Benjamin Disraeli Quotes

The choicest pleasures of life lie within the ring of moderation.

If you are not very clever, you should be conciliatory.

I acknowledge that the policy of England with respect to Europe should be a policy of reserve, but proud reserve; and in answer to those statesmen—those mistaken statesmen who have intimated the decay of the power of England and the decline of its resources, I express here my confident conviction that there never was a moment in our history when the power of England was so great and her resources so vast and inexhaustible.

This war represents the German Revolution, a greater political event than the French Revolution of last century — I don't say a greater, or as great, a social event. What its social consequences may be are in the future. Not a single principle in the management of our foreign affairs, accepted by all statesmen for guidance up to six months ago, any longer exists. There is not a diplomatic tradition which has not been swept away. You have a new world, new influences at work, new and unknown objects and dangers with which to cope... The balance of power has been entirely destroyed, and the country which suffers most, and feels the effects of this great change most, is England.

I am opposed to it because I wish to see united at an important crisis of the world—a crisis that perhaps is nearer arriving than some of us suppose—because I wish to see a united people welded in one great nationality, and because I feel that if we sanction this policy—if we do not cleanse the Parliamentary bosom of all this "perilous stuff"—we shall bring about the disintegration of the Kingdom and the destruction of the Empire.

Wherever is found what is called a paternal government, there is found state education. It has been discovered that the best way to insure implicit obedience is to commence tyranny in the nursery.

We have brought a peace, and we trust we have brought a peace with honour, and I trust that that will now be followed by the prosperity of the country.

I believe the landed interest should be the basis of our political and social system.

Like all great travellers, I have seen more than I remember, and remember more than I have seen.

It is fourteen years ago since yourself, then the leader of the country gentlemen...appealed to me to assist you at a moment of apparently overwhelming disaster. I ultimately agreed to do so...because, from my earliest years, my sympathies had been with the landed interest of England.

Gentlemen, the programme of the Conservative party is to maintain the Constitution of the country.

Her Majesty's new ministers proceeded in their career like a body of men under the influence of some delirious drug. Not satiated with the spoliation and anarchy of Ireland, they began to attack every institution and every interest, every class and calling in the country... As time advanced it was not difficult to perceive that extravagance was being substituted for energy by the Government. The unnatural stimulus was subsiding. Their paroxysms ended in prostration. Some took refuge in melancholy, and their eminent chief alternated between a menace and a sigh. As I sat opposite the Treasury Bench the ministers reminded me of one of those marine landscapes not very unusual on the coasts of South America. You behold a range of exhausted volcanoes. Not a flame flickers on a single pallid crest. But the situation is still dangerous. There are occasional earthquakes, and ever and anon the dark rumbling of the sea.

We are the children of the gods, and are never more the slaves of circumstance than when we deem ourselves their masters. What may next happen in the dazzling farce of life, the Fates only know.

That fatal drollery called a representative government.

Experience is the child of thought, and thought is the child of action.