Cromwell Quotes

• Some village Hampden, that with dauntless breast The little tyrant of his fields withstood, Some mute inglorious Milton here may rest, Some Cromwell guiltless of his country's blood.

  Thomas Gray

  Country, Blood, Tyrants

  "Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard" l. 57 (1751)

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• The irony about Charles II is not that he came to the throne because England needed a successor to Charles I, but because England needed a successor to Oliver Cromwell.

  Simon Schama

  History, England, Thrones

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• When Cromwell instructed his portraitist to paint him 'warts and all', he meant both halves of that equation. To teach the warts alone is morbid and unhealthy.

  Mark Steyn

  History, Half, Morbid

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• Caesar had his Brutus, Charles the First his Cromwell; and George the Third — ['Treason!' cried the Speaker] — may profit by their example. If this be treason, make the most of it.

  Patrick Henry

  History, Brutus, Firsts

  Speech in Virginia House of Burgesses,Williamsburg, Va., May 1765.

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• I've been dreaming of a time when
  The English are sick to death of Labour and Tories
  And spit upon the name Oliver Cromwell and denounce this royal line that still salutes him
  And will salute him forever.

  Steven Morrissey

  Dream, Names, Sick

  "Song: 'Irish Blood, English Heart'". 2004.

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• Society is an illusion to the young citizen. It lies before him in rigid repose, with certain names, men, and institutions, rootedlike oak-trees to the centre, round which all arrange themselves the best they can. But the old statesman knows that society is fluid; there are no such roots and centres; but any particle may suddenly become the centre of the movement, and compel the system to gyrate round it, as every man of strong will, like Pisistratus, or Cromwell, does for a time, and every man of truth, like Plato, or Paul, does forever.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Strong, Plato, Lying

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (2012). “The Selected Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson”, p.161, Graphic Arts Books

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• One of the frustrations of someone like Thomas Cromwell is that, before they step into the light of history, and become extremely well documented, they are not known. A king might be well documented but not everyone.

  Hilary Mantel

  Kings, Frustration, Light

  Source: newrepublic.com

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• When I came to write my Thomas Cromwell books, I moved onto the center ground of English history, but I was never there before. I didn't feel it was my history particularly, coming from Northern Britain, being of Irish extraction, being a cradle Catholic. The image of England I grew up with felt somewhere else. There was an official England in postcards, but it wasn't one I had visited. But I decided to march onto the center ground and occupy it whether it was mine or not.

  Hilary Mantel

  Book, Writing, Somewhere Else

  Source: newrepublic.com

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• It's complementary. It's fairly clear where the boundaries are. When I start telling you the contents of his head, I am making it up. But I try to make it up based on what is on the record. So even my wildest speculations [on Thomas Cromwell] will have a root somewhere.

  Hilary Mantel

  Roots, Trying, Records

  Source: newrepublic.com

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• Very interesting show. It's "Hotel" with the E missing. Hot L Baltimore. It was about a rundown hotel which had become kind of a residential not quite welfare but almost welfare hotel with a very bizarre collection of people.The desk clerk was played by Jamie Cromwell. That was his first big thing. Conchata Ferrell played April, the main of the two prostitutes, and my character didn't exist in the [stage] show.

  Richard Masur

  Character, Two, People

  Source: www.avclub.com

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• I got four volumes of the letters and speeches of Oliver Cromwell. He is prominent among the great unread, and treated so oddly by history that I wanted to hear his side of things.

  Marilynne Robinson

  Sides, Four, Letters

  Source: www.motherjones.com

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• In a Balkan country, not so many years ago, a party which had been beaten by a narrow margin in a general election retrieved its fortunes by shooting a sufficient number of the representatives of the other side to give it a majority. . . . Cromwell and Robespierre . . . acted likewise.

  Bertrand Russell

  Country, Party, Years

  Bertrand Russell (2009). “Unpopular Essays”, p.136, Routledge

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• Richard Cromwell was not fit to wear the mantle of his uncle.

  John F. Kennedy

  Uncles, Fit

  Democratic National Convention Nomination Acceptance Address, delivered 15 July 1960, Memorial Coliseum, Los Angeles

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• Did you know that Puritanism went hand in hand with dirt, that Oliver Cromwell put a 100 per cent tax on soap and that the repeal of the soap tax was one of the most popular acts of Charles II at his Restoration?

  Robertson Davies

  Hands, Restoration, Dirt

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• What is unique about Drogheda is the very large number of Protestants in the garrison and the fact that it's commanded, by and large, by Englishmen, who have come over from the English Civil War and are fighting in Ireland, and Cromwell is extraordinarily savage against these... Drogheda, after all, was a Protestant

  Ronald Hutton

  War, Fighting, Unique

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• Taxation, the very thing that had triggered the British civil wars, would do so again, this time in America. The taxes may have been different, but the result would once again be disaster. What happened in America was really round two of those wars - the civil war of the British Empire, with the Hanoverians playing the part of the Stuarts, and the Americans the heirs of the revolutionaries, of Cromwell and of William III, the inheritors of a true British liberty, that had somehow got lost in its own motherland.

  Simon Schama

  War, Two, America

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• The greatness of a popular character is less according to the ratio of his genius than the sympathy he shows with the prejudices and even the absurdities of his time. Fanatics do not select the cleverest but the most fanatical leaders as was evidenced in the choice of Robespierre by the French Jacobins, and in that of Cromwell by the English Puritans.

  Alphonse de Lamartine

  Character, Greatness, Choices

  Alphonse de Lamartine (1854). “Memoirs of celebrated characters”, p.157

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• There is no error so monstrous that it fails to find defenders among the ablest men. Imagine a congress of eminent celebrities, such as More, Bacon, Grotius, Pascal, Cromwell, Bossuet, Montesquieu, Jefferson, Napoleon, Pitt, etc. The result would be an Encyclopedia of Error.

  Lord Acton

  Men, Errors, Etc

  "Letters of Lord Acton to Mary Gladstone". Book by John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton, 1913.

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• Oliver Cromwell (1599-1658) moved from a legitimate to a charismatic role, reversing the course followed by Washington. Yet therewere surface similarities in their careers. Both led military rebellions against English monarchs--Cromwell against Charles I, Washington against George III. Each took local militia--the "train bands" of Cromwell, the colonial levies of Washington--and forged professional armies on a national scale. Each infused a new ethos in his troops--a religious spirit in Cromwell's case, a post-colonial American identity in Washington's.

  Garry Wills

  Religious, Military, Army

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• You ask what I have found and far and wide I go,
  Nothing but Cromwell's house and Cromwell's murderous crew,
  The lovers and the dancers are beaten into the clay,
  And the tall men and the swordsmen and the horsemen where are they?

  William Butler Yeats

  Men, House, Dancer

  William Butler Yeats (1997). “The Collected Works of W. B. Yeats: Volume I: The Poems, 2nd Edition”, p.311, Simon and Schuster

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• From the 15th century to 1688, England and Wales, like Scotland, had been peripheral kingdoms in the European power game, more often at war with each other that with Continental powers, and - except under Oliver Cromwell - scarcely very successful on those occasions when they did engage the Dutch, or the French, or the Spanish.

  Linda Colley

  War, Successful, Games

  Linda Colley (2005). “Britons: Forging the Nation, 1707-1837”, p.53, Yale University Press

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• The 'Little' or 'Barebones' Parliament, summoned by Oliver Cromwell to meet at Westminster on 4th July, 1653, after the dissolution of the remains of the Long Parliament, may have been an unpractical body, so far as the task of administration in troublous times was concerned. But it seems quite possible that the wealth of contumely and scorn which has been poured upon it was, originally, due quite as much to the fierce anger of vested interests against outspoken criticism, as to any real vagueness or want of practical wisdom in the plans of the House itself.

  Edward Jenks

  Real, 4th Of July, Long

  "A Short History Of The English Law" by Edward Jenks.Fiirst edition, ch. XII, Civil Procedure In The Middle Ages, p. 178, 1912.

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• It has been remarked that almost every character which has excited either attention or pity has owed part of its success to merit, and part to a happy concurrence of circumstances in its favor. Had Caesar or Cromwell exchanged countries, the one might have been a sergeant and the other an exciseman.

  Oliver Goldsmith

  Country, Character, Favors

  Oliver Goldsmith (1819). “Essays and poems, by Dr. Oliver Goldsmith. To which are prefixed, memoirs of the author”, p.3

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• When I see that the nineteenth century has crowned the idolatry of Art with the deification of Love, so that every poet is supposed to have pierced to the holy of holies when he has announced that Love is the Supreme, or the Enough, or the All, I feel that Art was safer in the hands of the most fanatical of Cromwell's major generals than it will be if ever it gets into mine.

  George Bernard Shaw

  Art, Love Is, Hands

  George Bernard Shaw (2006). “Three Plays for Puritans”, p.34, Penguin UK

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