Some men, by dint of excessive egotism, manage to persuade their contemporaries that they are very great men indeed: they publish their acquirements so loudly in people’s ears, and keep up their own praises so incessantly, that the world’s applause is actually taken by storm.

— Charles Mackay

Charles Mackay Quotes

Every age has its peculiar folly: Some scheme, project, or fantasy into which it plunges, spurred on by the love of gain, the necessity of excitement, or the force of imitation.

— Charles Mackay

Of all the offspring of Time, Error is the most ancient, and is so old and familiar an acquaintance, that Truth, when discovered, comes upon most of us like an intruder, and meets the intruder’s welcome.

— Charles Mackay

Men of thought and men of action, clear the Way!

— Charles Mackay

Aid the dawning, tongue and pen; Aid it, hopes of honest men!

— Charles Mackay

Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds.

— Charles Mackay

There is no such thing as death. In nature nothing dies. From each sad remnant of decay, some forms of life arise so shall his life be taken away before he knoweth that he hath it.

— Charles Mackay

Three causes especially have excited the discontent of mankind; and, by impelling us to seek remedies for the irremediable, have bewildered us in a maze of madness and error. These are death, toil, and the ignorance of the future...

— Charles Mackay

Nations, like individuals, cannot become desperate gamblers with impunity. Punishment is sure to overtake them sooner or later.

— Charles Mackay

Much as the sage may affect to despise the opinion of the world, there are few who would not rather expose their lives a hundred times than be condemned to live on, in society, but not of it – a by-word of reproach to all who know their history, and a mark for scorn to point his finger at.

— Charles Mackay

If happy I and wretched he, Perhaps the king would change with me.

— Charles Mackay

Old Tubal Cain was a man of might In the days when earth was young.

— Charles Mackay

There’s a fount about to stream, There’s a light about to beam, There’s a warmth about to glow, There’s a flower about to blow; There’s a midnight blackness changing Into gray; Men of thought and men of action, Clear the way.

— Charles Mackay

You have no enemies, you say? Alas, my friend, the boast is poor. He who has mingled in the fray of duty that the brave endure, must have made foes. If you have none, small is the work that you have done. You’ve hit no traitor on the hip. You’ve dashed no cup from perjured lip. You’ve never turned the wrong to right. You’ve been a coward in the fight.

— Charles Mackay

Duty

Injury was aggravated by insult, and insult was embittered by pleasantry.

— Charles Mackay

We all pay an involuntary homage to antiquity – a “blind homage,” as Bacon calls it in his “Novum Organum,” which tends greatly to the obstruction of truth. To the great majority of mortal eyes, Time sanctifies everything that he does not destroy. The mere fact of anything being spared by the great foe makes it a favourite with us, who are sure to fall his victims.

— Charles Mackay

During seasons of great pestilence men have often believed the prophecies of crazed fanatics, that the end of the world was come. Credulity is always greatest in times of calamity. Prophecies of all sorts are rife on such occasions, and are readily believed, whether for good or evil. During the great plague, which ravaged all Europe, between the years 1345 and 1350, it was generally considered that the end of the world was at hand.

— Charles Mackay

Posterity is grateful if our contemporaries are not.

— Charles Mackay

Credulity is always greatest in times of calamity.

— Charles Mackay

Every fool aspired to be a knave.

— Charles Mackay

Some men, by dint of excessive egotism, manage to persuade their contemporaries that they are very great men indeed: they publish their acquirements so loudly in people’s ears, and keep up their own praises so incessantly, that the world’s applause is actually taken by storm.

— Charles Mackay

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