1478-1535 · English lawyer, humanist, and Lord Chancellor, martyred under Henry VIII
About Thomas More
Thomas More (1478-1535), London lawyer, humanist scholar and friend of Erasmus, served Henry VIII as councillor, Speaker of the House of Commons and, from 1529 to 1532, Lord Chancellor. He refused the oath acknowledging the king's supremacy over the Church in England, was imprisoned in the Tower and beheaded on 6 July 1535. He was canonized in 1935 and is honoured as St. Thomas More, named patron of statesmen and politicians in 2000.
“your sheep, which are naturally mild, and easily kept in order, may be said now to devour men and unpeople, not only villages, but towns”
Utopia, Book I (Discourses of Raphael Hythloday), at Cardinal Morton's table
“if you suffer your people to be ill-educated, and their manners to be corrupted from their infancy, and then punish them for those crimes to which their first education disposed them, what else is to be concluded from this but that you first make thieves and then punish them?”
Utopia, Book I (Discourses of Raphael Hythloday), at Cardinal Morton's table
“They eat and drink out of vessels of earth or glass, which make an agreeable appearance, though formed of brittle materials; while they make their chamber-pots and close-stools of gold and silver”
Utopia, Book II, Of the Travelling of the Utopians
“there are many things in the commonwealth of Utopia that I rather wish, than hope, to see followed in our governments.”
Utopia, Book II, Of the Religions of the Utopians (closing words)
1516 (Latin); English 1551 · Renaissance Early Modern · Political Theory
Utopia is a dialogue in two books, written in Latin and presented as a true report. In Book I More, writing in his own person, recalls his embassy to Flanders in 1515 with Cuthbert Tunstall.