Oliver Cromwell Quotes (1599-1658)

“I find this only good, to love the Lord and his poor despised people, to do for them and to be ready to suffer with them.”

“Now I see there is a people risen that I cannot win with gifts or honours, offices or places; but all other sects and people I can.”

“Now I see there is a people risen that I cannot win with gifts or honours, offices or places; but all other sects and people I can.”

“Now I see there is a people risen that I cannot win with gifts or honours, offices or places; but all other sects and people I can.”

“Let him (James Harrington) him have his book (The Commonwealth of Oceana); if my government is made to stand, it has nothing to fear from paper shot.”

“Necessity hath no law. Feigned necessities, imagined necessities... are the greatest cozenage that men can put upon the Providence of God, and make pretenses to break known rules by.”

“He [Oliver Cromwell] in a furious manner, bid the Speaker leave his chair; told the house "That they had sat long enough, unless they had done more good;… and that it was not fit they should sit as a parliament any longer, and desired them to go away."”

“Queen Elizabeth of famous memory,—we need not be ashamed to call her so! ...that Lady, that great Queen.”

“It will be found an unjust and unwise jealousy, to deny a man the liberty he hath by nature upon a supposition that he may abuse it.”

“Recreate yourself with Sir Walter Raleigh's History: it's a Body of History; and will add much more to your understanding than fragments of Story.”

“During a great part of the eighteenth century most Tories hated him because he overthrew the monarchy, most Whigs because he overthrew Parliament. Since Carlyle wrote, all liberals have seen in him their champion, and all revolutionists have apotheosized the first great representatives of their school; while, on the other side, their opponents have hailed the dictator who put down anarchy. Unless the socialists or the anarchists finally prevail — and perhaps even then — his fame seems as secure as human reputation is likely to be in a changing world.”

“The commonest charge against Cromwell is hypocrisy — and the commonest basis for that is defective chronology.”

“A born soldier of humble origins, Cromwell's military record in the Civil Wars was second to none. His 'reign' as Lord Protector from 1653 to 1658 has marked him for later generations as either a visionary political figure or a loathsome tyrant, and both cases are equally arguable; his religious bigotry, and the bitter fruit it bore in Ireland, are sadly beyond dispute. He remains secure in his reputation as one of the most extraordnary Englishmen who ever lived.”

“Oliver Cromwell had certainly this afflatus. One that I knew was at the battle of Dunbar, told me that Oliver was carried on with a Divine impulse; he did laugh so excessively as if he had been drunk; his eyes sparkled with spirits. He obtain’d a great victory; but the action was said to be contrary to human prudence. The same fit of laughter seized Oliver Cromwell just before the battle of Naseby; as a kinsman of mine, and a great favourite of his, Colonel J. P. then present, testified. Cardinal Mazerine said, that he was a lucky fool.”

“A perfect master of all the arts of dissimulation: who, turning up the whites of his eyes, and seeking the Lord with pious gestures, will weep and pray, and cant most devoutly, till an opportunity offers of dealing his dupe a knock-down blow under the short ribs.”

“He thought secrecy a virtue, and dissimulation no vice, and simulation, that is in plain English, a lie, or perfideousness to be a tolerable fault in case of necessity.”

“The next morning I sent Colonel Cook to Cromwell, to let him know that I had letters and instructions to him from the King. He sent me word by the same messenger, that he dared not see me, it being very dangerous to us both, and bid me be assured that he would serve his Majesty as long as he could do it without his own ruin; but desired that I should not expect that he should perish for his sake.”

“A devotee of law, he was forced to be often lawless; a civilian to the core, he had to maintain himself by the sword; with a passion to construct, his task was chiefly to destroy; the most scrupulous of men, he had to ride roughshod over his own scruples and those of others; the tenderest, he had continually to harden his heart; the most English of our greater figures, he spent his life in opposition to the majority of Englishmen; a realist, he was condemned to build that which could not last.”