Top 140 Thomas More Quotes (2025 Update)
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101. “The most part of all princes have more delight in warlike manners and feats of chivalry than in the good feats of peace.”

— Thomas More

102. “The servant may not look to be in better case than his master.”

— Thomas More

103. “Consider any year, that has been so unfruitful that many thousands have died of hunger; and yet if, at the end of that year, a survey was made of the granaries of all the rich men that have hoarded up the corn, it would be found that there was enough among them to have prevented all that consumption.”

— Thomas More

104. “The same trade generally passes down from father to son, inclinations often following descent: but if any man’s genius lies another way he is, by adoption, translated into a family that deals in the trade to which he is inclined;.”

— Thomas More

105. “Isn’t this conception of absolute justice absolutely unjust?”

— Thomas More

106. “Laws could be passed to keep the leader of a government from getting too much power.”

— Thomas More

107. “If it be a point of humanity for man to bring health and comfort to man, and especially to mitigate and assuage the grief of others, and by taking from them the sorrow and heaviness of life to restore them to joy, that is to say, to pleasure, why may it not then be said that nature does provoke every man to do the same to himself?”

— Thomas More

108. “Human nature constitutes a treaty in itself, and human beings are far more effectively united by kindness than by contracts, by feelings than by words.”

— Thomas More

109. “Why, even poverty itself, the one problem that has always seemed to need money for its solution, would promptly disappear if money ceased to exist.”

— Thomas More

110. “And peradventure we have more cause to thank Him for our loss than for our winning; for His wisdom better seeth what is good for us than we do ourselves.”

— Thomas More

111. “Every man has by the law of nature a right to such a waste portion of the earth as is necessary for his subsistence.”

— Thomas More

112. “Who does more earnestly long for a change than he who is uneasy in his present circumstances? And who run to create confusions with so desperate a boldness as those who have nothing to lose, hope to gain by them?”

— Thomas More

113. “I prefer to be honest rather than clever.”

— Thomas More

114. “To love God, which was a thing far excelling all the cunning that is possible for us in this life to obtain.”

— Thomas More

115. “It seems to me a very unjust thing to take away a man’s life for a little money, for nothing in the world can be of equal value with a man’s life:.”

— Thomas More

116. “There’s nothing majestic about ruling a nation of beggars – true majesty consists in governing the rich and prosperous. That’s what that admirable character Fabricius meant when he said he’d rather govern rich men than be one. Certainly a man who enjoys a life of luxury while everyone else is moaning and groaning around him can hardly be called a king – he is more like a gaoler.”

— Thomas More

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

— Thomas More

118. “But as to the question, ‘What more convenient way of punishment can be found?’ I think it much easier to find out that than to invent anything that is worse; why.”

— Thomas More

119. “You are not obliged to assault people with discourses that are out of their road, when you see that their received notions must prevent your making an impression upon them: you ought rather to cast about and to manage things with all the dexterity in your power, so that, if you are not able to make them go well, they may be as little ill as possible; for, except all men were good, everything cannot be right, and that is a blessing that I do not at present hope to see.”

— Thomas More

120. “A sensible person, they say, prefers keeping well to taking medicine, and would rather feel cheerful than have people trying to comfort him.”

— Thomas More

121. “It was evidently quite obvious to a powerful intellect like his that the one essential condition for a healthy society was equal distribution of goods – which I suspect is impossible under capitalism. For, when everyone’s entitled to get as much for himself as he can, all available property, however much there is of it, is bound to fall into the hands of a small minority, which means that everyone else is poor.”

— Thomas More

122. “No more like together than is chalke to coles.”

— Thomas More

123. “You can get to the Underworld from anywhere.”

— Thomas More

124. “Plato judged right, that except kings themselves became philosophers, they who from their childhood are corrupted with false notions would never fall in entirely with the counsels of philosophers, and this he himself found to be true in the person of Dionysius.”

— Thomas More

125. “What’s medicine for some people is poison for others – because you can never pay Paul without robbing Peter.”

— Thomas More

126. “Don’t give up the ship in a storm because you cannot hold back the winds.”

— Thomas More

127. “For it is too extreme and cruel a punishment for theft, and yet not sufficient to restrain men from theft. For simple theft is not so great an offense that it ought to be punished with death. Neither is there any punishment that is so horrible that it can keep men from stealing who have no other craft whereby to get their living.”

— Thomas More

128. “These ensure that they value life too much to throw it recklessly away, but not enough to cling on to it in a mean and cowardly manner, when it’s their duty to give it up.”

— Thomas More

129. “It is naturally given to all men to esteem their own inventions best. So both the raven and the ape think their own young ones fairest.”

— Thomas More

130. “The most part of all be unlearned, and a great number hath learning in contempt.”

— Thomas More

131. “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.”

— Thomas More

132. “The change of the word,” said he, “does not alter the matter.”

— Thomas More

133. “The Utopians wonder that any man should be so enamoured of the lustre of a jewel, when he can behold a star or the sun.”

— Thomas More

134. “Fear of want, no doubt, makes every living creature greedy and rapacious, and man, besides, develops these qualities out of sheer pride, which glories in getting ahead of others by a superfluous display of possessions.”

— Thomas More

135. “Their idea of quitting themselves like men is to achieve victory by means of something which only man possessed, that is, by the power of the intellect. They say any animal can fight with its body – bears, lions, boars, wolves, dogs can all do it, and most of them are stronger and fiercer than we are – but what raises us above them is our reason and intelligence.”

— Thomas More

136. “If we Americans hate injustice and inequality as passionately as we say we do, would any person in this country lack enough to eat? We demand a rebellious spirit of those who have no chance to learn that rebellion is possible, but we the privileged hold still and see no evil. We.”

— Thomas More

137. “It’s better to have enough of what we really need than an abundance of superfluities.”

— Thomas More

138. “Be angry, but sin not.”

— Thomas More

139. “There’s almost no place where you won’t find Scyllas, ravening Celaenos, man-eating Laestrygones and such-like horrors,8 but wise and well-instructed.”

— Thomas More

140. “He had, with great cost, acquired a vast stock of wisdom, which is not soon lost when it is purchased so dear.”

— Thomas More

141. “This may be, methinketh, good cousin, great comfort in tribulation: that every tribulation which any time falleth unto us is either sent to be medicinable, if men will so take it; or may become medicinable, if men will so make it;.”

— Thomas More

142. “Among the ministers of princes, there are none that are not so wise as to need no assistance, or at least, that do not think themselves so wise that they imagine they need none; and if they court any, it is only those for whom the prince has much personal favour, whom by their fawning and flatteries they endeavour to fix to their own interests...”

— Thomas More