“Scratch me and you will find the Nonconformist.”
Austen Chamberlain (1863–1937) British politician
1927. Quoted in Sir Charles Petrie, The Life and Letters of Sir Austen Chamberlain: Vol. II (Cassell, 1940), p. 321.
1920s
“Scratch an Englishman and find a Protestant.”
Saint Joan : A Chronicle Play In Six Scenes And An Epilogue (1923)
1920s
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George Bernard Shaw413
Irish playwright 1856–1950Related quotes
“Scratch the Christian and you find the pagan — spoiled.”
Israel Zangwill (1864–1926) British writer
Children of the Ghetto (1892), bk. 2, ch. 6.
“If you scratch a Conservative, you find a Fascist.”
David Lloyd George (1863–1945) Former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom
Speech to the London Young Liberal Federation in the National Liberal Club (5 January 1925), quoted in John Campbell, Lloyd George: The Goat in the Wilderness, 1922–1931 (1977), p. 109
Leader of the Liberal Party in the House of Commons
“Scratch any cynic and you will find a disappointed idealist.”
George Carlin (1937–2008) American stand-up comedian
Variant: Inside every cynical person, there is a disappointed idealist.
“Scratch a pessimist and you find often a defender of privilege.”
William Beveridge (1879–1963) Economist and social reformer
As quoted in "Sayings of the Week" in The Observer [London] (17 December 1943)
“The sweeter the apple, the blacker the core. Scratch a lover and find a foe!”
Dorothy Parker (1893–1967) American poet, short story writer, critic and satirist
Source: Enough Rope
“You never find an Englishman among the under-dogs—except in England, of course.”
Evelyn Waugh book The Loved One
Source: The Loved One (1948), Chapter 1
Mohamed ElBaradei (1942) Egyptian law scholar and diplomat, former Director General of the International Atomic Energy Agency, and Nobel …
Nobel lecture (2005)
Context: What is more important is that these are not separate or distinct threats. When we scratch the surface, we find them closely connected and interrelated.
We are 1,000 people here today in this august hall. Imagine for a moment that we represent the world's population. These 200 people on my left would be the wealthy of the world, who consume 80 per cent of the available resources. And these 400 people on my right would be living on an income of less than $2 per day.
This underprivileged group of people on my right is no less intelligent or less worthy than their fellow human beings on the other side of the aisle. They were simply born into this fate.
In the real world, this imbalance in living conditions inevitably leads to inequality of opportunity, and in many cases loss of hope. And what is worse, all too often the plight of the poor is compounded by and results in human rights abuses, a lack of good governance, and a deep sense of injustice. This combination naturally creates a most fertile breeding ground for civil wars, organized crime, and extremism in its different forms.
In regions where conflicts have been left to fester for decades, countries continue to look for ways to offset their insecurities or project their 'power'. In some cases, they may be tempted to seek their own weapons of mass destruction, like others who have preceded them.
