William Cobbett
William Cobbett
William Cobbettwas an English pamphleteer, farmer and journalist, who was born in Farnham, Surrey. He believed that reforming Parliament and abolishing the rotten boroughs would help to end the poverty of farm labourers, and he attacked the borough-mongers, sinecurists and "tax-eaters" relentlessly. He was also against the Corn Laws, a tax on imported grain. Early in his career, he was a loyalist supporter of King and Country: but later he joined and successfully publicised the radical movement, which led to...
NationalityEnglish
ProfessionPolitician
Date of Birth9 March 1763
It is not the greatness of a man's means that makes him independent so much as the smallness of his wants
It is by attempting to reach the top in a single leap that so much misery is caused in the world
It is by attempting to reach the top at a single leap that so much misery is caused in the world.
Nothing is so well calculated to produce a death-like torpor in the country as an extended system of taxation and a great national debt.
Men fail much oftener from want of perseverance than from want of talent.
I defy you to agitate any fellow with a full stomach.
The smallness of our desires may contribute reasonably to our wealth.
Poverty is, except where there is an actual want of food and raiment, a thing much more imaginary than real. The shame of poverty--the shame of being thought poor--it is a great and fatal weakness, though arising in this country, from the fashion of the times themselves.
The very hirelings of the press, whose trade it is to buoy up the spirits of the people. have uttered falsehoods so long, they have played off so many tricks, that their budget seems, at last, to be quite empty.
To be poor and independent is very nearly an impossibility.
Free yourself from the slavery of tea and coffee and other slop kettles!
Men of integrity are generally pretty obstinate, in adhering to an opinion once adopted.
Norwich is a very fine city, and the castle, which stands in the middle of it, on a hill, is truly majestic.
If the people of Sheffield could only receive a tenth part of what their knives sell for by retail in America, Sheffield might pave its streets with silver.