Charles Mackay Quotes

Besides the sylphs, gnomes, undines, and salamanders, he acknowledged various ranks and orders of demons.

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.

It seemed at that time as if the whole nation had turned stockjobbers. Exchange Alley was every day blocked up by crowds, and Cornhill was impassable for the number of carriages. Everybody came to purchase stock. “Every fool aspired to be a knave.” In the words of a ballad, published at the time, and sung about the streets, [“A South Sea Ballad; or, Merry Remarks upon Exchange Alley Bubbles. To a new tune, called ‘The Grand Elixir; or, the Philosopher’s Stone Discovered.’“] Then stars and garters did appear Among the meaner rabble; To buy and sell, to see and hear, The Jews and Gentiles squabble. The greatest ladies thither came, And plied in chariots daily, Or pawned their jewels for a sum To venture in the Alley.

In February 1720 an edict was published, which, instead of restoring the credit of the paper, as was intended, destroyed it irrecoverably, and drove the country to the very brink of revolution...

Men, it has been well said, think in herds; it will be seen that they go mad in herds, while they only recover their senses slowly, one by one.

the dangerous practice of stock-jobbing, and would divert the genius of the nation from trade and industry. It would hold out a dangerous lure to decoy the unwary to their ruin, by making them part with the earnings of their labour for a prospect of imaginary wealth. The great principle of the project was an evil of first-rate magnitude; it was to raise artificially the value of the stock, by exciting and keeping up a general infatuation, and by promising dividends out of funds which could never be adequate to the purpose.

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

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