Benjamin Disraeli: Trending quotes (page 4)

“A very remarkable people the Zulus: they defeat our generals, they convert our bishops, they have settled the fate of a great European dynasty.”

Benjamin Disraeli

Source: Upon hearing of the death of Napoléon, Prince Imperial of the House of Bonaparte in Africa (1879); cited in James Anthony Froude, Lord Beaconsfield (1890), p. 213.

Fate , People

“None are so interested in maintaining the institutions of the country as the working classes. The rich and the powerful will not find much difficulty under any circumstances in maintaining their rights, but the privileges of the people can only be defended and secured by popular institutions.”

Benjamin Disraeli

Source: Letter to a working men's club (1867), quoted in William Flavelle Monypenny and George Earle Buckle, The Life of Benjamin Disraeli, Earl of Beaconsfield. Volume II. 1860–1881 (London: John Murray, 1929), p. 297.

People , Country

“He is so vain that he wants to figure in history as the settler of all the great questions; but a Parliamentary constitution is not favorable to such ambitions; things must be done by parties, not by persons using parties as tools.”

Benjamin Disraeli

Source: Letter to Lord John Manners, referring to the tactics of Prime Minister Sir Robert Peel (17 December 1846), cited in William Flavelle Monypenny and George Earle Buckle, The Life of Benjamin Disraeli, Earl of Beaconsfield (Vol. 2) (1913), p. 337-338.

History , Question , Personality

“Now I must tell that nothing will induce me to support the 3 F's—three fiddlesticks. During a long parliamentary life, and long before I was in Parliament, I have been profoundly convinced, that the greatness and character of this country depended on our landed tenure. All the rest, I look upon, and have ever looked upon, as "leather and prunella". I fear the pass is sold… I have formally, and even solemnly, warned the house in wh[ich] I now sit, that the landed system of this country would be attacked and invaded by the revolutionary party.”

Benjamin Disraeli

Letter to Lord Salisbury (27 December 1880), quoted in William Flavelle Monypenny and George Earle Buckle, The Life of Benjamin Disraeli, Earl of Beaconsfield. Volume II. 1860–1881 (London: John Murray, 1929), p. 1468.
1880s

Life , Fear , Support , Housing

“In the great struggle between popular principles and liberal opinions, which is the characteristic of our age, I hope ever to be found on the side of the people, and of the Institutions, of England. It is our Institutions that have made us free, and can alone keep us so; by the bulwark which they offer to the insidious encroachments of a convenient, yet enervating, system of centralisation, which, if left unchecked, will prove fatal to the national character.”

Benjamin Disraeli

Address to the electors of Buckinghamshire (25 May 1847), quoted in William Flavelle Monypenny and George Earle Buckle, The Life of Benjamin Disraeli, Earl of Beaconsfield. Volume I. 1804–1859 (London: John Murray, 1929), p. 837.
1840s

People , Age , Hope

“Then there was a maiden speech, so inaudible, that it was doubted whether, after all, the young orator really did lose his virginity.”

Benjamin Disraeli

Book I, Chapter 6.
Books, Coningsby (1844), The Young Duke (1831)

“Beware of endeavouring to become a great man in a hurry. One such attempt in ten thousand may succeed: these are fearful odds.”

Benjamin Disraeli

Book I, Chapter 10.
Books, Coningsby (1844), Vivian Grey (1826)

Fear

“The pursuit of science leads only to the insoluble.”

Benjamin Disraeli

Source: Books, Coningsby (1844), Lothair (1870), Ch. 17.

Science

“Man is not a rational animal. He is only truly good or great when he acts from passion.”

Benjamin Disraeli

Book 6, chapter 12.
Books, Coningsby (1844), Henrietta Temple (1837)

Passion , Animals

“I say that there are two systems of policy to apply to the management of what is commonly called the Eastern question, but which resolves itself into the geographical question, namely, the possession of that site which commands the empire of the world—the city of Constantinople. There is that school of opinions which I call British opinions, advocated by the noble Lord the Leader of this House (Lord J. Russell) and the noble Lord the Secretary of State for the Home Department (Viscount Palmerston), who believe in the vitality of Turkey, that it may remain an independent and even a progressive country, and form a powerful and sufficient barrier against the encroachment of Russia. There is the other school, which I call the school of Russian polities, that believes that Turkey is exhausted; that all we can do is, by gradually enfranchising the Christian population, to prevent, when its fall takes place, perfect anarchy, and contemplates the possibility of Russia occupying the Bosphorus.”

Benjamin Disraeli

Speech http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/commons/1854/mar/31/war-with-russia-the-queens-message in the House of Commons (21 March 1854).
1850s

World , School , Home , Question

“When a man fell into his anecdotage, it was a sign for him to retire.”

Benjamin Disraeli

Source: Books, Coningsby (1844), Lothair (1870), Ch. 28.

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

Benjamin Disraeli

Cited in Gwendolen Cecil, Life of Robert Marquis of Salisbury: 1868-1880, Vol. 2. (1921), p. 205.
Sourced but undated

Men , Courage

“The movement of the middle classes for the abolition of slavery was virtuous, but it was not wise. It was an ignorant movement. It showed a want of knowledge both of the laws of commerce and the stipulations of treaties; and it has alike ruined the colonies and aggravated the slave trade…The history of the abolition of slavery by the English and its consequences, would be a narrative of ignorance, injustice, blundering, waste, and havoc, not easily paralleled in the history of mankind.”

Benjamin Disraeli

Lord George Bentinck: A Political Biography (1852), pp. 324-325.
1850s

Law , History , Knowledge

“I think the author who speaks about his own books is almost as bad as a mother who talks about her own children.”

Benjamin Disraeli

Source: Speech at banquet given by the city of Glasgow to Disraeli on his inauguration as Lord Rector of Glasgow University (19 November 1870), cited in Wit and Wisdom of Benjamin Disraeli, Collected from his Writings and Speeches (1881), p. 16.

Children , Books , Thinking

“An insular country, subject to fogs, and with a powerful middle class, requires grave statesmen.”

Benjamin Disraeli

Source: Books, Coningsby (1844), Endymion (1880), Ch. 37.

Country

“You cannot choose between party government and Parliamentary government. I say, you can have no Parliamentary government if you have no party government; and, therefore, when Gentlemen denounce party government, they strike at that scheme of government which, in my opinion, has made this country great, and which I hope will keep it great.”

Benjamin Disraeli

Source: Speech http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/commons/1848/aug/30/business-of-the-session in the House of Commons (30 August 1848).

Hope , Country

“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.”

Benjamin Disraeli

Source: Speech http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/commons/1848/jun/05/expulsion-of-the-british-ambassador-from in the House of Commons (5 June 1848).

Life , Idea , Business

“The Services in war time are fit only for desperadoes but, in peace, are fit only for fools.”

Benjamin Disraeli

Book I, Chapter 9.
Books, Coningsby (1844), Vivian Grey (1826)

War , Peace , Fools , Time

“Nature is more powerful than education; time will develop everything.”

Benjamin Disraeli

Part 1, Chapter 8. Compare: "La Nature a été en eux forte que l'éducation" (translated: "Nature was a stronger force in them than education"), Voltaire, Vie de Molière.
Books, Coningsby (1844), Contarini Fleming (1832)

Education , Nature , Time

“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.”

Benjamin Disraeli

Speech http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/commons/1855/mar/26/newspaper-stamp-duties-bill in the House of Commons (26 March 1855).
1850s

Understanding