If you weren't such a great man, you'd be a terrible bore. - William Ewart Gladstone

I have been a learner all my life, and I am a learner still. ... I have some ideas that may not be thought to furnish good materials for a liberal politician. I do not like changes for their own sake, I only like a change when it is needful to alter something bad into something good, or something which is good into something better. ... [T]he basis of my liberalism is this. It is the lesson which I have been learning ever since I was young. I am a lover of liberty; and that liberty which I value for myself, I value for every human being in proportion to his means and opportunities. That is a basis on which I find it perfectly practicable to work in conjunction with a dislike to unreasoned change and a profound reverence for everything ancient, provided that reverence is deserved.

I feel with a peculiar sympathy all that relates to Scotland. The natives of Scotland, and all those who have Scotch blood in their veins—particularly if, like me, they only have Scotch blood in their veins—are not apt to forget the country from which they sprang. They know its great qualities. They know the solidity of its character.

Nonconformity...still supplies, to so great an extent, the backbone of British Liberalism.