Benjamin Disraeli Quotes

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

Without publicity there can be no public spirit, and without public spirit every nation must decay.

That is an apology, not an explanation; and apologies only account for that which they do not alter.

The right hon. Gentleman persuaded the people of England that with regard to Irish politics he was in possession of the philosopher's stone. Well, Sir, he has been returned to this House with an immense majority, with the object of securing the tranquillity and content of Ireland. Has anything been grudged him? Time, labour, devotion—whatever has been demanded has been accorded, whatever has been proposed has been carried. Under his influence and at his instance we have legalized confiscation, consecrated sacrilege, and condoned high treason; we have destroyed churches, we have shaken property to its foundation, and we have emptied gaols; and now he cannot govern a county without coming to a Parliamentary Committee! The right hon. Gentleman, after all his heroic exploits, and at the head of his great majority, is making Government ridiculous.

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 think the author who speaks about his own books is almost as bad as a mother who talks about her own children.

[L]ittle more than a year after the publication of <small>CONINGSBY</small>, the secession of <small>DR. NEWMAN</small> dealt a blow to the Church of England under which it still reels. That extraordinary event has been "apologised" for, but has never been explained. It was a mistake and a misfortune. The tradition of the Anglican Church was powerful. Resting on the Church of Jerusalem, modified by the divine school of Galilee, it would have found that rock of truth which Providence, by the instrumentality of the Semitic race, had promised to St. Peter. Instead of that, the seceders sought refuge in mediæval superstitions, which are generally only the embodiments of pagan ceremonies and creeds.

They [the novels] recognised imagination in the government of nations as a quality not less important than reason. They trusted much to a popular sentiment, which rested on an heroic tradition and was sustained by the high spirit of a free aristocracy. Their economic principles were not unsound, but they looked upon the health and knowledge of the multitude as not the least precious part of the wealth of nations. In asserting the doctrine of race, they were entirely opposed to the equality of man, and similar abstract dogmas, which have destroyed ancient society without creating a satisfactory substitute. Resting on popular sympathies and popular privileges, they held that no society could be durable unless it was built upon the principles of loyalty and religious reverence. The writer and those who acted with him looked, then, upon the Anglican Church as a main machinery by one which these results might be realised. There were few great things left in England, and the Church was one.

I have no doubt that the distinguished men who negotiated that Treaty, as the representatives of the great Liberal party, were influenced in the course they took by the traditions of English policy. They negotiated that Treaty for the general advantage of Europe, but with a clear appreciation of the importance of its provisions to England. It had always been held by the Government of this country that it was for the interest of England that the countries on the European Coast extending from Dunkirk and Ostend to the islands of the North Sea should be possessed by free and flourishing communities, practising the arts of peace, enjoying the rights of liberty, and following those pursuits of commerce which tend to the civilization of man, and should not be in the possession of a great military Power, one of the principles of whose existence necessarily must be to aim at a preponderating influence in Europe.

Nobody is forgotten, when it is convenient to remember him.

There can be no economy where there is no efficiency.

This is to be observed of the Bishop of London, that, though apparently of a spirit somewhat austere, there is in his idiosyncrasy a strange fund of enthusiasm, a quality which ought never to be possessed by an Archbishop of Canterbury, or a Prime Minister of England. The Bishop of London sympathies with everything that is earnest; but what is earnest is not always true; on the contrary error is often more earnest than truth.

Over this land he guided cavalry and infantry, and—what is perhaps the most remarkable part of the expedition—he led the elephants of Asia, bearing the artillery of Europe, over African passes which might have startled the trapper and appalled the hunter of the Alps. When he arrived at the base of this critical rendezvous, he encountered no inglorious foe; and if the manly qualities of the Abyssinians sank before the resources of our warlike science, our troops, even after that combat, had to scale a mountain fortress, of which the intrinsic strength was such that it may be fairly said it would have been impregnable to the whole world had it been defended by the man by whom it was assailed. But all these obstacles and all these difficulties and dangers were overcome by Sir Robert Napier, and that came to pass, which ten years ago, not one of us could have imagined even in his dreams, and which must, under all the circumstances, be an event of peculiar interest to an Englishman—the standard of St. George was hoisted on the mountains of Rasselas.

Now, what is meant by the union between Church and State? ... I understand by it that authority is to be not merely political; that Government is to be not merely an affair of force, but is to recognize its responsibility to the Divine Power. Sir, we have discarded the divine right of Kings, and properly discarded it, because the divine right of Kings led to the abuse of supernatural power by individuals; but an intelligent age will never discard the divine right of Government. If Government is not divine, it is nothing. It is a mere affair of the police-office, of the tax-gatherer, of the guard-room.

None are so interested in maintaining the institutions of the country as the working classes. The rich and the powerful will not find much difficulty under any circumstances in maintaining their rights, but the privileges of the people can only be defended and secured by popular institutions.