Benjamin Disraeli: Greatness

Benjamin Disraeli was British Conservative politician, writer, aristocrat and Prime Minister. Explore interesting quotes on greatness.
Benjamin Disraeli: 612 quotes320 likes

“Nothing is more disgusting, than the habit of our officers speaking always of the inhabitants of India—many of them descended from the great races—as “niggers.””

Benjamin Disraeli

It is ignorant, & brutal,—& surely most mischievous.
Source: Letter to Lord Salisbury (13 December 1875), quoted in Michael Bentley, Lord Salisbury's World: Conservative Environments in Late-Victorian Britain (2001), p. 224, n. 10

“I have always looked upon the interests of the labouring classes as essentially the most conservative interests of the country. The rights of labour have been to me always as sacred as the rights of property, and I have always thought that those who were most interested in the stability and even in the glory of a State are the great mass of the population, happy to enjoy the privileges of freemen under good laws, and proud at the same time of the country which confers on its inhabitants a name of honour and of glorious reputation in every quarter of the globe.”

Benjamin Disraeli

Source: Speech in Edinburgh (30 October 1867), quoted in The Chancellor of the Exchequer in Scotland; Being Two Speeches Delivered by Him in the City of Edinburgh on 29th and 30th October, 1867 (1867), pp. 36-37

“And now, gentlemen, what is the condition of the great body of the people? In the first place, gentlemen, they have for centuries been in the full enjoyment of that which no other country in Europe has ever completely attained—complete rights of personal freedom.”

Benjamin Disraeli

Source: Speech to the Conservatives of Manchester (3 April 1872), quoted in Selected Speeches of the Late Right Honourable the Earl of Beaconsfield, Volume II, ed. T. E. Kebbel (1882), p. 507

“I am opposed to it because I wish to see united at an important crisis of the world—a crisis that perhaps is nearer arriving than some of us suppose—because I wish to see a united people welded in one great nationality, and because I feel that if we sanction this policy—if we do not cleanse the Parliamentary bosom of all this "perilous stuff"—we shall bring about the disintegration of the Kingdom and the destruction of the Empire.”

Benjamin Disraeli

Source: Speech http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/commons/1874/jul/02/motion-for-a-committee-adjourned-debate#column_963 in the House of Commons against Irish Home Rule (2 July 1874)