Top 200 Edward Gibbon Quotes (2024 Update)
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101. “It was among the ruins of the capitol that I first conceived the idea of a work which has amused and exercised nearly twenty years of my life.”

— Edward Gibbon

102. “If this Punic war was carried on without any effusion of blood, it was owing much less to the moderation than to the weakness of the contending prelates.”

— Edward Gibbon

103. “There is nothing perhaps more adverse to nature and reason than to hold in obedience remote countries and foreign nations, in opposition to their inclination and interest.”

— Edward Gibbon

104. “Suspicious princes often promote the last of mankind, from a vain persuasion that those who have no dependence except on their favor will have no attachment except to the person of their benefactor.”

— Edward Gibbon

105. “But the wisdom and authority of the legislator are seldom victorious in a contest with the vigilant dexterity of private interest.”

— Edward Gibbon

106. “A state of skepticism and suspense may amuse a few inquisitive minds. But the practice of superstition is so congenial to the multitude that, if they are forcibly awakened, they still regret the loss of their pleasing vision.”

— Edward Gibbon

107. “To a philosophic eye, the vices of the clergy are far less dangerous than their virtues.”

— Edward Gibbon

108. “Philosophy, with the aid of experience, has at length banished the study of alchymy; and the present age, however desirous of riches, is content to seek them by the humbler means of commerce and industry.”

— Edward Gibbon

109. “As long as mankind shall continue to bestow more liberal applause on their destroyers than on their benefactors, the thirst of military glory will ever be the vice of the most exalted characters.”

— Edward Gibbon

110. “The separation of the Arabs from the rest of mankind has accustomed them to confound the ideas of stranger and enemy.”

— Edward Gibbon

111. “Constantinople was the principal seat and fortress of Arianism; and, in a long interval of forty years, the faith of the princes and prelates who reigned in the capital of the East was rejected in the purer schools of Rome and Alexandria.”

— Edward Gibbon

112. “Flattery is a foolish suicide; she destroys herself with her own hands.”

— Edward Gibbon

113. “A philosopher may deplore the eternal discords of the human race, but he will confess, that the desire of spoil is a more rational provocation than the vanity of conquest.”

— Edward Gibbon

114. “The principles of a free constitution are irrecoverably lost, when the legislative power is nominated by the executive.”

— Edward Gibbon

115. “Active valour may often be the present of nature; but such patient diligence can be the fruit only of habit and discipline.”

— Edward Gibbon

116. “On the approach of spring, I withdraw without reluctance from the noisy and extensive scene of crowds without company, and dissipation without pleasure.”

— Edward Gibbon

117. “As long as the same passions and interests subsist among mankind, the questions of war and peace, of justice and policy, which were debated in the councils of antiquity, will frequently present themselves as the subject of modern deliberation.”

— Edward Gibbon

118. “These idle disputants overlooked the invariable laws of nature, which have connected peace with innocence, plenty with industry, and safety with valour.”

— Edward Gibbon

119. “The forests and morasses of Germany were filled with a hardy race of barbarians, who despised life when it was separated from freedom;.”

— Edward Gibbon

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

— Edward Gibbon

121. “And thus toleration produced not only mutual indulgence, but even religious concord. The superstition of the people was not embittered theological rancor.”

— Edward Gibbon

122. “But the sages of Greece and Rome turned aside from the awful spectacle, and, pursuing the ordinary occupations of life and study, appeared unconscious of any alterations in the moral of physical government of the world.”

— Edward Gibbon

123. “Genius may anticipate the season of maturity; but in the education of a people, as in that of an individual, memory must be exercised, before the powers of reason and fancy can be expanded: nor may the artist hope to equal or surpass, till he has learned to imitate, the works of his predecessors.”

— Edward Gibbon

124. “The fabric of a mighty state, which has been reared by the labours of successive ages, could not be overturned by the misfortune of a single day, if the fatal power of the imagination did not exaggerate the real measure of the calamity.”

— Edward Gibbon

125. “Extreme distress, which unites the virtue of a free people, imbitters the factions of a declining monarchy.”

— Edward Gibbon

126. “The generality of princes, if they were stripped of their purple, and cast naked into the world, would immediately sink to the lowest rank of society, without a hope of emerging from their obscurity.”

— Edward Gibbon

127. “Agriculture is the foundation of manufactures;.”

— Edward Gibbon

128. “A Locrian, who proposed any new law, stood forth in the assembly of the people with a cord round his neck, and if the law was rejected, the innovator was instantly strangled.”

— Edward Gibbon

129. “It was scarcely possible that the eyes of contemporaries should discover in the public felicity the latent causes of decay and corruption. This long peace, and the uniform government of the Romans, introduced a slow and secret poison into the vitals of the empire. The minds of men were gradually reduced to the same level, the fire of genius was extinguished, and even the military spirit evaporated.”

— Edward Gibbon

130. “It has been calculated by the ablest politicians that no State, without being soon exhausted, can maintain above the hundredth part of its members in arms and idleness.”

— Edward Gibbon

131. “Once the monarchy was abolished, a decree was passed that there would be no more kings in Rome.”

— Edward Gibbon

132. “The urgent consideration of the public safety may undoubtedly authorize the violation of every positive law. How far that or any other consideration may operate to dissolve the natural obligations of humanity and justice, is a doctrine of which I still desire to remain ignorant.”

— Edward Gibbon

133. “Where the subject lies so far beyond our reach, the difference between the highest and the lowest of human understandings may indeed be calculated as infinitely small; yet the degree of weakness may perhaps be measured by the degree of obstinacy and dogmatic confidence.”

— Edward Gibbon

134. “The authority of Plato and Aristotle, of Zeno and Epicurus, still reigned in the schools; and their systems, transmitted with blind deference from one generation of disciples to another, precluded every generous attempt to exercise the powers, or enlarge the limits, of the human mind.”

— Edward Gibbon

135. “The awful mysteries of the Christian faith and worship were concealed from the eyes of strangers, and even of catechumens, with an affected secrecy, which served to excite their wonder and curiosity.”

— Edward Gibbon

136. “There exists in human nature a strong propensity to depreciate the advantages, and to magnify the evils, of the present times.”

— Edward Gibbon

137. “The great work of Gibbon is indispensable to the student of history. The literature of Europe offers no substitute for “The.”

— Edward Gibbon

138. “When Julian ascended the throne, he declared his impatience to embrace and reward the Syrian sophist, who had preserved, in a degenerate age, the Grecian purity of taste, of manners and of religion. The emperor’s prepossession was increased and justified by the discreet pride of his favourite.”

— Edward Gibbon

139. “Their poverty secured their freedom, since our desires and our possessions are the strongest fetters of despotism.”

— Edward Gibbon

140. “The author himself is the best judge of his own performance; none has so deeply meditated on the subject; none is so sincerely interested in the event.”

— Edward Gibbon

141. “A reformer should be exempt from the suspicion of interest, and he must possess the confidence and esteem of those whom he proposes to reclaim.”

— Edward Gibbon

142. “At that time the archiepiscopal throne of Alexandria was filled by Theophilus, the perpetual enemy of peace and virtue; a bold, bad man, whose hands were alternately polluted with gold and with blood.”

— Edward Gibbon

143. “A warlike nation like the Germans, without either cities, letters, arts, or money, found some compensation for this savage state in the enjoyment of liberty. Their poverty secured their freedom, since our desires and our possessions are the strongest fetters of despotism.”

— Edward Gibbon

144. “So natural to man is the practice of violence that our indulgence allows the slightest provocation, the most disputable right, as a sufficient ground of national hostility.”

— Edward Gibbon

145. “The historian must have some conception of how men who are not historians behave.”

— Edward Gibbon

146. “In the field of controversy I always pity the moderate party, who stand on the open middle ground exposed to the fire of both sides.”

— Edward Gibbon

147. “The most distinguished merit of those two officers was their respective prowess, of the one in the combats of Bacchus, of the other in those of Venus.”

— Edward Gibbon

148. “Since the primitive times, the wealth of the popes was exposed to envy, their powers to opposition, and their persons to violence.”

— Edward Gibbon

149. “The voice of history is often little more than the organ of hatred or flattery.”

— Edward Gibbon

150. “The narrow policy of preserving, without any foreign mixture, the pure blood of the ancient citizens, had checked the fortune, and hastened the ruin, of Athens and Sparta. The aspiring genius of Rome sacrificed vanity to ambition, and deemed it more prudent, as well as honorable, to adopt virtue and merit for her own wheresoever they were found, among slaves or strangers, enemies or barbarians.”

— Edward Gibbon