Benjamin Disraeli Quotes

The English in politics are as the old Hebrews in religion, 'a favored and peculiar people.

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.

Lord Salisbury and myself have brought you back peace, but a peace, I hope, with honour which may satisfy our Sovereign, and tend to the welfare of the country.

How much easier it is to be critical than to be correct.

"So you see, my dear Coningsby, that the world is governed by very different personages from what is imagined by those who are not behind the scenes." (Sidonia speaking)

We make our own fortunes, and call them fate.

Gentlemen, a body of public men...seized the helm of affairs in a manner the honour of which I do not for a moment question, but they introduced a new system into our political life. Influenced in a great degree by the philosophy and the politics of the Continent, they endeavoured to substitute cosmopolitan for national principles; and they baptized the new scheme of politics with the plausible name of "Liberalism"... [T]he tone and tendency of Liberalism cannot be long concealed. It is to attack the institutions of the country under the name of Reform, and to make war on the manners and customs of the people of this country under the pretext of Progress. During the forty years that have elapsed since the commencement of this new system...the real state of affairs has been this: the attempt of one party to establish in this country cosmopolitan ideas, and the efforts of another...to recur to and resume those national principles to which they attribute the greatness and glory of the country.

Grief is the agony of an instant; the indulgence of Grief the blunder of a life.

He is so vain that he wants to figure in history as the settler of all the great questions; but a Parliamentary constitution is not favorable to such ambitions; things must be done by parties, not by persons using parties as tools.

There is no act of treachery or meanness of which a political party is not capable; for in politics there is no honour.

[A]s I have been challenged and pressed so closely by Mr. Gladstone upon this subject, I will venture to say that I do not believe you can have economical government in a country in where the Chief Minister piques himself upon disregarding the interests of the country abroad... [T]he most economical Government we ever had in England was the Government of the Duke of Wellington. Why was that Government so economical? Because the Duke of Wellington paid the greatest possible attention of any Minister who ever ruled in this country to the interests and business of England abroad. (Hear, hear.) He attended to them so successfully and so sedulously that during his administration we were not involved in expensive wars; we did not get into difficulties in which we were obliged to have recourse to expensive arbitration...and I repeat it was essentially by his attention to foreign affairs, and by his knowledge of foreign affairs...that he was able to make his an economical Government and had not to appeal, as has been our custom of late, for increased armaments. (Hear, hear.) Now, Mr. Gladstone's view of economy, or, rather, the view of his party and of the school he represents, is of another kind. He says, "The English people do not care for their affairs abroad—I do not much care for them myself—but I must have economy (laughter); I must discharge dockyard workmen; I must reduce clerks; I must sell the Queen's stores (laughter); I must starve the Queen's services; I must sell the accumulations of timber in the dockyards and arsenals; I must sell all the anchors belonging to the Navy (laughter); I must sell"—we were selling them off last year—"half the ships of Her Majesty's Navy." (Cheers and laughter.) ... Now, gentlemen, that is the economy of which Mr. Gladstone is so proud.

Individuals may form communities, but it is institutions alone that can create a nation.

Never apologize for showing feeling. When you do so, you apologize for truth.

To believe in the heroic makes heroes.

Her Majesty's present Ministers have hitherto been enabled to secure that peace, so necessary to the welfare of all the civilized countries, and so peculiarly the interest of our own. But this ineffable blessing cannot be obtained by the passive principle of non-interference. Peace rests on the presence, not to say the ascendancy, of England in the Councils of Europe... May [the election] return to Westminster a Parliament not unworthy of the power of England and resolved to maintain it!