Stanley Baldwin: Quotes about people (page 2)

“Bewdley, as most of you know was in distant times a sanctuary town to which a man, whatever his sins, might flee and be safe from justice. So, whatever the rude waves of the outside world buffet me with more than usual vigour, I have only to remember that in Bewdley, there is sanctuary even for a Prime Minister…I have never failed to find in my own country understanding, sympathy and support, and even when life seems to most difficult and the fences in front unclimbable, I can turn back in memory and recollection to this peaceful spot by the side of the river where I first drew breath and in the memory of which I am able to draw strength. There could have been no more typical English surroundings in which to cherish the earliest memories. I remember as a child, looking up the river from the bridge into that mysterious and romantic land of Shropshire, so close to us, from which my people came only three generations before and watching the smoke of the train running along the little railway through places bearing names like Wyre Forest, Cleobury Mortimer, Neen Sollars and Tenbury - names steeped in romance and redolent of the springtime of an England long ago passed but whose heritage is ours.”

Stanley Baldwin

Speech in Bewdley (8 August 1925), quoted in On England, and Other Addresses (1926), pp. 10-11.
1925

Life , People , World , Peace

“The fortunes of a nation are determined above everything by the quality of its people.”

Stanley Baldwin

Speech at Douglas Castle, Lanarkshire, Scotland (27 August 1927), quoted in Our Inheritance (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1938), p. 129.
1927

People

“With Russia and America out of the League sanctions are a mistake. I've always thought so. You can't enforce them against a first-class power. The very people like Bob Cecil who have made us disarm, and quite right too, are now urging us forward to take action. But where will action lead us to? If we withdraw Ambassadors that's only the first step. What's the next? and the next? If you have economic boycott you'll have war declared by Japan and she will seize Singapore and Hongkong and we can't, as we are placed, stop her. You'll get nothing out of Washington but words, big words, but only words.”

Stanley Baldwin

Conversation with Thomas Jones (27 February 1932) after the Japanese invasion of Manchuria, quoted in Thomas Jones, A Diary with Letters. 1931-1950 (Oxford University Press, 1954), p. 30.
1932

War , People

“I have often thought, with reference to the late War…that it has shown the whole world how thin is the crust of civilisation on which this generation is walking. The realisation of that must have come with an appalling shock to most of us here. But more than that. There is not a man in this House who does not remember the first air raids and the first use of poisoned gas, and the cry that went up from this country. We know how, before the War ended, we were all using both those means of imposing our will upon our enemy. We realise that when men have their backs to the wall they will adopt any means for self-preservation. But there was left behind an uncomfortable feeling in the hearts of millions of men throughout Europe that, whatever had been the result of the War, we had all of us slipped down in our views of what constituted civilisation. We could not help feeling that future wars might provide, with further discoveries in science, a more rapid descent for the human race. There came a feeling, which I know is felt in all quarters of this House, that if our civilisation is to be saved, even at its present level, it behoves all people in all nations to do what they can by joining hands to save what we have, that we may use it as the vantage ground for further progress, rather than run the risk of all of us sliding in the abyss together.”

Stanley Baldwin

Speech http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/commons/1923/jul/23/military-expenditure-and-disarmament in the House of Commons (23 July 1923).
1923

Men , War , People , World

“When I was a boy I knew the Odes of Horace backwards and forwards, and when I came to manhood year by year those odes came knocking at the door of my heart at the most unexpected times and places. So, even if you do not realise it now, the time will come when you will be thankful that you were steeped in Shakespeare as boys. In him we not only have, as Sir Gerald du Maurier said here not long ago, perhaps the greatest man the world has ever seen, but one who had a profound knowledge of human nature and of the world. Shakespeare was one of those few poets in whom we find the magic which comes straight from heaven, and which is the prerogative of the very greatest…Shakespeare's plays, no matter of what country he may be writing, are redolent of our own soil and of our own country people. The habit of thought and the outlook of Shakespeare's country people and of those wise men, Shakespeare's fools, may be found to-day in our rural counties.”

Stanley Baldwin

Speech to the City of London School (13 June 1924), quoted in On England, and Other Addresses (1926), p. 120.
1924

Men , People , World , Fools

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

Stanley Baldwin

Speech at Westminster Hall (4 July 1935); published in This Torch of Freedom: Speeches and Addresses (1935), p. 4
1935

People , Law

“I think the English people are at heart and in practice the kindest people in the world…there is in England a profound sympathy for the under-dog. There is a brotherly and a neighbourly feeling which we see to a remarkable extent through all classes. There is a way of facing misfortunes with a cheerful face. It was shown to a marvellous degree in the war.”

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. 4-5.
1924

War , People , World , Dogs

“The price man has to pay for the good things he enjoys is constant watchfulness lest they be employed for evil. Has not this been the case from the dawn of history with drink, language, and liberty? …Let us take our stand on public right and a law of nations with Grotius rather than with Machiavelli; let us seek to moralise our public intercourse and reduce the area of casuistry and duplicity. That is not only the accepted principle of the best amongst us, but it is, I am sure, in harmony with a widespread instinct in the British people. It asserted itself in August 1914 when it was made plain that ethics was not a branch of politics, but the reverse.”

Stanley Baldwin

It is at the root of our support of the League of Nations.
Speech at his inauguration as Lord Rector of The University of Edinburgh (6 November 1925), quoted in On England, and Other Addresses (1926), p. 91.
1925

People , Law , History , Drink

“Byron, a man who gave the world a better heart and a new pulse…The man who finds new pulses in the world is the man who will enjoy immortality. Byron was, if anything, a sower of new seed that had a great germinal force…Byron found the eyes of the people sealed, and opened them, and for that reason the gratitude of the nation should be given to him.”

Stanley Baldwin

Speech to the Byron centenary luncheon (29 April 1924), quoted in On England, and Other Addresses (1926), pp. 123-124.
1924

People , World , Heart , Gratitude

“I find there, especially among the Labour Party, many men who fifty years ago would inevitably have gone into the Christian Ministry. They have been drawn into political life from a deep desire to help the people. Such men are common in all parties to-day…I certainly agree with many observers that since the war the manifest forces of Satan have been more conspicuously at large. But the very manifestation of these forces is calling other forces into the field.”

Stanley Baldwin

Speech at the Langham Hotel (11 February 1926), quoted in On England, and Other Addresses (1926), p. 196.
1926

Life , Men , War , People

“I come back to speed, and I want my last words to be on speed. I see a danger ahead that our people may become mechanised, not only in body, but mechanised in mind. I dread the mass mind. I dread the loss of that independent individualist character which has made this nation what it is. I dread the growth of that materialistic view of life which, to my mind, is a danger both to body and to soul. We must see to it that in some way we can preserve the character of our people to meet the changed conditions of the age, and see that our character triumphs over our environment.”

Stanley Baldwin

Speech to the Federation of British Industries (13 April 1937), quoted in Service of Our Lives (1937), pp. 116-117.
1937

Life , People , Age , Way

“…for us alone are still opportunities denied to other nations. It is open to us to settle and work in any climate we may choose and in almost any part of the world, and find ourselves amongst people who speak our tongue, who obey our laws, who cherish the same ideals, and worship according to the rites familiar to us, who are subjects of the same Sovereign; and to this we—Tory, Liberal and Labour alike—to make our unity such a reality that men and women regard the Empire as one, and that it may become possible for them to move within its bounds to New Zealand, to Australia, to South Africa, to Canada, as easily and as freely as from Glasgow to London or Bristol to Newcastle.”

Stanley Baldwin

Broadcast from 10 Downing Street, London (24 May 1927), quoted in Our Inheritance (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1938), pp. 60-61.
1927

Women , Men , People , World

“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

People , Education , Time , Parting

“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

People , Truth , World , Literature

“The word Imperialism still has to many people in this country a rather sinister meaning. They associate it—wrongly in my view and in your view—the idea of exploitation, of riding roughshod over the world, of jingoism and of selfishness in public policy. It was not that to Lord Milner, and it is not that to us. It is rather this—the spreading throughout such parts of the world as we control, or in which we have influence, of all those ideas of law, order, and justice which we believe to be peculiar to our own race. It is to help people who belong to a backward civilisation, wisely to raise them in the scale of civilisation—an extraordinarily difficult task, and one which needs wisdom for its consummation. There is no country in the world upon whom that task has been imposed to the same degree as our own country, and it is undoubtedly by the way in which we fulfil that task that we shall be judged at the bar of history, not perhaps to-day, but by those who come after us of our own blood.”

Stanley Baldwin

Speech in Oxford (15 May 1925), quoted in On England, and Other Addresses (1926), pp. 185-186.
1925

Wisdom , People , World , Justice

“All parties are deeply committed to intervention in the lives of the people. The goal of some is to convert the state into a universal Providence. Character is built up by innumerable acts of choice. If all or most of the crucial choices in life are made for you by the State, when then becomes of the democratic ideal…the management of and responsibility for our own lives, whether we be clever or stupid, good or bad?”

Stanley Baldwin

The John Clifford Lecture at Coventry (14 July 1930), published in This Torch of Freedom (1935), p. 47
1930

Life , People , Stupidity , Universe

“There is no doubt that to-day feeling in totalitarian countries is, or they would like it to be, one of contempt for democracy. Whether it is the feeling of the fox which has lost its brush for his brother who has not I do not know, but it exists. Coupled with that is the idea that a democracy qua democracy must be a kind of decadent country in which there is no order, where industrial trouble is the order of the day, and where the people can never keep to a fixed purpose. There is a great deal that is ridiculous in that, but it is a dangerous belief for any country to have of another. There is in the world another feeling. I think you will find this in America, in France, and throughout all our Dominions. It is a sympathy with, and an admiration for, this country in the way she came through the great storm, the blizzard, some years ago, and the way in which she is progressing, as they believe, with so little industrial strife. They feel that that is a great thing which marks off our country from other countries to-day. Except for those who love industrial strife for its own sake, and they are but a few, it indeed is the greatest testimony to my mind that democracy is really functioning when her children can see her through these difficulties, some of which are very real, and settle them—a far harder thing than to fight.”

Stanley Baldwin

Speech http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/commons/1937/may/05/supply in the House of Commons (5 May 1937).
1937

Love , Children , People , World

“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

Life , Men , People , Home

“…that very loyalty to the past with its dream of beauty and with its real hardness and hardships. These things save us from what is the greatest peril of our age, the peril of materialism…. The struggle against materialism in the hearts of our people is one of the greatest struggles of this age.”

Stanley Baldwin

Speech upon receiving the Freedom of the Burgh of Inverness, Scotland (13 June 1930), published in This Torch of Freedom (1935), pp. 191-192.
1930

People , Age , Beauty , Dreams

“We in England also suffer very much…from very clever physicians who are always prepared to prescribe for the body politic with a great deal of intellectual agility, which is equalled only by their ignorance of human nature. These people in Europe are called the "intelligentsia"—a very ugly word for a very ugly thing.”

Stanley Baldwin

Speech to the Canadian Club in Toronto (6 August 1927), quoted in Our Inheritance (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1938), p. 78.
1927

People , Nature , Suffering