William Ewart Gladstone Quotes

British Liberal prime minister (1809–1898)

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William Ewart Gladstone (29 December 1809 – 19 May 1898) was a British Liberal politician and Prime Minister (1868–1874, 1880–1885, 1886 and 1892–1894). He was a notable political reformer, known for his populist speeches, and was for many years the main political rival of Benjamin Disraeli.

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Pen Names: Scrutator

Alternative Names: William Gladstone • Gladstone • W. E. Gladstone • The Rt Hon William Ewart Gladstone • Gladstone, W. E. (William Ewart)

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We look forward to the time when the Power of Love will replace the Love of Power. Then will our world know the blessings of peace.

Show me the manner in which a nation or a community cares for its dead. I will measure exactly the sympathies of its people, their respect for the laws of the land, and their loyalty to high ideals.

So long as there is this book, there will be no peace in the world.

In 1834 the Government...did themselves high honour by the new Poor Law Act, which rescued the English peasantry from the total loss of their independence.

[T]he House of Lords...had inflicted a deadly mutilation on the Parish Councils Bill, they (having also refused our measure on employers' liability) had placed themselves in sharp conflict with public opinion on great subjects. ... I was at Biarritz when this happened in January or February 1894. I suggested dissolution to my colleagues in London. ... But...I was compelled to let the matter drop. ... Thus there was let slip an opportunity in my opinion nothing less than splendid for raising decisively an issue of vital importance to popular government: an opportunity which if rightly used would have given the Liberal party a decisive preponderance for the full term of one or probably two Parliaments, quite apart from the vast public advantages within reach. The great controversy between Lords and Commons, terrible in 1831–32, formidable in 1860–1, happily averted with the Queen's wise aid in 1884...would have reached a practical settlement: and the yet graver controversy...of seven hundred years with Ireland would have come nearer to a complete settlement by a measure of Home Rule.

The hopelessness of the Turkish Government should make me witness with delight its being swept out of the countries which it tortures. Next to the Ottoman Government nothing can be more deplorable and blameworthy than jealousies between Greek and Slav and plans by the States already existing for appropriating other territory. Why not Macedonia for the Macedonians as well as Bulgaria for the Bulgarians and Serbia for the Serbians?

I venture on assuring you that I regard the design formed by you and your friends with sincere interest, and in particular wish well to all the efforts you may make on behalf of individual freedom and independence as opposed to what is termed Collectivism.

I am fundamentally a dead man: one fundamentally a Peel–Cobden man.

[W]e do not prosecute the cause we have in hand upon the ground that they are our fellow Christians. This is no crusade against Mahomedanism. ... Nay, I will say it is no declaration of universal condemnation of the Mahomedans of the Turkish Empire. On the contrary...there have been good and generous Mahomedans, who have resisted these misdeeds to the uttermost of their power. ... Although it is true that those persons are Christians on whose behalf we move, I confidently affirm...that if, instead of being Christians, they were themselves Mahomedans, Hindus, Buddhists, Confucians—call them what you like—they would have precisely the same claims upon our support, and the motives which brought us here today would be incumbent upon us with the same force and with the same sacredness that we recognize at the present moment. ... The ground on which we stand here is not British nor European, but it is human. Nothing narrower than humanity could pretend for a moment justly to represent it. (Cheers.)

[The publication of The Jubilee of Free Trade is] an act of great gallantry for the Cobdenian faith is in all points at a heavy discount—Peace, Retrenchment, Free Trade and all the rest of it, to my great grief I must confess.

To serve Armenia is to serve the Civilization.

[T]he idea that the colonies add to the strength of the mother country appears to me to be as dark a superstition as any that existed in the Middle Ages.

I am not so much afraid either of Democracy or of Science as of the love of money. This seems to me to be a growing evil. Also, there is a danger from the growth of that dreadful military spirit.

I dislike the idea of its [vaccination] being compulsory. I don't like the notion of the State stepping in between parent and child when it is not absolutely necessary. The State is generally a very bad nurse.

I am a Free Trader on moral no less than on economic grounds: for I think human greed and selfishness are interwoven with every thread of the Protective system.