And to say that society ought to be governed by the opinion of the wisest and best, though true, is useless. Whose opinion is to decide who are the wisest and best?
Interpretation
This quote highlights the challenge of determining who should be considered the wisest and best to govern society, making the concept of wise governance complex.
Thomas B. Macaulay's quote reflects on the paradox of relying on the wisdom of the best individuals for societal governance. While it seems logical to trust the insights of the most knowledgeable and moral leaders, the real issue arises in identifying who qualifies as 'the wisest and best.' This ambiguity complicates the notion of what constitutes effective and just leadership, as it prompts questions about biases and subjective judgments inherent in such evaluations.
In practice
This quote can be used during a debate on leadership qualifications.
None of the modes by which a magistrate is appointed, popular election, the accident of the lot, or the accident of birth, affords, as far as we can perceive, much security for his being wiser than any of his neighbours. The chance of his being wiser than all his neighbours together is still smaller.
Your Constitution is all sail and no anchor.
I wish I was as sure of anything as he is of everything.
To punish a man because he has committed a crime, or because he is believed, though unjustly, to have committed a crime, is not persecution. To punish a man, because we infer from the nature of some doctrine which he holds, or from the conduct of other persons who hold the same doctrines with him, that he will commit a crime, is persecution, and is, in every case, foolish and wicked.
Mere negation, mere Epicurean infidelity, as Lord Bacon most justly observes, has never disturbed the peace of the world. It furnishes no motive for action; it inspires no enthusiasm; it has no missionaries, no crusades, no martyrs.
What a blessing it is to love books as I love them;- to be able to converse with the dead, and to live amidst the unreal!
To what expedient then shall we finally resort, for maintaining in practice the necessary partition of power among the several departments, as laid down in the constitution? The only answer that can be given is, that as all these exterior provisions are found to be inadequate, the defect must be supplied, by so contriving the interior structure of the government, as that its several constituent parts may, by their mutual relations, be the means of keeping each other in their proper places.
I surrendered my beliefs and found myself at the tree of life injecting my story into the veins of leaves only to find that stories like forests are subject to seasons
A man has no religion who has not slowly and painfully gathered one together, adding to it, shaping it; and one's religion is never complete and final, it seems, but must always be undergoing modification.
Live for this life as though you live in it forever and live for the life to come as though you die tomorrow.
The world will not be destroyed by those who do evil, but by those who watch them without doing anything.
The observations and encounters of a devotee of solitude and silence are at once less distinct and more penetrating than those of the sociable man; his thoughts are weightier, stranger, and never without a tinge of sadness. Images and perceptions which might otherwise be easily dispelled by a glance, a laugh, an exchange of comments, concern him unduly, they sink into mute depths, take on significance, become experiences, adventures, emotions.
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