Benjamin Disraeli citations
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Benjamin Disraeli, né le 21 décembre 1804 et mort le 19 avril 1881 à Londres, est un homme d'État et écrivain britannique, Premier ministre du Royaume-Uni à deux reprises. Il joue un rôle central dans la création du Parti conservateur moderne dont il formalise la doctrine. Par sa grande influence sur la politique étrangère, il a associé les conservateurs à la gloire et à la puissance de l'Empire britannique.

Né dans une famille juive, Benjamin Disraeli est élevé dans la foi anglicane car son père est en conflit avec sa synagogue. Il entame une carrière d'avocat mais se tourne vers la politique dans les années 1830 et est élu à la Chambre des communes comme député de Maidstone en 1837. Lorsque les conservateurs prennent le pouvoir en 1841, Disraeli n’intègre pas le gouvernement du Premier ministre Robert Peel. Cinq ans plus tard, Peel divise le parti en demandant l'abrogation des Corn Laws qui limitaient les importations de céréales : il est violemment attaqué par Disraeli. Peu de notables conservateurs rompent avec Peel, et Disraeli devient alors une figure importante du parti même si beaucoup se méfient de lui. Il est trois fois chancelier de l'Échiquier et chef de la Chambre des communes au sein des cabinets de Lord Derby dans les années 1850 et 1860. Il développe à cette période une forte rivalité avec le libéral William Ewart Gladstone.

Lorsque Derby démissionne pour des raisons de santé en février 1868, Disraeli devient Premier ministre mais perd les élections à la fin de l'année. Il représente alors l'Opposition avant de mener son parti à la victoire en 1874. Il développe une forte amitié avec la reine Victoria qui le fait comte de Beaconsfield en 1876. Le second mandat de Disraeli est dominé par la question d'Orient, désignant le déclin de l'Empire ottoman et les actions des autres pays européens, notamment la Russie, pour en profiter. Il pousse ainsi les intérêts britanniques à prendre des parts dans la compagnie du canal de Suez en Égypte ottomane. En 1878, devant les victoires russes contre les Ottomans, Disraeli mène la délégation britannique au congrès de Berlin et négocie des termes favorables au Royaume-Uni.

Même si Disraeli est félicité pour ses actions à Berlin, d'autres événements affectent le soutien à son gouvernement : les guerres en Afghanistan et en Afrique du Sud sont critiquées, et il irrite les agriculteurs britanniques en refusant de rétablir les Corn Laws. Gladstone mène une campagne efficace et le parti libéral remporte les élections de 1880.

Auteur de plusieurs romans depuis 1826, Benjamin Disraeli publie sa dernière œuvre, Endymion, peu avant sa mort à l'âge de 76 ans. Wikipedia  

✵ 21. décembre 1804 – 19. avril 1881
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Benjamin Disraeli: 307   citations 0   J'aime

Benjamin Disraeli Citations

Benjamin Disraeli: Citations en anglais

“We moralise among ruins.”

Bk. V, Ch. 5.
Books, Coningsby (1844), Tancred (1847)

“With words we govern men.”

Part 1, Chapter 21.
Books, Coningsby (1844), Contarini Fleming (1832)

“I hate definitions.”

Book II, Chapter 6.
Books, Coningsby (1844), Vivian Grey (1826)

“Be amusing: never tell unkind stories; above all, never tell long ones.”

Upon being asked to offer the young son of a member of Parliament advice, cited in Wilfrid Meynell, Benjamin Disraeli: An Unconventional Biography (1903), p. 83.
Sourced but undated

“It is fourteen years ago since yourself, then the leader of the country gentlemen…appealed to me to assist you at a moment of apparently overwhelming disaster. I ultimately agreed to do so…because, from my earliest years, my sympathies had been with the landed interest of England.”

Source: Letter to Sir William Miles (11 June 1860), 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), pp. 23–24

“What is the question now placed before society with the glib assurance the most astounding? That question is this—Is man an ape or an angel? My lord, I am on the side of the angels.”

Variante: The question is this— Is man an ape or an angel? My Lord, I am on the side of the angels. I repudiate with indignation and abhorrence these new fanged theories.
Variante: Is man an ape or an angel? Now, I am on the side of the angels!
Source: Speech at Oxford Diocesan Conference (25 November 1864), quoted in William Flavelle Monypenny and George Earle Buckle, The Life of Benjamin Disraeli, Earl of Beaconsfield. Volume II. 1860–1881 (1929), p. 108

“[I]n speaking of Italy, romance has omitted for once to exaggerate.”

Source: Letter to Isaac Disraeli (2 September 1826), quoted in William Flavelle Monypenny and George Earle Buckle, The Life of Benjamin Disraeli, Earl of Beaconsfield. Volume I. 1804–1859 (1929), p. 104

“It is vital to your Majesty's authority and power at this critical moment, that the Canal should belong to England.”

Source: Letter to Queen Victoria (18 November 1875), quoted in William Flavelle Monypenny and George Earle Buckle, The Life of Benjamin Disraeli, Earl of Beaconsfield. Volume II. 1860–1881 (1929), p. 783

“There are rare instances when the sympathy of a nation approaches those tenderer feelings which are generally supposed to be peculiar to the individual, and to be the happy privilege of private life, and this is one.”

Addressing the House of Commons after the assassination of Abraham Lincoln (1 May 1865).
1860s
Contexte: There are rare instances when the sympathy of a nation approaches those tenderer feelings which are generally supposed to be peculiar to the individual, and to be the happy privilege of private life, and this is one. Under any circumstances we should have bewailed the catastrophe at Washington; under any circumstances we should have shuddered at the means by which it was accomplished. But in the character of the victim, and even in the accessories of his last moments, there is something so homely and innocent, that it takes the question, as it were, out of all the pomp of history and the ceremonial of diplomacy; it touches the heart of nations, and appeals to the domestic sentiment of mankind.
Whatever the various and varying opinions in this House, and in the country generally, on the policy of the late President of the United States, all must agree that in one of the severest trials which ever tested the moral qualities of man he fulfilled his duty with simplicity and strength. …When such crimes are perpetrated the public mind is apt to fall into gloom and perplexity, for it is ignorant alike of the causes and the consequences of such deeds. But it is one of our duties to reassure them under unreasoning panic and despondency. Assassination has never changed the history of the world. I will not refer to the remote past, though an accident has made the most memorable instance of antiquity at this moment fresh in the minds and memory of all around me. But even the costly sacrifice of a Caesar did not propitiate the inexorable destiny of his country.

“Nationality is the principle of political independence. Race is the principle of physical analogy,”

Speech http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/commons/1848/aug/09/supply-navy-estimates in the House of Commons (9 August 1848).
1840s
Contexte: The hon. Gentleman has said, in a most extraordinary manner, that our security for peace at the present day is the desire of nations to keep at home. There is a great difference between nationality and race. Nationality is the principle of political independence. Race is the principle of physical analogy, and you have at this moment the principle of race— not at all of nationality— adopted by Germany, the very country to which the hon. Member for the West Riding referred.

“What is the question now placed before society with the glib assurance the most astounding? That question is this— Is man an ape or an angel? My lord, I am on the side of the angels.”

1860s
Variante: The question is this— Is man an ape or an angel? My Lord, I am on the side of the angels. I repudiate with indignation and abhorrence these new fanged theories.
Variant: Is man an ape or an angel? Now, I am on the side of the angels!
Speech at Oxford Diocesan Conference (25 November 1864), 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. 108.

“The people of God co-operate with atheists; the most skilful accumulators of property ally themselves with communists; the peculiar and chosen race touch the hand of all the scum and low castes of Europe! And all this because they wish to destroy that ungrateful Christendom which owes to them even its name, and whose tyranny they can no longer endure.”

Lord George Bentinck: A Political Biography (1852), Chapter X http://www.gutenberg.org/files/20007/20007-h/20007-h.htm#link2HCH0010. Variations of the bolded portion of this quote have been incorrectly challenged as misattributions based on the seemingly anachronistic reference to communism (which was not yet an important political force at the time), the negative language toward Jews, and the use of such variations by antisemitic agitators who failed to provide an accurate citation to the work in which it appears. See Paul F. Boller, John George, They Never Said It: A Book of Fake Quotes, Misquotes, and Misleading Attributions (1990).
1850s
Contexte: But existing society has chosen to persecute this race which should furnish its choice allies, and what have been the consequences?
They may be traced in the last outbreak of the destructive principle in Europe. An insurrection takes place against tradition and aristocracy, against religion and property. Destruction of the Semitic principle, extirpation of the Jewish religion, whether in the Mosaic or in the Christian form, the natural equality of man and the abrogation of property, are proclaimed by the secret societies who form provisional governments, and men of Jewish race are found at the head of every one of them. The people of God co-operate with atheists; the most skilful accumulators of property ally themselves with communists; the peculiar and chosen race touch the hand of all the scum and low castes of Europe! And all this because they wish to destroy that ungrateful Christendom which owes to them even its name, and whose tyranny they can no longer endure.

“Success is the child of audacity.”

The Rise of Iskander ch. 4 (1833).
Books

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

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

“Gentl, I am a party man. I believe that, without party, Parliamentary government is impossible. I look upon Parliamentary government as the noblest government in the world, and certainly the one most suited to England.”

Source: Speech to the Conservatives of Manchester (3 April 1872), cited in The World's Best Orations from the Earliest Period to the Present Time, Vol. 1 (eds. David Josiah Brewer, Edward Archibald Allen, William Schuyler), pp. 309-338

“Pure air, pure water, the inspection of unhealthy habitations, the adulteration of food, these and many kindred matters may be legitimately dealt with by the Legislature... After all, the first consideration of a minister should be the health of the people.”

Source: Speech to the Conservatives of Manchester (3 April 1872), quoted in Selected Speeches of the Late Right Honourable the Earl of Beaconsfield, Volume II, ed. T. E. Kebbel (1882), pp. 511-512

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

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

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