Stanley Baldwin Quotes

And for us in this country to think of having, for example, a dictatorship—a popular form of government in many countries to-day—would, on our part, be an act of consummate cowardice, an act of surrender, of throwing in our hands, a confession that we were unable to govern ourselves...In this country we do not want what I call the "get-rich-quick" mind. Speed and efficiency are very good things, and they are, perhaps, the idols of this generation. But they do not necessarily go together. Acceleration, as I have often said, is not a synonym for civilisation. It is quite true the State coach of this country may be going through heavy ground, the wheels may be creaking; but are you quite sure that the wheels of the State coach are not creaking to-day in Moscow, in Berlin, in Vienna? Are you quite certain that they are not creaking even in the United States of America?

Government is carried on in this country more cleanly, I believe, than in any country of the world. It is the rarest thing in our local popular government, as in the government of our country, to find men who fall by the way and yield to temptations that may come from the direction of corruption or undue influence. There is a magnificent tradition handed down from the earliest times in this country, of public service—service for the good of all our brothers in whatever their station of life.

Our freedom is our own—civil and religious. We are so accustomed to it, as to the air we breathe, that we take it for granted...And that freedom did not drop down on us like the manna from Heaven: it has been fought for from the beginning of our history, and the blood of men far better than ourselves has been shed to obtain it. It is the result of centuries of resistance to the power of the executive, and it has brought us an equal justice and trial by jury, and freedom of worship, and freedom of opinion—religious and political.

I would say that we are the only defenders left of liberty in a world of Fascists. ... these fascists and communists are the successors today of the wars of the sects.

There are two facts that are burned into our minds. In the age in which we live war is as fatal for the victors as for the conquered. The second point is that another European war would be the end of Western civilisation as we know it. In these circumstances what can any Government do but what this Government is doing—struggle without ceasing to attain an agreement in Europe on the limitation of arms? At this moment many men's hearts are failing them because of the difficulties that lie ahead... Our duty is to leave no stone unturned to overcome these political difficulties and resume our work of working out, even at the eleventh hour, a convention for the limitation of armaments.

No matter what a man's conversation may be on the platform or what air of cynicism he may assume as his shield in daily life, yet underneath that surface, in ninety-nine Englishmen out of one hundred, there will be a love, which he sometimes cannot and sometimes will not explain, for the home in which either he at one time has lived or his parents or grandparents have lived before him.

I am a Victorian. When I was young, I lived as everybody else did at that time, in the centre of a circle with a radius of about ten miles—so far as a pair of horses could draw me. Beyond that I hardly ever went, and I was isolated from other parts of England in a way impossible to conceive by those who have only known England as a country of motor roads and motor cars.

Perfect governments are only to be found where the prisons are full.

It is characteristic of the British Public to look askance at any deliberate, systematic attempt to rationalise our institutions.

It is no ready made article; it has grown through the centuries as native to our country and people as the oak, ash, or thorn. It has given her people freedom and taught them the difference between freedom and licence. That is the Constitution that is threatened to-day, not quite openly yet, by the Socialist Party in their conference, tendenciously by sketching a course of action which if it takes place means the destruction of the Constitution. You may dispute that as much as you like, but in effect taking away the executive power of the House of Commons is the way every tyranny starts. It is proletarian Hitlerism and nothing else, and it can be nothing else. I want you to realize it in time.

I say that such qualities were never more needed in the word. Let us hold on to what we are; let us not try to be like anybody else...With our pertinacity, our love of freedom, our love of ordered freedom, our respect for law, our respect for the individual and our power of combining in service; indeed, in our strength and in our weakness, I believe, from my heart, that our people are fitted to pass through whatever trials may be before us, and to emerge—if they are true to their own best traditions—a greater people in the future than they have been in the past.

Kindliness, sympathy with the under dog, love of home! Are not these all characteristics of the ordinary Englishman that you know? He is a strong individualist in this, that he does not want to mould himself into any common mould, to be like everybody else; he likes to develop his own individuality. And yet he can combine for service. Some of the best things in this country have originated among our own common people with no help from governments—friendly society work, our trade unions, our hospitals and our education before the State took it in hand. Then the Englishman has a profound respect for law and order—that is part of his tradition of self-government. Ordered liberty—not disordered liberty, nor what invariably follows, tyranny; but ordered liberty, at present one of the rare things of this topsy-turvy world.

Then, above all, the English people have a curious sense of humour, rather than wit. Humour comes from the heart; wit comes from the brain. We can laugh at ourselves. Do you remember what Ruskin said? "The English laugh is the purest and truest in the metals that can be minted," and indeed, only Heaven can know what the country owes to it. Well, laughter is one of the best things that God has given us, and with hearty laughter neither malice nor indecency can exist. And of all men who have shown us what that laughter can mean, none was like Dickens, every one of whose characters is English to the marrow; and if I might mention a living writer, I think the truest Englishmen are found in Mr. Priestley's novels.

As a nation we grumble, we never worry, and the more difficult times are, the more cheerful we become. Indifferent we may be in many ways to what is going on in the world outside, but this indifference is soon shed in times of difficulty. We are always serene in times of difficulty. We are not a military nation, but we are great fighters—as we ought to be, from the stock of which I have told you. We have staying power, we are not rattled. I remember being very amused and rather pleased by a writer in The Times, who said that my spiritual home was in the last ditch. If that be so, I shared that ditch with most of my fellow-countrymen.

During the Middle Ages, and indeed, throughout later years...Our boundary was the sea; it was a fixed boundary, and a boundary which none could cross when once there was a united nation able to guard that sea frontier; and it is owing to that, primarily and principally, that we were able to develop in this country our own peculiar civilisation and our own freedom in a security which was alien, at that time, to almost every other nation of the world.