Top 12 Alfred Milner, 1st Viscount Milner Quotes

British statesman and colonial administrator (1854-1925)

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Alfred Milner KG GCB GCMG PC (23 March 1854 – 13 May 1925) was a British statesman and colonial administrator.

From: Wikiquote (CC BY-SA 4.0)

Native Name: Alfred Milner

Alternative Names: Viscount Milner

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Instead of it (World War I) being a war to end wars - it (the Paris Peace Conference) is a Peace to end Peace.

The prospects for peace were, "even blacker than a year ago".

My own disposition is against being in the government unless I am part of the Supreme Direction.

I feel more sure that the end is nearing than I do what kind of end it will be.

If we believe a thing to be bad, and if we have a right to prevent it, it is our duty to try to prevent it and to damn the consequences.

...the impracticability of governing natives, who, at best, are children, needing and appreciating just paternal government, on the same principles as apply to the government of full-grown men.

If, ten years hence, there are three men of British race to two of Dutch, the country [i.e. South Africa] will be safe and prosperous.

There is only one possible settlement – war! It has got to come ... The difficulty is in the occasion and not the job itself, that is very easily done and I think nothing of the bogies and difficulties of settling South Africa afterwards. You will find a very different tone and temper when the center of unrest is dealt with.

I have a strong hope and conviction that, with moderation and good sense, and a policy of firmness, patience and good temper, these difficulties may yet be satisfactorily, if not immediately settled.

[I]f Egyptian prosperity is a British interest, so is Egyptian independence. We have no desire to possess ourselves of Egypt, but we have every reason to prevent any rival power from so possessing itself. And there is no sure, no creditable manner of providing permanently against such a contingency, except to build up a system of Government so stable as to leave no excuse for future foreign intervention.

British influence... is not exercised to impose an uncongenial foreign system upon a reluctant people. It is a force making for the triumph of the simplest ideas of honesty, humanity, and justice, to the value of which Egyptians are just as much alive as anybody else.

"Churchill was 'very keen, able, and broad-minded' and a 'powerful backer', but warned that his weakness was being 'too apt to make up his mind without sufficient knowledge'.