Henry Brougham, 1st Baron Brougham and Vaux

Henry Peter Brougham, 1st Baron Brougham and Vaux

Sourced

What is valuable is not new, and what is new is not valuable.
- From The Edinburgh Review, The Work of Thomas Young (c. 1802)

There have been periods when the country heard with dismay that "the soldier was abroad." That is not the case now. Let the soldier be abroad; in the present age he can do nothing. Let the soldier be abroad if he will, he can do nothing in this age. There is another personage,—a personage less imposing in the eyes of some, perhaps insignificant. The schoolmaster is abroad, and I trust to him, armed with his primer, against the soldier in full military array, for upholding and extending the liberties of his country.
- Speech, Opening of Parliament (January 29, 1828)

In my mind, he was guilty of no error he — was chargeable with no exaggeration — he was betrayed by his fancy into no metaphor, who once said that all we see about us, Kings, Lords, and Commons, the whole machinery of the State, all the apparatus of the system, and its varied workings, end in simply bringing twelve men into a box.
- Present State of the Law (February 7, 1828)

A lawyer is a learned gentleman who rescues your estate from your enemies and keeps it himself.

Education makes a people easy to lead, but difficult to drive; easy to govern but impossible to enslave.

It is necessary that I should qualify the doctrine of its being not men, but measures, that I am determined to support. In a monarchy it is the duty of parliament to look at the men as well as at the measures.