Stanley Baldwin Quotes (225 quotes) | Quotes of famous people

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Famous Stanley Baldwin Quotes

“We don't know what Germany really intends. We do know and have long known that France is pacific, and is not a potential enemy. We cannot say that about Germany.”

Stanley Baldwin

Conversation with Thomas Jones (28 April 1934), quoted in Thomas Jones, A Diary with Letters. 1931-1950 (Oxford University Press, 1954), p. 129.
1934

“I went out into Downing Street a happy man. Of course it was partly because an old buffer like me enjoys feeling that he is still not quite out of things. But it was also pure patriotic joy that my country at such a time should have found such a leader. The furnace of war has smelted out all base metals from him.”

Stanley Baldwin

On his meeting with Winston Churchill, quoted in Harold Nicolson's diary (21 July 1943), Nigel Nicolson (ed.), Harold Nicolson: Diaries and Letters. 1939-1945 (London: Collins, 1967), p. 286.
1940s

“Magna Carta is the Law: Let the King look out.”

Stanley Baldwin

So it has always been with tyrants among our own people: when the King was tyrant, let him look out. And it has always been the same, and will be the same, whether the tyrant be the Barons, whether the tyrant be the Church, whether he be demagogue or dictator — let them look out.
Speech at Westminster Hall (4 July 1935); published in This Torch of Freedom: Speeches and Addresses (1935), p. 4
1935

“Two years before the war the then Government of Lord Oxford was confronted with an epidemic of strikes. The quarrel of one trade became the quarrel of all. This was the sympathetic strike…In the hands of one set of leaders, it perhaps meant no more than obtaining influence to put pressure on employers to better the conditions of the men. But in the hands of others it became an engine to wage what was beginning to be called class warfare, and the general strike which first began to be talked about was to be the supreme instrument by which the whole community could be either starved or terrified into submission to the will of its promoters. There was a double attitude at work in the same movement: the old constitutional attitude…of negotiations, keeping promises made collectively, employing strikes where negotiations failed; and on the other hand the attempt to transform the whole of this great trade union organization into a machine for destroying the system of private enterprise, of substituting for it a system of universal State employment…What was to happen afterwards was never very clear. The only thing clear was the first necessity to smash up the existing system. This was a profound breach with the past, and in its origin it was from a foreign source, and, like all those foreign revolutionary instances, it has been very largely secretive and subterranean. This attitude towards agreements and contracts has been a departure from the British tradition of open and straight dealing. The propaganda is a propaganda of hatred and envy.”

Stanley Baldwin

Speech in Chippenham (12 June 1926), quoted in Our Inheritance (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1938), pp. 164-165.
1926

“What matters is that religion should sway our motives, sustain our principles, surround and bathe our spirits like a secret atmosphere as we go about our work…Religion, as we are all agreed, is not merely an affair of Christians in churches; it is an affair of Christians in politics, in diplomacy, in trade, in industry, in school, in sport. I think the popular judgment has accepted that as axiomatic.”

Stanley Baldwin

Speech to the annual assembly of the Congregational Union, London (12 May 1931), published in This Torch of Freedom (1935), pp. 80-81.
1931

“I think that to those of us who have watched the development of the Middle West and the Far West nothing is more remarkable, nothing pays a higher tribute to the finest qualities of our race, than the way in which law and order are maintained from coast to coast.”

Stanley Baldwin

Speech in Regina, Canada (13 August 1927), quoted in Our Inheritance (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1938), p. 105.
1927

Stanley Baldwin Quotes about homeland

“I do not think there is any single thing more important for our people, and for those who form public opinion, than to keep our people immune, so far as they can be so kept, from the virus of either Communism or Fascism. Our constitution has been evolved… There are some people who speak wildly and loosely about sudden and fundamental changes. Look out for them, and remember that our party, full of ideas of progress to-day as any other party that exists, has always stood, in Disraeli's words, "for the maintenance of the Constitution."… any attempt at sudden constitutional changes of a fundamental nature would not be maintaining the Constitution… the whole virtue of our people… has been the way in which we have adapted ourselves, and adapted the instruments that we use to give effect to our wishes; and we have adapted ourselves without bloodshed and without hatred among ourselves. Far, far the most important thing that we have to do is to keep this country at least… secure from those strange crises that to-day are rushing round the world.”

Stanley Baldwin

Speech to the Bewdley Unionist Association in Worcester (10 April 1937), quoted in Service of Our Lives (1937), pp. 102-104.
1937

“One of the reasons why our people are alive and flourishing, and have avoided many of the troubles that have fallen to less happy nations, is because we have never been guided by logic in anything we have done. If you will only do as I have done—study the history of the growth of the Constitution from the time of the Civil War until the Hanoverians came to the Throne—you will see what a country can do without the aid of logic, but with the aid of common sense.”

Stanley Baldwin

Speech to the Empire Day and Coronation Banquet of the Combined Empire Societies, London (24 May 1937), quoted in Service of Our Lives (1937), pp. 154-155.
1937

“For Greek democracy failed, and the reasons for its failure are full of instruction. The great ruling ideas which the Greeks gave to the world, ideas which England later was to absorb and spread over a quarter of the globe, freedom and self-government, social equality and civic patriotism, these were corrupted by demagogues and flatterers of the people. It was so fatally easy to think that freedom meant doing what you like, that one man was not only as good as another but equally able to fill any office whatsoever, that majorities could do no wrong, that you could make Utopian laws for your own country without regard to what other nations or other empires were doing…Freedom of speech was stifled and public men who refused to advocate pleasures for the public multitude were banished. Politicians rivalled one another in bribing the electorate.”

Stanley Baldwin

The John Clifford Lecture at Coventry (14 July 1930), published in This Torch of Freedom (1935), pp. 35-36.
1930

“Then, above all, the English people have a curious sense of humour, rather than wit. Humour comes from the heart; wit comes from the brain. We can laugh at ourselves. Do you remember what Ruskin said? "The English laugh is the purest and truest in the metals that can be minted," and indeed, only Heaven can know what the country owes to it. Well, laughter is one of the best things that God has given us, and with hearty laughter neither malice nor indecency can exist. And of all men who have shown us what that laughter can mean, none was like Dickens, every one of whose characters is English to the marrow; and if I might mention a living writer, I think the truest Englishmen are found in Mr. Priestley's novels.”

Stanley Baldwin

Broadcast from London (25 September 1933), quoted in This Torch of Freedom (1935), p. 13.
1933

“The mystery, the romance, the coincidence of real life far transcends the mystery and the romance and the coincidence of fiction. I would like at the beginning of my remarks to remind hon. Members of something that has always struck me as one of the strangest and most romantic coincidences that have entered into our political life. Far away in time, in the dawn of history, the greatest race of the many races then emerging from prehistoric mists was the great Aryan race. When that race left the country which it occupied in the western part of Central Asia, one great branch moved west, and in the course of their wanderings they founded the cities of Athens and Sparta; they founded Rome; they made Europe, and in the veins of the principal nations of Europe flows the blood of their Aryan forefathers. The speech of the Aryans which they brought with them has spread through out Europe. It has spread to America. It has spread to the Dominions beyond the seas. At the same time, one branch went south, and they crossed the Himalayas. They went into the Punjab and they spread through India, and, as an historic fact, ages ago, there stood side by side in their ancestral land the ancestors of the English people and the ancestors of the Rajputs and of the Brahmins. And now, after aeons have passed, the children of the remotest generations from that ancestry have been brought together by the inscrutable decree of Providence to set themselves to solve the most difficult, the most complicated political problem that has ever been set to any people of the world.”

Stanley Baldwin

Speech http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/commons/1929/nov/07/india in the House of Commons (7 November 1929).
1929

“For too long people have forgotten what a genius there is in the ordinary people of this country…the English stock is a true stock; and our people are the same people as those who built our cathedrals and our village churches: who carved the sculptures and who carved the screens inside them.”

Stanley Baldwin

Speech upon receiving the Freedom of the City of Winchester (6 July 1928), published in This Torch of Freedom (1935), p. 115.
1928

Stanley Baldwin Quotes about people

“Kindliness, sympathy with the under dog, love of home! Are not these all characteristics of the ordinary Englishman that you know? He is a strong individualist in this, that he does not want to mould himself into any common mould, to be like everybody else; he likes to develop his own individuality. And yet he can combine for service. Some of the best things in this country have originated among our own common people with no help from governments—friendly society work, our trade unions, our hospitals and our education before the State took it in hand. Then the Englishman has a profound respect for law and order—that is part of his tradition of self-government. Ordered liberty—not disordered liberty, nor what invariably follows, tyranny; but ordered liberty, at present one of the rare things of this topsy-turvy world.”

Stanley Baldwin

Broadcast from London (25 September 1933), quoted in This Torch of Freedom (1935), pp. 13-14.
1933

“I often wonder if all the people in this country realise the inevitable changes that are coming over the industrial system in England…owing to the peculiar circumstances of my own life, I have seen a great deal of this evolution taking place before my own eyes. I worked for many years in an industrial business, and had under me a large number, or what was then a large number, of men…I was probably working under a system that was already passing. I doubt if its like could have been found in any of the big modern industrial towns of this country, even at that time. It was a place where I knew, and had known from childhood, every man on the ground, a place where I was able to talk with the men not only about the troubles in the works, but troubles at home where strikes and lock-outs were unknown. It was a place where the fathers and grandfathers of the men then working there had worked, and where their sons went automatically into the business. It was also a place where nobody ever "got the sack," and where we had a natural sympathy for those who were less concerned in efficiency than is this generation, and where a number of old gentlemen used to spend their days sitting on the handle of a wheelbarrow, smoking their pipes. Oddly enough, it was not an inefficient community. It was the last survivor of that type of works, and ultimately became swallowed up in one of those great combinations towards which the industries of to-day are tending.”

Stanley Baldwin

Speech http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/commons/1925/mar/06/industrial-peace in the House of Commons (6 March 1925).
1925

“I say that such qualities were never more needed in the word. Let us hold on to what we are; let us not try to be like anybody else…With our pertinacity, our love of freedom, our love of ordered freedom, our respect for law, our respect for the individual and our power of combining in service; indeed, in our strength and in our weakness, I believe, from my heart, that our people are fitted to pass through whatever trials may be before us, and to emerge—if they are true to their own best traditions—a greater people in the future than they have been in the past.”

Stanley Baldwin

Broadcast from London (25 September 1933), quoted in This Torch of Freedom (1935), p. 14.
1933

“Then, in no nation more than the English is there a diversified individuality. We are a people of individuals, and a people of character…The preservation of the individuality of the Englishman is essential to the preservation of the type of the race, and if our differences are smoothed out and we lose that gift, we shall lose at the same time our power. Uniformity of type is a bad thing. I regret very much myself the uniformity of speech. Time was, two centuries ago, when you could have told by his speech from what part of England every member of Parliament came. He spoke the speech of his fathers, and I regret that the dialects have gone, and I regret that by a process which for want of a better name we have agreed among ourselves to call education, we are drifting away from the language of the people and losing some of the best English words and phrases which have lasted in the country through centuries, to make us all talk one uniform and inexpressive language.”

Stanley Baldwin

Speech at the annual dinner of The Royal Society of St. George (6 May 1924), quoted in On England, and Other Addresses (1926), pp. 5-6.
1924

“Now, I always think that one of the most curious contradictions about the English stock is this: that while the criticism that is often made of us is not without an element of truth, and that is that as a nation we are less open to the intellectual sense than the Latin races, yet through that may be a fact, there is no nation on earth that has had the same knack of producing geniuses. It is almost a characteristic of the English race; there is hardly any line in which the nation has not produced geniuses, and in a nation which may people might think restrained, unable to express itself, in this same nation you have a literature second to none that has ever existed in the world, and certainly in poetry supreme.”

Stanley Baldwin

Speech at the annual dinner of The Royal Society of St. George (6 May 1924), quoted in On England, and Other Addresses (1926), pp. 2-3.
1924

“To me the greatest value of the Commonwealth of Nations to which we belong is not necessarily an area in which to make money, but it is space in the world for the spreading and the increase of our own race, because I believe our own race to be the best in the world, and I believe that the progress of the world, morally and spiritually as well as economically, is bound up in the spread of our people with their ideas and with their ideals.”

Stanley Baldwin

Speech http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/commons/1924/jun/18/imperial-preference in the House of Commons (18 June 1924).
1924

Stanley Baldwin: Trending quotes

“One of the weaknesses of a democracy, a system of which I am trying to make the best, is that until it is right up against it it will never face the truth.”

Stanley Baldwin

Speech http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/commons/1935/oct/23/international-situation#column_152 in the House of Commons (23 October 1935).
1935
Context: The lessons of this crisis have made it clear to us that in the interests of world peace it is essential that our defensive services should be stronger than they are to-day. When I say that I am not thinking of any kind of unilateral rearmament directed either in reality or in imagination against any particular country, as might have been said to be the case before the War. It is a strengthening of our defensive services within the framework of the League, for the sake of international peace, not for selfish ends... I will not be responsible for the conduct of any Government in this country at this present time, if I am not given power to remedy the deficiencies which have accrued in our defensive services since the War.... One of the weaknesses of a democracy, a system of which I am trying to make the best, is that until it is right up against it it will never face the truth.

Truth , Democracy

“Quality before quantity any day. Build up with the best. What does it matter if it is a hundred years, or two hundred years, or more, before your country is full? Keep the stock you have, and the men and women you have, and see that the coming generations are in no way inferior to them.”

Stanley Baldwin

Speech to the Canada Club, London (21 November 1927), quoted in Our Inheritance (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1938), p. 141.
1927
Context: Your country is a country for men from the North, the hardy virile races. Quality before quantity any day. Build up with the best. What does it matter if it is a hundred years, or two hundred years, or more, before your country is full? Keep the stock you have, and the men and women you have, and see that the coming generations are in no way inferior to them.

Women , Men , Way , Country

“I think that our experience in business had taught us that, as a matter of fact, there are no such things as supermen, and that we should have to rely on the innate common-sense, integrity, courage and faith of the common men and women of this country if we were to make good.”

Stanley Baldwin

Speech in Leeds (13 March 1925), quoted in On England, and Other Addresses (1926), p. 62.
1925
Context: We were not peculiarly impressed with speeches that talked of the glorious time that was coming after the war. We realised what the war meant in the world. We felt the foundations of civilisation in Europe cracking. We knew as business men that for a generation this country and the world would be as a whole far, far poorer, and we realised early the struggle that must result to repair the cracks in the foundations of our civilisation and to restore to the country that level of prosperity which she had enjoyed before the war. I think, too, many of us had little faith in supermen. I think that our experience in business had taught us that, as a matter of fact, there are no such things as supermen, and that we should have to rely on the innate common-sense, integrity, courage and faith of the common men and women of this country if we were to make good.

Women , Men , Faith , Courage

Stanley Baldwin Quotes

“I give you my word that there will be no great armaments.”

Stanley Baldwin

Speech to the Peace Society (31 October 1935), quoted in This Torch of Freedom (1935), pp. 338-339.
1935
Context: Do not fear or misunderstand when the Government say they are looking to our defences. It does not mean that we look upon force as the judge and law-giver in the affairs of nations. We do not dedicate ourselves to such evil, and there is here no spirit whatever of aggression. But weakness, or wavering, or uncertainty, or neglect of our obligations— obligations for peace— doubts of our own safety give no assurance of peace; believe me, quite the reverse. Do not fear that it is a step in the wrong direction. You need not remind me of the solemn task of the League— to reduce armaments by agreement. I know, and I shall not forget. But we have gone too far alone, and must try to bring others along with us. I give you my word that there will be no great armaments.

“Freedom for common men, which was to have been the fruit of victory, is once more in jeopardy in our own land because it has been taken away from the common men of other lands.”

Stanley Baldwin

Speech to the Empire Rally of Youth at the Royal Albert Hall (18 May 1937), quoted in Service of Our Lives (1937), pp. 162-163.
1937
Context: The twenty post-War years have shown that war does not settle the account. There is a balance brought forward. When emancipation is achieved a new slavery may begin. The moment of victory may be the beginning of defeat. The days which saw the framing of the League of Nations saw the signing of the Treaty of Versailles. Should both be entered on the credit side? Twenty years ago we should all have said, "Yes"; to-day the reply would be doubtful, for both have belied the hopes of mankind and given place to disillusion. Freedom for common men, which was to have been the fruit of victory, is once more in jeopardy in our own land because it has been taken away from the common men of other lands.

Men , Freedom , Victory

“A free trade unionism is a bulwark of popular liberty.”

Stanley Baldwin

Speech to the Conservative Party Conference in Bournemouth (4 October 1935), quote in The Times (5 October 1935), p. 17.
1935
Context: Trade unionism, like friendly societies, is a peculiarly English growth. This country is the native soil in which such democratic institutions are indigenous. They are an integral part of the country's life, and they are a great stabilizing influence... Watch carefully the continuous efforts that are made by the Communist Party in this country to get control of and to destroy trade unionism. They do not want to destroy it for nothing. A free trade unionism is a bulwark of popular liberty. If trade unionism were destroyed you would be a long way on the road to Communism, and via Communism to Fascism.

“To-day when we think of Empire we think of it primarily as an instrument of world peace.”

Stanley Baldwin

Speech to a dinner given by the Province of Ontario (6 August 1927), quoted in Our Inheritance (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1938), pp. 91-92.
1927
Context: There is no precedent for the British Commonwealth of Nations... we have wrought for ourselves a common tradition which transcends all local loyalties and binds us as one people. The Empire of our dreams, if not always of our deeds, is compacted of great spiritual elements— freedom and law, fellowship and loyalty, honour and toleration... To-day when we think of Empire we think of it primarily as an instrument of world peace.

World , Peace , Thinking

“The brotherhood of man to-day is often denied and derided and called foolishness, but it is, in fact, one of the foolish things of the world which God has chosen to confound the wise, and the world is confounded by it daily. We may evade it, we may deny it; but we shall find no rest for our souls, or will the world until we acknowledge it as the ultimate wisdom. That is the message I have tried to deliver as Prime Minister in a hundred speeches.”

Stanley Baldwin

Speech to the Empire Rally of Youth at the Royal Albert Hall (18 May 1937), quoted in Service of Our Lives (1937), pp. 166-167.
1937
Context: The torch I would hand to you, and ask you to pass from hand to hand along the pathways of the Empire, is a Christian truth rekindled anew in each ardent generation. Use men as ends and never merely as means; and live for the brotherhood of man, which implies the Fatherhood of God. The brotherhood of man to-day is often denied and derided and called foolishness, but it is, in fact, one of the foolish things of the world which God has chosen to confound the wise, and the world is confounded by it daily. We may evade it, we may deny it; but we shall find no rest for our souls, or will the world until we acknowledge it as the ultimate wisdom. That is the message I have tried to deliver as Prime Minister in a hundred speeches.

Wisdom , God , World , Soul

“Love of one's country has been perverted into hatred of our neighbour's country by the preaching of lop-sided intellectuals, who themselves generally manage to escape the martyrdom they provide for others.”

Stanley Baldwin

Speech to the St. David's Day Banquet in Cardiff (1 March 1927), quoted in Our Inheritance (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1938), pp. 46-47.
1927
Context: ... that chauvinistic spirit which so often has been the curse of modern Europe. The best way in which you can develop a true national feeling and put your own country in the pride of place which belongs to her is to do it in communion with other nations and with the sole object of improving the world at large. It is not from disillusionment we have suffered since the War; we are taking a more sober view both of ourselves and of the world... Nationalism can take on some very ugly shapes. It looks as if as many crimes will be committed in its name as in the name of Religion or of Liberty. Indeed the source of the trouble is that Nationalists are apt to assume the garments of Religion... Love of one's country has been perverted into hatred of our neighbour's country by the preaching of lop-sided intellectuals, who themselves generally manage to escape the martyrdom they provide for others.

Love , Country

“Supposing I had gone to the country and said that Germany was rearming and that we must rearm, does anybody think that this pacific democracy would have rallied to that cry at that moment? I cannot think of anything that would have made the loss of the election from my point of view more certain.”

Stanley Baldwin

Speech http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/commons/1936/nov/12/debate-on-the-address in the House of Commons (12 November 1936).
1936
Context: I put before the whole House my own views with an appalling frankness. From 1933, I and my friends were all very worried about what was happening in Europe. You will remember at that time the Disarmament Conference was sitting in Geneva. You will remember at that time there was probably a stronger pacifist feeling running through this country than at any time since the War. I am speaking of 1933 and 1934... My position as the leader of a great party was not altogether a comfortable one. I asked myself what chance was there... within the next year or two of that feeling being so changed that the country would give a mandate for rearmament? Supposing I had gone to the country and said that Germany was rearming and that we must rearm, does anybody think that this pacific democracy would have rallied to that cry at that moment? I cannot think of anything that would have made the loss of the election from my point of view more certain. I think the country itself learned by certain events that took place during the winter of 1934–35 what the perils might be to it. All I did was to take a moment perhaps less unfortunate than another might have been, and we won the election with a large majority... [In 1935] we got from the country—with a large majority—a mandate for doing a thing that no one, 12 months before, would have believed possible.

Democracy , Thinking , Loss , Cry

“A dynamic force is a very terrible thing; it may crush you, but it is not necessarily right.”

Stanley Baldwin

Speech at the Carlton Club (19 October 1922) on David Lloyd George, quoted in The Times (20 October 1922), p. 8.
1922
Context: The Prime Minister was described this morning in The Times, in the words of a distinguished aristocrat, as a live wire. He was described to me, and to others, in more steady language, by the Lord Chancellor, as a dynamic force, and I accept those words. He is a dynamic force, and it is from that very fact that our troubles, in our opinion, arise. A dynamic force is a very terrible thing; it may crush you, but it is not necessarily right. It is owing to that dynamic force, and that remarkable personality, that the Liberal Party, to which he formerly belonged, had been smashed to pieces; and it is my firm conviction that, in time, the same thing will happen to our party.

“Dictatorship is like a giant beech tree—very magnificent to look at in its prime, but nothing grows underneath it.”

Stanley Baldwin

Broadcast from London (6 March 1934); published in This Torch of Freedom (1935), p. 21.
1934

Tree

“But our race is not a raw and untried race. The country, true to its finest traditions, kept its head, and by keeping its head won the admiration, the reluctant admiration, of the world.”

Stanley Baldwin

Speech in Chippenham (12 June 1926) on the General Strike, quoted in Our Inheritance (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1938), p. 159.
1926
Context: The Government took emergency measures to control food supplies, to commandeer all forms of transport, to preserve order, and to stop the export of such coal as might be in the ports. Now into those few hours there were thus crowded events of a staggering character, and, had they taken place among a less disciplined people than our own people, riot and revolution would have quickly followed. But our race is not a raw and untried race. The country, true to its finest traditions, kept its head, and by keeping its head won the admiration, the reluctant admiration, of the world.

World , Country

“I am quite content in these circumstances to be called a coward if I have done what I could, in accordance with the views of every country in Europe, to keep my own people out of war.”

Stanley Baldwin

Speech to the centenary dinner of the City of London Conservative and Unionist Association (2 July 1936) on the Italo-Abyssinian War, quoted in Service of Our Lives (1937), pp. 41-42.
1936
Context: War is a very terrible thing, and, when once let loose in Europe, no man can tell how far it will spread, and no man can tell when or how it will stop. I am quite content in these circumstances to be called a coward if I have done what I could, in accordance with the views of every country in Europe, to keep my own people out of war.

War , People , Country

“No Government in this country to-day, which has not faith in the people, hope in the future, love for his fellow-men, and which will not work and work and work, will ever bring this country through into better days and better times, or will ever bring Europe through or the world through.”

Stanley Baldwin

Speech in the House of Commons (16 February 1923), quoted in On England, and Other Addresses (1926), pp. 59-60.
1923
Context: I am myself of that somewhat flabby nature that always prefers agreement to disagreement... When the Labour Party sit on these benches, we shall all wish them well in their effort to govern the country. But I am quite certain that whether they succeed or fail there will never in this country be a Communist Government, and for this reason, that no gospel founded on hate will ever seize the hearts of our people— the people of Great Britain. It is no good trying to cure the world by spreading out oceans of bloodshed. It is no good trying to cure the world by repeating that pentasyllabic French derivative, "Proletariat." The English language is the richest in the world in thought. The English language is the richest in the world in monosyllables. Four words, of one syllable each, are words which contain salvation for this country and for the whole world, and they are "Faith," "Hope," "Love," and "Work." No Government in this country to-day, which has not faith in the people, hope in the future, love for his fellow-men, and which will not work and work and work, will ever bring this country through into better days and better times, or will ever bring Europe through or the world through.

Love , Men , People , World

“We are not all equal, and never shall be; the true postulate of democracy is not equality but the faith that every man and woman is worth while.”

Stanley Baldwin

Speech to the annual meeting of the Union of Girls' Schools (27 October 1927), quoted in Our Inheritance (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1938), pp. 150-151.
1927
Context: Your work in social service, whatever form it may take, requires exactly those two things that my work requires... patience and faith in human worth. Those are the real foundations of democracy, not equality in the sense in which that word is so often used. We are not all equal, and never shall be; the true postulate of democracy is not equality but the faith that every man and woman is worth while.

Faith , Democracy

“Her life is an artificial life, and anything that tends to upset it, to break those cords and those strings, might ruin our country in a thousandth part of the time it has taken to build it up.”

Stanley Baldwin

Speech to the centenary dinner of the City of London Conservative and Unionist Association (2 July 1936), quoted in Service of Our Lives (1937), pp. 43-44.
1936
Context: I have tried so far as I can to lead this country into the way of evolutionary progress, but I have tried to warn it against revolutionary progress, and I have tried to bring about a unity of spirit in the nation. I have done that, not only because it is right in itself, but because one watches this country becoming year by year more urbanised, more industrialised, and the potential dangers to this country becoming greater and greater lest at any time and in any way her communications, the constant flow of food and of raw materials, might ever be interrupted. Her life is an artificial life, and anything that tends to upset it, to break those cords and those strings, might ruin our country in a thousandth part of the time it has taken to build it up.

Life , Time , Parting , Country

“Our most valuable real estate is our character”

Stanley Baldwin

Speech to the Canadian Club in Toronto (6 August 1927), quoted in Our Inheritance (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1938), p. 79.
1927
Context: I may confess to men here, of a stock so largely English, that our English intelligence is sometimes apt to be despised by nations that think they are quicker-witted than we are. Our most valuable real estate is our character— its steadiness, its reliability, its personal integrity, its capacity for toleration and for a quiet, humorous boredom with things. The general strike in England, which was not without its alarming aspects, illustrated all these qualities in our people.

“Members of our party were fighting for the working classes when Members or the ancestors of Members opposite were shackled with laissez faire.”

Stanley Baldwin

Speech http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/commons/1924/jan/21/debate-on-the-address in the House of Commons (21 January 1924).
1924
Context: The future lies between hon. Members opposite and ourselves. We are not afraid on this side of the House of social reform. Members of our party were fighting for the working classes when Members or the ancestors of Members opposite were shackled with laissez faire. Disraeli was advocating combination among agricultural labourers years before the agricultural labourer had the vote, and when he first began to preach the necessity of sanitation in the crowded centres of this country, the Liberal party called it a "policy of sewage." We stand on three basic principles, as we have done for two generations past—the maintenance of the institutions of our country, the preservation and the development of our Empire, and the improvement of the conditions of our own people; and we adapt those principles to the changing needs of each generation. Do my Friends behind me look like a beaten army? We shall be ready to take up the challenge from any party whenever it be issued, wherever it is issued and by whomsoever it be thrown down.

Fight

“There is no country…where there are not somewhere lovers of freedom who look to this country to carry the torch and keep it burning bright until such time as they may again be able to light their extinguished torches at our flame. We owe it not only to our own people but to the world to preserve our soul for that.”

Stanley Baldwin

Speech at University of Durham to the Ashridge Fellowship, as quoted in The Times (3 December 1934); also in Christian Conservatives and the Totalitarian Challenge, 1933-40 by Philip Williamson, in The English Historical Review, Vol. 115, No. 462 (June 2000)
1934

People , World , Soul , Lovers

“True to our traditions, we have avoided all extremes.”

Stanley Baldwin

Newsreel appearance after the general election (November 1935)
Variant: We, true to our traditions, avoided all extremes, have steered clear of fascism, communism, dictatorship, and have shown the world that democratic government, constitutional methods and ordered liberty are not inconsistent with progress and prosperity.
As quoted in Cinema, Literature & Society : Elite and Mass Culture in Interwar Britain (1987) by Peter Miles and Malcolm Smith, p. 22
1935
Context: True to our traditions, we have avoided all extremes. We have steered clear of fascism, communism, dictatorship, and we have shown the world that democratic government, constitutional methods and ordered liberty are not inconsistent with progress and prosperity.

“It proved the stability of the whole fabric of our own country, and to the amazement of the world not a shot was fired. We were saved by common sense and the good temper of our own people.”

Stanley Baldwin

Speech in Chippenham (12 June 1926) on the General Strike, quoted in Our Inheritance (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1938), pp. 167-168.
1926
Context: It may have been a magnificent demonstration of the solidarity of labour, but it was at the same time a most pathetic evidence of the failure of all of us to live and work together for the good of all. I recognize the courage that it took on the part of the leaders who had taken a false step to recede from that position unconditionally... It took a great deal more courage than it takes their critics now, who are blaming them for not going straight on, whatever happened. But if that strike showed solidarity, sympathy with the miners— whatever you like— it showed something else far greater. It proved the stability of the whole fabric of our own country, and to the amazement of the world not a shot was fired. We were saved by common sense and the good temper of our own people.

People , World , Sense , Country

“Rather should they have looked deep into the hearts of their own people, relying on that common sense and political sense that has never failed our race.”

Stanley Baldwin

Speech at the Philip Scott College (27 September 1923), quoted in On England, and Other Addresses (1926), pp. 153-154.
1923
Context: This country of ours has been the birthplace and the home of some of the greatest movements that have yet arisen for human freedom and human progress, and the strength of our race is not yet exhausted. We have confused ourselves in Great Britain of recent years by a curious diffidence, and by a fear of relying upon ourselves. The result has been that many of those who have been eager for the progress of our country have only succeeded in befogging themselves and their fellow-countrymen, by filling their bellies with the east wind of German Socialism and Russian Communism and French Syndicalism. Rather should they have looked deep into the hearts of their own people, relying on that common sense and political sense that has never failed our race.... [That] far from following at the tail of exploded Continental theorists, is ready once more to lead the way of the world as she was destined to do from the beginning of time, and to show other peoples, many peoples who have not yet learned what real political freedom is, that the mother of political freedom is still capable of guiding the way to her children and her children's children.

People , Sense , Heart

“The stock is the same as it ever was, and it is as fine as it ever was.”

Stanley Baldwin

Speech in Winnipeg, Canada (13 August 1927), quoted in Our Inheritance (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1938), pp. 116-117.
1927
Context: You very often hear and you sometimes read in newspapers not friendly to the British race that there signs of decadence in Great Britain. Don't you believe a word of it. The people at home are the same people who fought shoulder to shoulder with you for four years all over the world. They are the same stock which created the Maritime Provinces and Ontario. They are the same stock that built up this country. The stock is the same as it ever was, and it is as fine as it ever was.

“Let us resolve once more that we can best keep his memory bright by confirming our own resolution that government of the people by the people shall never perish on this earth.”

Stanley Baldwin

Speech http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/commons/1937/mar/17/the-late-sir-austen-chamberlain in the House of Commons upon the death of Sir Austen Chamberlain (17 March 1937).
1937
Context: In the remote parts of that countryside where I was born and where old English phrases linger, though they may now be dying, even now I hear among those old people this phrase about those who die "He has gone home." It was a universal phrase among the old agricultural labourers, whose life was one toil from their earliest days to their last, and I think that that phrase must have arisen from the sense that one day the toil would be over and the rest would come, and that rest, the cessation of toil, wherever that occurred would be home. So they say, "He has gone home." When our long days of work are over here there is nothing in our oldest customs which so stirs the imagination of the young Member as the cry which goes down the Lobbies, "Who goes home?" Sometimes when I hear it I think of the language of my own countryside and my feeling that for those who have borne the almost insupportable burden of public life there may well be a day when they will be glad to go home. So Austen Chamberlain has gone home.... he had an infinite faith in the Parliamentary system of this country. Let us resolve once more that we can best keep his memory bright by confirming our own resolution that government of the people by the people shall never perish on this earth.

People , Memory

“Now we have been called all kinds of names because we have not brought the country to war, and those who have principally criticised us have been those who hitherto have been noted for their pacifist views and not for their support of the strengthening of the arms of this country.”

Stanley Baldwin

Speech to the centenary dinner of the City of London Conservative and Unionist Association (2 July 1936) on the Italo-Abyssinian War, quoted in Service of Our Lives (1937), pp. 40-41.
1936
Context: The Government decided... that they would support at Geneva the raising of "sanctions" which were imposed against Italy in the latter part of last year... but the action of the "sanctions" imposed was not swift enough in practice to effect what we had all hoped might be possible, and there came a point when further pressure might well have led to war. Now we have been called all kinds of names because we have not brought the country to war, and those who have principally criticised us have been those who hitherto have been noted for their pacifist views and not for their support of the strengthening of the arms of this country. You may not know that every day of my life, when I sit at my work in the Cabinet room, I sit under the portrait of a great Prime Minister... Sir Robert Walpole, whose great boast was, and whose great reputation rested on, this— that, except on one occasion, he kept his country out of war... to him was attributed that well-known remark, when a war against his will had been forced on him, that the people were now ringing the bells but they would soon be wringing their hands.

War , Support , Country

“The only argument which appealed to the dictators was that of force.”

Stanley Baldwin

Baldwin to the Cabinet in 1937 during his last days as Premier, as quoted in The Collapse of British Power (1972) by Correlli Barnett, p. 449 
1937
Context: In none of these countries [Russia, Italy and Germany] was it possible to make to the people such an appeal as went home to the heart of our people, an appeal based on Christianity or ethics … The whole outlook in the dictator countries was so completely different from ours that for a long time people here could not understand how it was possible for these nations not to respond to the same kind of appeal as that to which our people responded. But they were beginning to realise it now... The only argument which appealed to the dictators was that of force.

“I want a truce of God in this country”

Stanley Baldwin

Speech in Birmingham (5 March 1925), quoted in On England, and Other Addresses (1926), pp 33-34, p. 40.
1925
Context: I want a truce of God in this country, that we may compose our differences, that we may join all our strengths together to see if we cannot pull the country into a better and happier condition. It is little that a Government can do; these reforms, these revolutions must come from the people themselves. The organisations of employers and men, if they take their coats off to it, are far more able to work out the solutions of their troubles than the politicians... So let those who represent labour and capital get down to it, and seek and pursue peace through every alley and every corner of this country... And if I have a message to-night for you and the people of this country, it is just this. I would say: "England! Steady! Look where you are going! Human hands were given us to clasp, and not to be raised against one another in fratricidal strife."

God , Country

“I have tried so far as I can to lead this country into the way of evolutionary progress, but I have tried to warn it against revolutionary progress, and I have tried to bring about a unity of spirit in the nation.”

Stanley Baldwin

Way , Country

“If there be one thing certain, to my mind it is this. That if the people of this country in great numbers were to become adherents of either Communism or Fascism there could only be one end to it. And that one end would be civil war.”

Stanley Baldwin

Broadcast from London (6 March 1934); published in This Torch of Freedom (1935), p. 23
1934
Context: When one is young one is always in a hurry, and it may well be to-day that those two alien plants— for they neither have their roots in England— Communism and Fascism, may appeal to many of you. This is a free country. You can support either creed, and you can support it in safety, but I want to put this to you. If there be one thing certain, to my mind it is this. That if the people of this country in great numbers were to become adherents of either Communism or Fascism there could only be one end to it. And that one end would be civil war.

War , People , Communication , Country

“Democracy can rise to great heights; it can also sink to great depths. It is for us so to conduct ourselves, and so to educate our own people, that we may achieve the heights and avoid the depths.”

Stanley Baldwin

Speech at the Albert Hall (4 December 1924), quoted in On England, and Other Addresses (1926), pp. 70-71.
1924
Context: It is a testing time for democracy... Democracy, democratic government, calls for harder work, for higher education, for further vision than any form of government known in this world. It has not lasted long yet in the West, and it is only by those like ourselves who believe in it making it a success that we can hope to see it permanent and yielding those fruits which it ought to yield. The assertion of people's rights has never yet provided that people with bread. The performance of their duties, and that alone, can lead to the successful issue of those experiments in government which we have carried further than any other people in this world. Democracy can rise to great heights; it can also sink to great depths. It is for us so to conduct ourselves, and so to educate our own people, that we may achieve the heights and avoid the depths.

People , Education , Democracy

“It may be the communist tyranny; it may be tyranny from the other end. But if you cannot evolve a sound and sane democracy, that will be the fate of the country.”

Stanley Baldwin

Speech to the thirtieth anniversary of the Junior Imperial League in Kingsway Hall (19 June 1926), quoted in Our Inheritance (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1938), pp. 17-18.
1926
Context: You have to realize that these years in which we are living, the years into which we are entering, are going to be, as no years before have been, the real testing-time of democracy... We in this country may make a fearful mess of it; and if we make a mess of it, we shall get something much worse— we shall get a tyranny of some kind or other. I don't know what form of tyranny it may be. It may be the communist tyranny; it may be tyranny from the other end. But if you cannot evolve a sound and sane democracy, that will be the fate of the country.

Fate , Democracy , Country

“Freedom, ordered freedom, within the law, with force in the background and not in the foreground”

Stanley Baldwin

Speech to the Empire Rally of Youth at the Royal Albert Hall (18 May 1937), quoted in Service of Our Lives (1937), pp. 164-165.
1937
Context: Let me proclaim my faith... Here we have ceased to be an island, but we are still an Empire. And what is the secret? Freedom, ordered freedom, within the law, with force in the background and not in the foreground... It is an Empire organised for peace... It deifies neither the State nor its rulers. The old doctrine of the divine right of Kings has gone, but we have no intention of erecting in its place a new doctrine of the divine right of States. No State that ever was is worthy of a free man's worship.

Law , Freedom

“I did tell His Majesty once that I might be a remnant of the old Victorians, but that my worst enemy would not say of me that I did not know what the reaction of the English people would be to any particular course of action”

Stanley Baldwin

Speech http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/commons/1936/dec/10/members-of-the-house-of-commons in the House of Commons on the Abdication of Edward VIII (10 December 1936).
1936
Context: I saw the King on Monday, 16th November, and I began by giving him my view of a possible marriage. I told him that I did not think that a particular marriage was one that would receive the approbation of the country. That marriage would have involved the lady becoming Queen. I did tell His Majesty once that I might be a remnant of the old Victorians, but that my worst enemy would not say of me that I did not know what the reaction of the English people would be to any particular course of action, and I told him that so far as they went I was certain that that would be impracticable.

People

“That is to me a far more significant portent than the aggregation of the population in cities, the immense luxury, and the exhaustion of the permanent sources of wealth, all of which combined to sap that very character whose continued existence was necessary for the life of the State.”

Stanley Baldwin

Speech to the Classical Association (8 January 1926), quoted in On England, and Other Addresses (1926), p. 105.
1926
Context: A character founded on pietas and gravitas had its roots in truth, and I am proud to think that the English word has been held in no less honour than the Roman... It is from Ammian, who wrote while the legions were leaving Britain, that we learn that the Roman word could no longer be trusted. That is to me a far more significant portent than the aggregation of the population in cities, the immense luxury, and the exhaustion of the permanent sources of wealth, all of which combined to sap that very character whose continued existence was necessary for the life of the State.

Life , Wealth

“We, at any rate, are not going to fire the first shot. We stand for peace. We stand for the removal of suspicion in the country. We want to create an atmosphere, a new atmosphere in a new Parliament for a new age, in which the people can come together.”

Stanley Baldwin

Speech http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/commons/1925/mar/06/industrial-peace in the House of Commons (6 March 1925).
1925
Context: We find ourselves, after these two years in power, in possession of perhaps the greatest majority our party has ever had, and with the general assent of the country. Now, how did we get there? It was not by promising to bring this Bill in; it was because, rightly or wrongly, we succeeding in creating an impression throughout the country that we stood for stable Government and for peace in the country between all classes of the community... We have our majority; we believe in the justice of this Bill which has been brought in to-day, but we are going to withdraw our hand, and we are not going to push our political advantage home at a moment like this. Suspicion which has prevented stability in Europe is the one poison that is preventing stability at home, and we offer the country to-day this: We, at any rate, are not going to fire the first shot. We stand for peace. We stand for the removal of suspicion in the country. We want to create an atmosphere, a new atmosphere in a new Parliament for a new age, in which the people can come together. We abandon what we have laid our hands to. We know we may be called cowards for doing it. We know we may be told that we have gone back on our principles. But we believe we know what at this moment the country wants, and we believe it is for us in our strength to do what no other party can do at this moment, and to say that we at any rate stand for peace... Although I know that there are those who work for different ends from most of us in this House, yet there are many in all ranks and all parties who will re-echo my prayer: "Give peace in our time, O Lord."

People , Age , Peace , Country

“We none of us know what is going on in that strange man's mind.”

Stanley Baldwin

Baldwin to the deputation at the end of July, 1936, as quoted in Baldwin : A Biography by Keith Middlemas and John Barnes (1969), p. 947, p. 955. 
1936
Context: We none of us know what is going on in that strange man's mind. We all know the German desire as he has come out with in his book [Mein Kampf] to move East, and if he moves East, I shall not break my heart, but that is another thing. I do not believe he wants to move West, because West would be a very difficult programme for him … If there is any fighting in Europe to be done, I should like to see the Bolsheviks and Nazis doing it.

“The best way in which you can develop a true national feeling and put your own country in the pride of place which belongs to her is to do it in communion with other nations and with the sole object of improving the world at large.”

Stanley Baldwin

World , Way , Feeling , Country

“I am just one of yourselves, who has been called to special work for the country at this time.”

Stanley Baldwin

Speech in Worcester (7 November 1923), quoted in On England, and Other Addresses (1926), p. 19.
1923
Context: I am just one of yourselves, who has been called to special work for the country at this time. I never sought the office. I never planned out or schemed my life. I have but one idea, which was an idea that I inherited, and it was the idea of service — service to the people of this country. My father lived in the belief all his life … It is a tradition; it is in our bones; and we have to do it. That service seemed to lead one by way of business and the county council into Parliament, and it has led one through various strange paths to where one is; but the ideal remains the same, because all my life I believed from my heart the words of Browning, "All service ranks the same with God". It makes very little difference whether a man is driving a tramcar or sweeping streets or being Prime Minister, if he only brings to that service everything that is in him and performs it for the sake of mankind.

Time , Country

“I am a man of peace. I am longing and working and praying for peace, but I will not surrender the safety and security of the British constitution.”

Stanley Baldwin

Speech on BBC radio on the General Strike (8 May 1926), as quoted in Baldwin : A Biography by Keith Middlemas and John Barnes (1969), p. 415 
1926
Context: I am a man of peace. I am longing and working and praying for peace, but I will not surrender the safety and security of the British constitution. You placed me in power eighteen months ago by the largest majority accorded to any party for many, many years. Have I done anything to forfeit that confidence? Cannot you trust me to ensure a square deal to secure even justice between man and man?

Peace

“It is to moralise the world that we all desire.”

Stanley Baldwin

Speech http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/commons/1923/jul/23/military-expenditure-and-disarmament in the House of Commons (23 July 1923).
1923
Context: ... some of those to-day who are loudest in their protestations of international pacifism are loudest in their protestations that nothing but a class war can save society. No truer word was ever said by a philosopher than was said by Kant, a century ago or more, that we are civilised to the point of wearisomeness, but before we can be moralised we have a long way to go. It is to moralise the world that we all desire.... We have to remember one more thing besides that, that since the War we must not make the mistake of thinking that what may be war weariness is necessarily an excess of innate good will, and we cannot help noting that there has arisen in Europe, in the few years since the peace, a strong local feeling in different places of an extreme nationalism which, unless corrected, may bear in what is not of itself an evil thing the seeds of much future peril for the peace and harmony of Europe.

World

“Socialism would bring him back from contract to status.”

Stanley Baldwin

Speech to the Junior Imperial League (3 May 1924), quoted in On England, and Other Addresses (1926), p. 225.
1924
Context: We want to help to better the conditions for our own people. We want to see our people raised, not into a society of State ownership, but into a society in which, increasingly, the individual may become an owner. There is a very famous sentence of Sir Henry Maine's, in which he said that the progress of our civilisation had been of recent centuries a progress on the part of mankind from status to contract. Socialism would bring him back from contract to status.

“All service ranks the same, according to the spirit in which it is performed.”

Stanley Baldwin

Speech in Leeds (13 March 1925), quoted in On England, and Other Addresses (1926), pp. 62-63.
1925
Context: It was for that reason, feeling as I did, that I was driven into the course which I embraced in December, 1916, when I accepted Mr. Bonar Law's offer to serve as his Parliamentary Secretary. I did that deliberately, because I believed that at my time of life, having already sufficient means to be independent of the active business in which I had passed my life up to then, I had the opportunity of giving my services to the country without any feeling that it was necessary to be remunerated for them. There is nothing singular in that. There must have been millions of men who felt as I did. I have never said, or believed, that that service which I had the opportunity of rendering was one whit higher or better than any other. All service ranks the same, according to the spirit in which it is performed. One of the sources of the great strength of our country in every part of the kingdom is that there are men who have no personal ambition for themselves to get where the limelight is brightest and publicity is greatest. And as long as our country can go on producing that type, which I am thankful to say it is producing from all classes of the community— so long as that is the case, I should never despair of England.

“The fruits of the free spirit of man do not grow in the garden of tyranny”

Stanley Baldwin

Speech to the Empire Rally of Youth at the Royal Albert Hall (18 May 1937), quoted in Service of Our Lives (1937), pp. 165-166.
1937
Context: The fruits of the free spirit of man do not grow in the garden of tyranny... As long as we have the wisdom to keep the sovereign authority of this country as the sanctuary of liberty, the sacred temple consecrated to our common faith, men will turn their faces towards us and draw their breath more freely. The association of the peoples of the Empire is rooted, and their fellowship is rooted, in this doctrine of the essential dignity of the individual human soul. That is the English secret.

“The real enemies are overwork, under-payment, insecurity and bad conditions”

Stanley Baldwin

Speech to the National Institute of Industrial Psychology (12 November 1925), quoted in On England, and Other Addresses (1926), pp. 55-56.
1925
Context: The fundamental question is how to make the most of the individual, with all his idiosyncrasies, in his work... these depressing features of the Industrial Revolution, whatever they have brought in their train inside workshops, have had a tendency to bring in their train outside workshops one very bad thing, and that is a dislike of work itself. If work can be presented in a palatable form, I am not sure that the ordinary human being does not like it, provided that he gets a reasonable amount of play. The real enemies are overwork, under-payment, insecurity and bad conditions... We must not exaggerate what is possible. You cannot abolish repetitive work; you cannot, even in a Socialist State; and, after all, the monotony of the workman's life is very much due to the monotony of the consumers' demands. If a man wants the same thing every day, the man who provides it will have a monotonous task.

“There is a saying as old as the Greeks that it is more important to form good habits than to frame good laws.”

Stanley Baldwin

The John Clifford Lecture at Coventry (14 July 1930), published in This Torch of Freedom (1935), p. 46.
1930
Context: There is a saying as old as the Greeks that it is more important to form good habits than to frame good laws. There is an undercurrent of suspicion that this is true and that, like patriotism, legislation is not enough. The hopes held out when laws are framed are not always realised when laws are passed... What happens to all the laws placed on the statute book? If half the hopes of their promoters had been realised, would not the millennium have arrived ere this?

Law

“We remember what modern warfare is, with no glory in it but the heroism of man.”

Stanley Baldwin

Speech to the Peace Society (31 October 1935), quoted in This Torch of Freedom (1935), p. 322.
1935
Context: We live under the shadow of the last War and its memories still sicken us. We remember what modern warfare is, with no glory in it but the heroism of man.

“There is only one thing which I feel is worth giving one's whole strength to, and that is the binding together of all classes of our people in an effort to make life in this country better in every sense of the word. That is the main end and object of my life in politics”

Stanley Baldwin

Speech in Stourport (12 January 1925), quoted in On England, and Other Addresses (1926), pp. 15-16.
1925
Context: If there is anything... it is my training, which has given me, whether I can use it or not, a knowledge and a sympathy very difficult for any man to attain who has had an exclusively political training I regard it as of the greatest value to myself that during the formative years of my life, and during the ten and twenty years when I first started work in the world, I worked in close contact with all classes of people in this country, and enjoyed, through no credit to myself, the goodwill which I have inherited from generations that have gone before me and left behind a name for honesty, fair play, right judgment, and kindliness to those with whom they worked. Through that, whether I succeed or not, I believe I have an understanding of the mind of the people of the country which I could have gained in no other way. It is through this that I have that ineradicable belief and faith in our people which sustains me through good times and evil, and it is because of this that I have every confidence that, whatever troubles may come to this country, or in this country at any time, the native strength and virtue of our people will overcome everything. There is only one thing which I feel is worth giving one's whole strength to, and that is the binding together of all classes of our people in an effort to make life in this country better in every sense of the word. That is the main end and object of my life in politics.

Life , People , Feeling , Sense

“When you think of the defence of England you no longer think of the chalk cliffs of Dover; you think of the Rhine. That is where our frontier lies.”

Stanley Baldwin

Speech http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/commons/1934/jul/30/armaments in the House of Commons (30 July 1934).
1934
Context: Let us never forget this; since the day of the air, the old frontiers are gone. When you think of the defence of England you no longer think of the chalk cliffs of Dover; you think of the Rhine. That is where our frontier lies.

Thinking

“I would say: "England! Steady! Look where you are going! Human hands were given us to clasp, and not to be raised against one another in fratricidal strife."”

Stanley Baldwin

“Now, whatever those ideas may produce for those countries, what I want to warn you about is that neither of those ideas can ever do anything to help our country in solving her own constitutional problems. They are exotic to this country. They are alien. You could not graft them on to our system any more than you could graft a Siberian crab on an oak.”

Stanley Baldwin

Speech to the Bewdley Unionist Association in Worcester (10 April 1937), quoted in Service of Our Lives (1937), pp. 100-101.
1937
Context: ... ideas may be very dangerous things. There is no country in Europe that has a constitution comparable to ours. I do not mean by using that word "comparable" that I am assuming that ours is the best. I merely affirm that they have been all different; that there is no constitution like ours, which has evolved through the centuries into the constitution as we know it to-day. Therefore it is a more easy matter for ideas to sweep people off their feet in those countries. Throughout the whole of Russia, and of Germany and Italy, you have peoples numbering hundreds of millions who are governed by ideas alien to the ideas which we hold in this country. They are the ideas of Communism and of differing forms of Fascism. Now, whatever those ideas may produce for those countries, what I want to warn you about is that neither of those ideas can ever do anything to help our country in solving her own constitutional problems. They are exotic to this country. They are alien. You could not graft them on to our system any more than you could graft a Siberian crab on an oak.

Idea , Problem , Help , Country

“We have demonstrated to the world in actual practice that difficulties can be resolved by discussion as they cannot be resolved by force.”

Stanley Baldwin

Broadcast from London (16 April 1937), quoted in Service of Our Lives (1937), pp. 120-121.
1937
Context: When we look round and consider the state of the world to-day, we see on every side bewilderment and doubt... I am no pessimist; I believe that in the end the countries of the world will find peace and prosperity— but that road will be a long and a hard one. For such a journey... above all, there is need of leadership. No one country— no group of countries— is so qualified to provide that leadership as the British Empire... I say this with no idea that we are necessarily better than other people, but because of our experience. For we, the peoples of the Empire, in our relations with one another, have set an example of mutual co-operation in the solution of our problems, such as, I believe, no group of nations has ever before achieved. We have demonstrated to the world in actual practice that difficulties can be resolved by discussion as they cannot be resolved by force.

World

“England is the natural home of liberty and free institutions, and in her endeavour to secure these blessings for the world no country ought to be quicker than she in acknowledging her debt to Hellas.”

Stanley Baldwin

Speech to the annual meeting of the British School at Athens in London (2 November 1926), quoted in Our Inheritance (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1938), p. 205.
1926
Context: September of the year 490 B. C. was to my mind a more cardinal moment of fate for Europe than August 1914. Western civilization... was saved in its infancy at Marathon, and ten years later by Leonidas and by the men of Salamis... had it not been for that decade there would have been nothing to prevent Eastern Europe being orientalized and the ultimate fight for the hegemony of Europe would have been left to the Persians and the Carthaginians. But for the Greeks there would have been no civilization as we know it, and we should all have been dark-skinned people with long noses... England is the natural home of liberty and free institutions, and in her endeavour to secure these blessings for the world no country ought to be quicker than she in acknowledging her debt to Hellas.

World , Home , Nature , Country

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