Benjamin Disraeli Quotes

» Plagiarists, at least, have the merit of preservation.

» Never apologize for showing feeling. When you do so, you apologize for the truth.

» The greatest good you can do for another is not just to share your riches but to reveal to him his own.

» It destroys one's nerves to be amiable every day to the same human being.

» No man is regular in his attendance at the House of Commons until he is married.

» There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics.

» Like all great travellers, I have seen more than I remember, and remember more than I have seen.

» Diligence is the mother of good fortune.

» Let the fear of a danger be a spur to prevent it; he that fears not, gives advantage to the danger.

» Seeing much, suffering much, and studying much, are the three pillars of learning.

» There is moderation even in excess.

» Moderation has been called a virtue to limit the ambition of great men, and to console undistinguished people for their want of fortune and their lack of merit.

» Moderation is the center wherein all philosophies, both human and divine, meet.

» The choicest pleasures of life lie within the ring of moderation.

» There is no index of character so sure as the voice.

» Taking a new step, uttering a new word, is what people fear most.

» Man is not the creature of circumstances, circumstances are the creatures of men. We are free agents, and man is more powerful than matter.

» Nurture your minds with great thoughts. To believe in the heroic makes heroes.

» The secret of success in life is for a man to be ready for his opportunity when it comes.

» To tax the community for the advantage of a class is not protection: it is plunder.

» Silence is the mother of truth.

» The first magic of love is our ignorance that it can ever end.

» The wisdom of the wise and the experience of the ages are perpetuated by quotations.

» An author who speaks about their own books is almost as bad as a mother who speaks about her own children.

» The secret of success is to be ready when your opportunity comes.

» Man is only great when he acts from passion.

» One secret of success in life is for a man to be ready for his opportunity when it comes.

» If a man be gloomy let him keep to himself. No one has the right to go croaking about society, or what is worse, looking as if he stifled grief.

» Be amusing: never tell unkind stories; above all, never tell long ones.

» Beware of endeavoring to become a great man in a hurry. One such attempt in ten thousand may succeed. These are fearful odds.

» To be conscious that you are ignorant of the facts is a great step to knowledge.

» In a progressive country change is constant; change is inevitable.

» Next to knowing when to seize an opportunity, the most important thing in life is to know when to forego an advantage.

» Teach us that wealth is not elegance, that profusion is not magnificence, that splendor is not beauty.

» If you're not very clever you should be conciliatory.

» The very phrase 'foreign affairs' makes an Englishman convinced that I am about to treat of subjects with which he has no concern.

» A man may speak very well in the House of Commons, and fail very completely in the House of Lords. There are two distinct styles requisite: I intend, in the course of my career, if I have time, to give a specimen of both.

» I repeat... that all power is a trust; that we are accountable for its exercise; that from the people and for the people all springs, and all must exist.

» I say that justice is truth in action.

» The palace is not safe when the cottage is not happy.

» Two nations between whom there is no intercourse and no sympathy; who are as ignorant of each other's habits, thoughts, and feelings, as if they were dwellers in different zones, or inhabitants of different planets. The rich and the poor.

» The secret of success is constancy to purpose.

» It is much easier to be critical than to be correct.

» What we anticipate seldom occurs: but what we least expect generally happens.

» Never take anything for granted.

» A precedent embalms a principle.

» William Gladstone has not a single redeeming defect.

» The world is weary of statesmen whom democracy has degraded into politicians.

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

» A Conservative Government is an organized hypocrisy.

» Conservatism discards Prescription, shrinks from Principle, disavows Progress; having rejected all respect for antiquity, it offers no redress for the present, and makes no preparation for the future.

» We should never lose an occasion. Opportunity is more powerful even than conquerors and prophets.

» In politics nothing is contemptible.

» There is no act of treachery or meanness of which a political party is not capable; for in politics there is no honour.

» Finality is not the language of politics.

» There is no gambling like politics.

» A majority is always better than the best repartee.

» As for our majority... one is enough.

» No Government can be long secure without a formidable Opposition.

» Damn your principles! Stick to your party.

» As a general rule, the most successful man in life is the man who has the best information.

» I never deny. I never contradict. I sometimes forget.

» Everyone likes flattery; and when you come to Royalty you should lay it on with a trowel.

» Never complain and never explain.

» Read no history: nothing but biography, for that is life without theory.

» The governments of the present day have to deal not merely with other governments, with emperors, kings and ministers, but also with the secret societies which have everywhere their unscrupulous agents, and can at the last moment upset all the governments' plans.

» The world is governed by very different personages from what is imagined by those who are not behind the scenes.

» Something unpleasant is coming when men are anxious to tell the truth.

» The fool wonders, the wise man asks.

» Without tact you can learn nothing.

» Youth is a blunder; Manhood a struggle, Old Age a regret.

» The services in wartime are fit only for desperadoes, but in peace are only fit for fools.

» Where knowledge ends, religion begins.

» Courage is fire, and bullying is smoke.

» There can be economy only where there is efficiency.

» The people of England are the most enthusiastic in the world.

» Fame and power are the objects of all men. Even their partial fruition is gained by very few; and that, too, at the expense of social pleasure, health, conscience, life.

» Change is inevitable. Change is constant.

» A great city, whose image dwells in the memory of man, is the type of some great idea. Rome represents conquest; Faith hovers over the towers of Jerusalem; and Athens embodies the pre-eminent quality of the antique world, Art.

» Assassination has never changed the history of the world.

» Nine-tenths of the existing books are nonsense and the clever books are the refutation of that nonsense.

» There is no greater index of character so sure as the voice.

» Desperation is sometimes as powerful an inspirer as genius.

» A consistent soul believes in destiny, a capricious one in chance.

» I have brought myself, by long meditation, to the conviction that a human being with a settled purpose must accomplish it, and that nothing can resist a will which will stake even existence upon its fulfillment.

» Despair is the conclusion of fools.

» Duty cannot exist without faith.

» Talk to a man about himself and he will listen for hours.

» There is no education like adversity.

» Frank and explicit - that is the right line to take when you wish to conceal your own mind and confuse the minds of others.

» Grief is the agony of an instant. The indulgence of grief the blunder of a life.

» The health of the people is really the foundation upon which all their happiness and all their powers as a state depend.

» The best security for civilization is the dwelling, and upon properly appointed and becoming dwellings depends, more than anything else, the improvement of mankind.

» Power has only one duty - to secure the social welfare of the People.

» He was distinguished for ignorance; for he had only one idea, and that was wrong.

» Justice is truth in action.

» Nowadays, manners are easy and life is hard.

» Little things affect little minds.

» Mediocrity can talk, but it is for genius to observe.

» We moralize among ruins.

» Great countries are those that produce great people.

» Nationality is the miracle of political independence; race is the principle of physical analogy.

» I am prepared for the worst, but hope for the best.

» The pursuit of science leads only to the insoluble.

» When little is done, little is said; silence is the mother of truth.

» What is earnest is not always true; on the contrary, error is often more earnest than truth.

» The more you are talked about the less powerful you are.

» Every man has a right to be conceited until he is successful.

» Success is the child of audacity.

» Worry - a God, invisible but omnipotent. It steals the bloom from the cheek and lightness from the pulse; it takes away the appetite, and turns the hair gray.

» The Youth of a Nation are the trustees of posterity.

» We live in an age when to be young and to be indifferent can be no longer synonymous. We must prepare for the coming hour. The claims of the Future are represented by suffering millions; and the Youth of a Nation are the trustees of Posterity.

» Through perseverance many people win success out of what seemed destined to be certain failure.

» Increased means and increased leisure are the two civilizers of man.

» How much easier it is to be critical than to be correct.

» We are all born for love. It is the principle of existence, and its only end.

» Action may not always bring happiness; but there is no happiness without action.

» Fear makes us feel our humanity.

» Every production of genius must be the production of enthusiasm.

» The difference between a misfortune and a calamity is this: If Gladstone fell into the Thames, it would be a misfortune. But if someone dragged him out again, that would be a calamity.

» King Louis Philippe once said to me that he attributed the great success of the British nation in political life to their talking politics after dinner.

» We cannot learn men from books.

» Real politics are the possession and distribution of power.

» You will find as you grow older that courage is the rarest of all qualities to be found in public life.

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

» London is a roost for every bird.

» Colonies do not cease to be colonies because they are independent.

» Characters do not change. Opinions alter, but characters are only developed.

» Upon the education of the people of this country the fate of this country depends.

» To supervise people, you must either surpass them in their accomplishments or despise them.

» Youth is the trustee of prosperity.

» War is never a solution; it is an aggravation.

» It is easier to be critical than correct.

» I must follow the people. Am I not their leader?

» Travel teaches toleration.

» Adventures are to the adventurous.

» Time is precious, but truth is more precious than time.

» Man is only truly great when he acts from the passions.

» Almost everything that is great has been done by youth.

» You can tell the strength of a nation by the women behind its men.

» There is no waste of time in life like that of making explanations.

» Experience is the child of thought, and thought is the child of action.

» What we anticipate seldom occurs, what we least expected generally happens.

» Circumstances are beyond human control, but our conduct is in our own power.

» The more extensive a man's knowledge of what has been done, the greater will be his power of knowing what to do.

» Nature, like man, sometimes weeps from gladness.

» I have been ever of opinion that revolutions are not to be evaded.

» London is a modern Babylon.

» Genius, when young, is divine.

» When a man fell into his anecdotage it was a sign for him to retire from the world.

» The practice of politics in the East may be defined by one word: dissimulation.

» Things must be done by parties, not by persons using parties as tools.

» A University should be a place of light, of liberty, and of learning.

» That fatal drollery called a representative government.

» The view of Jerusalem is the history of the world; it is more, it is the history of earth and of heaven.

» Life is too short to be little. Man is never so manly as when he feels deeply, acts boldly, and expresses himself with frankness and with fervor.

» Man is made to adore and to obey: but if you will not command him, if you give him nothing to worship, he will fashion his own divinities, and find a chieftain in his own passions.

» The right honourable gentleman caught the Whigs bathing, and walked away with their clothes. He has left them in the full enjoyment of their liberal positions, and he is himself a strict conservative of their garments.

» My objection to Liberalism is this that it is the introduction into the practical business of life of the highest kind namely, politics of philosophical ideas instead of political principles.

» The question is this, "Is man an ape or an angel?" My Lord, I am on the side of the angels. I repudiate with indignation and abhorrence the contrary view, which is I believe, foreign to the conscience of humanity.

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