436 Quotes by Edward Gibbon

It was an inflexible maxim of Roman discipline that good soldier should dread his own officers far more than the enemy.

I have somewhere heard or read the frank confession of a Benedictine abbot: “My vow of poverty has given me a hundred thousand crowns a year; my vow of obedience has raised me to the rank of a sovereign prince.” – I forget the consequences of his vow of chastity.

It is easy for faction and calumny to shed their poison on the administration of the best of princes, and to accuse even their virtues, by artfully confounding them with those vices to which they bear the nearest affinity.

Too idle to work, too proud to beg, the mercenaries were accustomed to a life of rapine: they could rob with more dignity and effect under a banner and a chief; and the sovereign, to whom their service was useless, and their presence importunate, endeavored to discharge the torrent on some neighboring countries.

The best and most important part of every man’s education is that which he gives himself.

...the temper of soldiers, habituated at once to violence and to slavery, renders them very unfit guardians of a legal or even a civil constitution. Justice, humanity, or political wisdom, are qualities they are too little acquainted with in themselves to appreciate them in others.

The winds and waves are always on the side of the ablest navigators.

Religion is regarded by the common people as true, by the wise as false, and by the rulers as useful.

All taxes must, at last, fall upon agriculture.