons and religious tracts. They are great softeners of temper and promoters of domestic harmony. — William Cobbett

When, from the top of any high hill, one looks round the country, and sees the multitude of regularly distributed spires, one not only ceases to wonder that order and religion are maintained, but one is astonished that any such thing as disaffection or irreligion should prevail. — William Cobbett

Give me, Lord, neither poverty nor riches. — William Cobbett

The tendency of taxation is to create a class of persons who do not labor, to take from those who do labor the produce of that labor, and to give it to those who do not labor. — William Cobbett

The power which money gives is that of brute force; it is the power of the bludgeon and the bayonet. — William Cobbett

Here is a quote I used to post on the chalkboard once and a while for my students:

Education is not going to fall out of a tree and bonk you on the head -like an apple- you have to dig for it, much like digging for Gold... — Miles Cobbett

He who writes badly thinks badly — William Cobbett

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. — William Cobbett

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

To be poor and independent is very nearly an impossibility. — William Cobbett