And to say that society ought to be governed by the opinion of the wisest and best, though true, is useless. Whose opinion is to decide who are the wisest and best?
Interpretation
This quote highlights the challenge of determining who should be considered the wisest and best to govern society, making the concept of wise governance complex.
Thomas B. Macaulay's quote reflects on the paradox of relying on the wisdom of the best individuals for societal governance. While it seems logical to trust the insights of the most knowledgeable and moral leaders, the real issue arises in identifying who qualifies as 'the wisest and best.' This ambiguity complicates the notion of what constitutes effective and just leadership, as it prompts questions about biases and subjective judgments inherent in such evaluations.
In practice
This quote can be used during a debate on leadership qualifications.
None of the modes by which a magistrate is appointed, popular election, the accident of the lot, or the accident of birth, affords, as far as we can perceive, much security for his being wiser than any of his neighbours. The chance of his being wiser than all his neighbours together is still smaller.
Your Constitution is all sail and no anchor.
I wish I was as sure of anything as he is of everything.
To punish a man because he has committed a crime, or because he is believed, though unjustly, to have committed a crime, is not persecution. To punish a man, because we infer from the nature of some doctrine which he holds, or from the conduct of other persons who hold the same doctrines with him, that he will commit a crime, is persecution, and is, in every case, foolish and wicked.
Mere negation, mere Epicurean infidelity, as Lord Bacon most justly observes, has never disturbed the peace of the world. It furnishes no motive for action; it inspires no enthusiasm; it has no missionaries, no crusades, no martyrs.
What a blessing it is to love books as I love them;- to be able to converse with the dead, and to live amidst the unreal!
Whereas the law is passionless, passion must ever sway the heart of man.
Both our senses and our passions are a supply to the imperfection of our nature; thus they show that we are such sort of creatures as to stand in need of those helps which higher orders of creatures do not.
To discover and know has always been a deep tendency of our nature. Can we not recognize it already in caveman?
The rain falls upon the just And also on the unjust fellas But mostly it falls upon the just Cause the unjust have the just's umbrellas
If we had the power of ten Shakespeares or a dozen Mozarts, we could not produce anything half so marvelous as one ordinary human child.
The problem with the future is that it keeps turning into the present.
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