John Morley Quotes

Yet the Opposition refused to extend the franchise unless they were assured that there would be some manipulation or re-arrangement of seats, which, would, in fact, be taking away with one hand what was given with the other. He regretted that proportional representation should have been introduced into the debate from that side of the House, for all these schemes were but new disguises for the old Tory distrust of the people.

I'm all against your “autoritaire”. I don't believe in it, and I never did. Your Cromwells and Fredericks don't do their work half as well as slow sober free American citizens.

It is not enough to do good; one must do it the right way.

You cannot demonstrate an emotion or prove an aspiration.

Those who would treat politics and morality apart will never understand the one or the other.

Germany is the power in whose strength, prosperity, and vigorous government, Europe has the most vital interest, because she is the Power best able from her position to deal with Russia.

If the country does best, where State action is least, you at least require political effort enough to reduce those noxious forms of State action which have come down to us from the imprudence of pre-scientific days. The philosopher, for example, who is most in earnest for the free play of social forces, is bound before all other men to press on for the disestablishment of the State Church.

Do let us try to give a national, not a class tone to English politics .

You have not converted a man, because you have silenced him.

Evolution is not a force but a process; not a cause but a law.

The sophists of newspaper press are so busily fighting momentous practical issues with the lath sword of some little abstract theory, that they have no eyes for the gulf which is ready to open at the feet of them and the institutions which they so absurdly suppose themselves to be defending... They do not discern that the same classes who are now believed to be on the point of following the publicans and the clergy to the polls...are one day very likely to invent cries of their own, that will bring destruction where the abused reformer to-day only seeks improvement, and, where we only seek to amend, will trample, efface, obliterate.

In plain English, a majority of those who come out of the schools cannot read a newspaper. This unfortunate class is our ruling class. Their votes can carry elections, change administrations, decide policies. As yet they have no initiative, and it may be some time before they cease to follow the initiative of others. When their time comes, and a leader, they will make terrible short work with a good deal that you hold precious now.

Household suffrage as yet is only a thing on paper. We have still to feel its reality. The new possessors of power are still hardly aware that it is theirs. And who are the new possessors of power? The skilled artisans, the leaders of trade societies, and the like? Alas, no; it is not they but those below them, those between the artisan and the pauper, who, whenever they choose to awake, or whenever they choose in their dreams to let somebody else lead them, hold the destinies of our society in their hands.

Where it is a duty to worship the sun it is pretty sure to be a crime to examine the laws of heat.

I shall not flinch if they decapitate or flagellate all the bishops and curés in Paris.