199 Quotes by Thomas More

The magistrates never engage the people in unnecessary labour, since the chief end of the constitution is to regulate labour by the necessities of the public, and to allow the people as much time as is necessary for the improvement of their minds, in which they think the happiness of life consists.

No living creature is naturally greedy, except from fear of want – or in the case of human beings, from vanity, the notion that you’re better than people if you can display more superfluous property than they can.

When you give somebody your word, it is like taking your life and holding it in your hands. You are cupping your life in your hands when you are giving them your word. And should you let that word fall through, you will look down and not find yourself there.

The clod rejects as too difficult whatever isn’t cloddish.

It is the fear of want that makes any of the whole race of animals either greedy or ravenous but besides fear there is in man a pride that makes him fancy it a particular glory to excel others in pomp and excess but by the laws of the utopians there is no room for this.

Therefore I must say that, as I hope for mercy, I can have no other notion of all the other governments that I see or know, than that they are a conspiracy of the rich, who, on pretence of managing the public, only pursue their private ends, and devise all the ways and arts they can find out;.

You can get to the Underworld from anywhere.

For the Utopians were amazed that anyone can take delight in the transitory glitter of a tiny jewel or precious stone, when he is free to gaze at a star, or even at the sun itself.

I must say, extreme justice is an extreme injury: for we ought not to approve of those terrible laws that make the smallest offences capital, nor of that opinion of the Stoics that makes all crimes equal;.