Benjamin Disraeli (1804 – 1881)
British politician, novelist, and essayist, serving twice as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom.
Every production of genius must be the production of enthusiasm.
This shows how much easier it is to be critical than to be correct.
A majority is always the best repartee.
Something has risen up in this country as fatal in the political world as it has been in the landed world of Ireland—we have a great Parliamentary middleman. It is well known what a middleman is; he is a man who bamboozles one party, and plunders the other, till, having obtained a position to which he is not entitled, he cries out, "Let us have 566 no party questions, but fixity of tenure."
He told Lord Esher that, in talking with the Queen, he observed a simple rule: "I never deny; I never contradict; I sometimes forget."
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.
Something unpleasant is coming when men are anxious to tell the truth.
At present the peace of the world has been preserved, not by statesmen, but by capitalists.
That is an apology, not an explanation; and apologies only account for that which they do not alter.
The present man will do well, and will be particularly loyal and anxious to please me in every way. He is vy. peculiar, but vy. clever and sensible and vy. conciliatory.
It is the initial letters of the four points of the compass that make the word "news," and he must understand that news is that which collies from the North, East, West and South, and if it comes from only one point of the compass, then it is a class publication, and not news.
Nature has given us two ears but only one mouth.
But he has left us the legacy of heroes--the memory of his great name, and the inspiration of his great example.
There is no gambling like politics.
Great countries are those that produce great people.
With words we govern men.
The age of chivalry is past. Bores have succeeded to dragons.
Which do you believe most likely to enter an insane convention, a body of English gentlemen honoured by the favour of their Sovereign and the confidence of their fellow-subjects, managing your affairs for five years, I hope with prudence, and not altogether without success, or a sophistical rhetorician, inebriated with the exuberance of his own verbosity, and gifted with an egotistical imagination that can at all times command an interminable and inconsistent series of arguments to malign an opponent and to glorify himself?
Why, I say, that to tax the community for the advantage of a class is not protection; it is plunder, and I entirely disclaim it; but I ask you to protect the rights and interests of labour generally in the first place, by allowing no free imports from countries which meet you with countervailing duties; and, in the second place, with respect to agricultural produce, to compensate the soil for the burdens from which other classes are free by an equivalent duty. This is my view of what is called "protection."
It is knowledge that influences and equalises the social condition of man; that gives to all, however different their political position, passions which are in common, and enjoyments which are universal.