William Cobbett

We want great alteration, but we want nothing new.

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.

I have always said, that, without commerce...this island could not possibly continue to be great...but, it is the system of rendering every thing commercial; of making merchants and bankers into Lords; of making a set of fund-dealers the …

The profession of arms is always the most honourable.

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.

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.

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 …

Marat was a chemist, Le Bon a lawyer, Collet d'Herbois a player, and not one of them a bull-baiter, I dare be sworn.

Men of integrity are generally pretty obstinate in adhering to an opinion once adopted.

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.

As to politics, we were like the rest of the country people in England; that is to say, we neither knew nor thought any thing about the matter.

All that I can boast of in my birth, is, that I was born in Old England.

After this, who will say that an Englishman ought not to despise “all the nations of Europe?” For my part I do, and that most “heartily.”

A man of all countries is a man of no country: and let all those citizens of the world remember, that he who has been a bad subject in his own country...will never be either trusted or respected.

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