Benjamin Disraeli: Quotes about people

Benjamin Disraeli was British Conservative politician, writer, aristocrat and Prime Minister. Explore interesting quotes on people.
Benjamin Disraeli: 612   quotes 320   likes

“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.”

Benjamin Disraeli

Not Disraeli but La Rochefoucauld; it is Maxim 308 in his Reflections.
Misattributed

Men , People

“There is no doubt a difference in the right hon. gentleman's demeanour as leader of the Opposition and as Minister of the Crown. But that's the old story; you must not contrast too strongly the hours of courtship with the years of possession. 'Tis very true that the right hon. gentleman's conduct is different. I remember him making his protection speeches. They were the best speeches I ever heard. It was a great thing to hear the right hon. gentleman say: "I would rather be the leader of the gentlemen of England than possess the confidence of Sovereigns". That was a grand thing. We don't hear much of "the gentlemen of England" now. But what of that? They have the pleasures of memory—the charms of reminiscence. They were his first love, and, though he may not kneel to them now as in the hour of passion, still they can recall the past; and nothing is more useless or unwise than these scenes of crimination and reproach, for we know that in all these cases, when the beloved object has ceased to charm, it is in vain to appeal to the feelings. You know that this is true. Every man almost has gone through it. My hon. gentleman does what he can to keep them quiet; he sometimes takes refuge in arrogant silence, and sometimes he treats them with haughty frigidity; and if they knew anything of human nature they would take the hint and shut their mouths. But they won't. And what then happens? What happens under all such circumstances? The right hon. gentleman, being compelled to interfere, sends down his valet, who says in the genteelest manner: "We can have no whining here". And that, sir, is exactly the case of the great agricultural interest—that beauty which everybody wooed and one deluded. There is a fatality in such charms, and we now seem to approach the catastrophe of her career. Protection appears to be in about the same condition that Protestantism was in 1828. The country will draw its moral. For my part, if we are to have free trade, I, who honour genius, prefer that such measures should be proposed by the hon. member for Stockport than by one who through skilful Parliamentary manoeuvres has tampered with the generous confidence of a great people and a great party. For myself, I care not what may be the result. Dissolve, if you please, the Parliament you have betrayed. For me there remains this at least—the opportunity of expressing thus publicly my belief that a Conservative Government is an organised hypocrisy.”

Benjamin Disraeli

Speech http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/commons/1845/mar/17/agricultural-interest in the House of Commons (17 March 1845).
1840s

Love , People , Pleasure , Beauty

“I look upon the Whigs as an anti-national party. … Believing that the policy of the party was such as must destroy the honour of the kingdom abroad and the happiness of the people at home, I considered it my duty to oppose the Whigs, to ensure their discomfiture, and, if possible, their destruction.”

Benjamin Disraeli

Speech in Taunton (28 April 1835), 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. 286
1830s

Home , People , Happiness

“The life of this people greatly accords with my taste, which is naturally somewhat indolent and melancholy... To repose on voluptuous ottomans and smoke superb pipes, daily to indulge in the luxuries of a bath which requires half a dozen attendants for its perfection; to court the air in a carved caïque, by shores which are a perpetual scene; and to find no exertion greater than a canter on a barb; this is, I think, a far more sensible life than all the bustle of clubs, all the boring of drawing-rooms, and all the coarse vulgarity of our political controversies.”

Benjamin Disraeli

Source: Letter to Edward Lytton Bulwer from Constantinople, Turkey (27 December 1830), quoted in William Flavelle Monypenny and George Earle Buckle, The Life of Benjamin Disraeli, Earl of Beaconsfield. Volume I. 1804–1859 (1929), p. 174

Drawing , Perfection , Nature , Thinking

“You have nothing to trust to but your own energy and the sublime instinct of an ancient people. You must act as if everything depended on your individual efforts. The secret of success is constancy of purpose. Go to your homes, and teach there these truths, which will soon be imprinted on the conscience of the land. Make each man feel how much rests on his own exertions... Act in this spirit, and you will succeed. You will maintain your country in its present position. But you will do more than that, you will deliver to your posterity a land of liberty, of prosperity, of power, and of glory.”

Benjamin Disraeli

Source: Speech to the National Union of Conservative and Constitutional Associations in Crystal Palace, London (24 June 1872), quoted in Selected Speeches of the Late Right Honourable the Earl of Beaconsfield, Volume II, ed. T. E. Kebbel (1882), pp. 534-535

Home , Dependency , Country , Effort

“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.”

Benjamin Disraeli

Book VI, Chapter 7.
Books, Coningsby (1844), Vivian Grey (1826)

People , Exercises , Spring

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

Benjamin Disraeli

Speech of 1877-06-24
1870s

People , Health , Dependency , Happiness

“To build up a community, not upon Liberal opinions, which any man may fashion to his fancy, but upon popular principles, which assert equal rights, civil and religious; to uphold the institutions of the country because they are the embodiment of the wants and wishes of the nation, and protect us alike from individual tyranny and popular outrage; equally to resist democracy and oligarchy; and favour that principle of free aristocracy which is the only basis and security for constitutional government; to be vigilant to guard and prompt to vindicate the honour of the country, but to hold aloof from that turbulent diplomacy which only distracts the mind of a people from internal improvement; to lighten taxation; frugally but wisely to administer the public treasure; to favour popular education, because it is the best guarantee for public order; to defend local government; and to be as jealous of the rights of the working man as of the prerogatives of the Crown and the privileges of the Senate—these were once the principles which regulated Tory statesmen, and I for one have no wish that the Tory party should ever be in power unless they practise them.”

Benjamin Disraeli

Source: Speech https://api.parliament.uk/historic-hansard/commons/1862/aug/01/the-administration-of-viscount in the House of Commons (1 August 1862).

People , Education , Democracy , Communication

“My Lords, the key of India is not Merv, or Herat, or Candahar. The key of India is London. The majesty of sovereignty, the spirit and vigour of your Parliaments, the inexhaustible resources of a free, an ingenious, and a determined people—these are the keys of India.”

Benjamin Disraeli

Source: Speech https://api.parliament.uk/historic-hansard/lords/1881/mar/04/candahar-resolution in the House of Lords (4 March 1881).

People

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

Benjamin Disraeli

This comes from Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment, part 1, chapter 1.
Misattributed

Courageous , People , Fear

“Sir, very few people reach posterity. Who amongst us may arrive at that destination I presume not to vaticinate. Posterity is a most limited assembly. Those gentlemen who reach posterity are not much more numerous than the planets.”

Benjamin Disraeli

Speech http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/commons/1846/jan/22/address-in-answer-to-the-speech in the House of Commons (22 January 1846).
1840s

People

“The most distinguishing feature, or, at least, one of the most distinguishing features, of the great change effected in 1832 was that those who effected it at once abolished all the franchises as ancient as those of the Baronage of England; and, while they abolished them, they offered and proposed no substitute. The discontent upon the subject of representation which afterwards more or less pervaded our society dates from that period, and that discontent, all will admit, has ceased. It was terminated by the Act of Parliamentary Reform of 1867-8. That act was founded on a confidence that the great body of the people of this country were "Conservative". I use the word in its purest and loftiest sense. I mean that the people of England, and especially the working classes of England, are proud of belonging to a great country, and wish to maintain its greatness— that they are proud of belonging to an Imperial country, and are resolved to maintain, if they can, the empire of England— that they believe, on the whole, that the greatness and the empire of England are to be attributed to the ancient institutions of this country… There are people who may be, or who at least affect to be, working men, and who, no doubt, have a certain influence with a certain portion of the metropolitan working class, who talk Jacobinism… I say with confidence that the great body of the working class of England utterly repudiate such sentiments. They have no sympathy with them. They are English to the core. They repudiate cosmopolitan principles. They adhere to national principles. They are for maintaining the greatness of the kingdom and the empire, and they are proud of being subjects of our Sovereign and members of such an Empire. Well, then, as regards the political institutions of this country, the maintenance of which is one of the chief tenets of the Tory party, so far as I can read public opinion, the feeling of the nation is in accordance with the Tory party.”

Benjamin Disraeli

Speech at banquet of the National Union of Conservative and Constitutional Associations, Crystal Palace, London (24 June 1872), cited in "Mr. Disraeli at Sydenham," The Times (25 June 1872), p. 8.
1870s

Men , People , Feeling , Confidence

“In a progressive country change is constant; and the great question is, not whether you should resist change which is inevitable, but whether that change should be carried out in deference to the manners, the customs, the laws, the traditions of the people, or in deference to abstract principles and arbitrary and general doctrines. The one is a national system; the other…is a philosophic system.”

Benjamin Disraeli

Source: Speech on Reform Bill of 1867, Edinburgh, Scotland (29 October 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. 291.

People , Law , Question , Change

“I have that confidence in the common sense, I will say the common spirit of our countrymen, that I believe they will not long endure this huckstering tyranny of the Treasury Bench—these political pedlars that bought their party in the cheapest market, and sold us in the dearest. I know, Sir, that there are many who believe that the time is gone by when one can appeal to those high and honest impulses that were once the mainstay and the main element of the English character. I know, Sir, that we appeal to a people debauched by public gambling—stimulated and encouraged by an inefficient and shortsighted Minister. I know that the public mind is polluted with economic fancies; a depraved desire that the rich may become richer without the interference of industry and toil. I know, Sir, that all confidence in public men is lost. But, Sir, I have faith in the primitive and enduring elements of the English character. It may be vain now, in the midnight of their intoxication, to tell them that there will be an awakening of bitterness; it may be idle now, in the spring-tide of their economic frenzy, to warn them that there may be an ebb of trouble. But the dark and inevitable hour will arrive. Then, when their spirit is softened by misfortune, they will recur to those principles that made England great, and which, in our belief, can alone keep England great. Then, too, perchance they may remember, not with unkindness, those who, betrayed and deserted, were neither ashamed nor afraid to struggle for the "good old cause"—the cause with which are associated principles the most popular, sentiments the most entirely national—the cause of labour—the cause of the people—the cause of England.”

Benjamin Disraeli

Speech http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/commons/1846/may/15/corn-importation-bill-adjourned-debate in the House of Commons (15 May 1846).
1840s

Men , People , Faith , Confidence

“There is no subject in which I have taken a deeper interest than the condition of the working classes. Long before what is called the 'condition of the people question' was discussed in the House of Commons, I had employed my pen on the subject. I had long been aware that there was something rotten in the core of our social system. I had seen that while immense fortunes were accumulating, while wealth was increasing to a superabundance, and while Great Britain was cited throughout Europe as the most prosperous nation in the world, the working classes, the creators of wealth, were steeped in the most abject poverty and gradually sinking into the deepest degradation.”

Benjamin Disraeli

Shropshire Conservative (31 August 1844), 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. 629.
1840s

People , World , Question , Housing

“The press is not only free, it is powerful. That power is ours. It is the proudest that man can enjoy. It was not granted by monarchs, it was not gained for us by aristocracies; but it sprang from the people, and, with an immortal instinct, it has always worked for the people.”

Benjamin Disraeli

Speech at the Printing Trade Festival (1845).
1840s

People

“First, without reference to England, looking at all countries, I say that it is the first duty of the Minister, and the first interest of the State, to maintain a balance between the two great branches of national industry; that is a principle which has been recognised by all great Ministers for the last two hundred years…Why we should maintain that balance between the two great branches of national industry, involves political considerations—social considerations, affecting the happiness, prosperity, and morality of the people, as well as the stability of the State. But I go further; I say that in England we are bound to do more—I repeat what I have repeated before, that in this country there are special reasons why we should not only maintain the balance between the two branches of our national industry, but why we should give a preponderance…to the agricultural branch; and the reason is, because in England we have a territorial Constitution. We have thrown upon the land the revenues of the Church, the administration of justice, and the estate of the poor; and this has been done, not to gratify the pride, or pamper the luxury of the proprietors of the land, but because, in a territorial Constitution, you, and those whom you have succeeded, have found the only security for self-government—the only barrier against that centralising system which has taken root in other countries.”

Benjamin Disraeli

Speech http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/commons/1846/feb/20/commercial-policy-customs-corn-laws in the House of Commons (20 February 1846).
1840s

People , Justice , Country , Happiness

“The English people are, without exception, the most enthusiastic people in the world. There are more excitable races. The French, the Italians, are much more excitable; but for deep and fervid feeling, there is no race in the world at all equal to the English. And what is the subject, of all others, upon which the English people have been most enthusiastic? Religion. The notes on the gamut of their feeling are few, but they are deep. Industry, Liberty, Religion, form the solemn scale. Industry, Liberty, Religion — that is the history of England.”

Benjamin Disraeli

Source: Speech in Wycombe (30 October 1862), 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. 98.

People , World , Religion , Feeling