Benjamin Disraeli Quotes

326 Sourced Quotes

Knowledge must be gained by ourselves. Mankind may supply us with facts; but the results, even if they agree with previous ones, must be the work of our own minds.

Benjamin Disraeli
This is the third time that, in the course of six years, during which I have had the lead of the Opposition in the House of Commons, I have stormed the Treasury Benches: twice, fruitlessly, the third time with a tin kettle to my tail which rendered the race hopeless. You cannot, therefore, be surprised, that I am a little wearied of these barren victories, which like Alma, Inkerman, and Balaclava, may be glorious but are certainly nothing more.

Benjamin Disraeli
Great revolutions, whatever may be their causes, are not lightly commenced, and are not concluded with precipitation.

Benjamin Disraeli
Then there was a maiden speech, so inaudible, that it was doubted whether, after all, the young orator really did lose his virginity.

Benjamin Disraeli
What are the most brilliant of our chymical discoveries compared with the invention of fire and the metals?

Benjamin Disraeli
The very phrase 'foreign affairs' makes an Englishman convinced that I am about to treat of subjects with which he has no concern.

Benjamin Disraeli
No man is regular in his attendance at the House of Commons until he is married.

Benjamin Disraeli
I see before me the statue of a celebrated minister, who said that confidence was a plant of slow growth. But I believe, however gradual may be the growth of confidence, that of credit requires still more time to arrive at maturity.

Benjamin Disraeli
I have always felt that the best security for civilisation is the dwelling, and that upon properly appointed and becoming dwellings depends more than anything else the improvement of mankind. Such dwellings are the nursery of all domestic virtues, and without a becoming home the exercise of those virtues is impossible.

Benjamin Disraeli
'Frank and explicit'—that is the right line to take when you wish to conceal your own mind and to confuse the minds of others.

Benjamin Disraeli
Beware of endeavouring to become a great man in a hurry. One such attempt in ten thousand may succeed: These are fearful odds.

Benjamin Disraeli
Pretending that people can be better off than they are is radicalism and nothing else.

Benjamin Disraeli
Why, I say, that to tax the community for the advantage of a class is not protection; it is plunder, and I entirely disclaim it; but I ask you to protect the rights and interests of labour generally in the first place, by allowing no free imports from countries which meet you with countervailing duties; and, in the second place, with respect to agricultural produce, to compensate the soil for the burdens from which other classes are free by an equivalent duty. This is my view of what is called "protection."

Benjamin Disraeli
Upon the education of the people of this country the fate of this country depends.

Benjamin Disraeli
When little is done, little is said; silence is the mother of truth.

Benjamin Disraeli
A government of statesmen or of clerks? Of Humbug or Humdrum?

Benjamin Disraeli
In the character of the victim [Lincoln], 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.

Benjamin Disraeli
As a general rule the most successful man in life is the man who has the best information.

Benjamin Disraeli
A University should be a place of light, of liberty, and of learning.

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

Benjamin Disraeli
The affections are the children of ignorance; when the horizon of our experience expands, and models multiply, love and admiration imperceptibly vanish.

Benjamin Disraeli
There is no waste of time in life like that of making explanations.

Benjamin Disraeli
Conservatism discards Prescription, shrinks from Principle, disavows Progress; having rejected all respect for antiquity, it offers no redress for the present, and makes no preparation for the future.

Benjamin Disraeli
He who anticipates his century is generally persecuted when living, and always pilfered when dead.

Benjamin Disraeli
Yes, I am a Jew, and when the ancestors of the right honorable gentleman were brutal savages in an unknown island, mine were priests in the temple of Solomon.

Benjamin Disraeli
I remember—the interruption of the hon. Gentleman reminds me of the words of a great writer, who said that "Grace was beauty in action." 'Sir, I say that justice is truth in action. Truth should animate an opposition, and I hope it does animate this opposition.;

Benjamin Disraeli
Nothing is going on, but everybody is afraid of something.

Benjamin Disraeli
That is an apology, not an explanation; and apologies only account for that which they do not alter.

Benjamin Disraeli
"As for that," said Waldershare, "sensible men are all of the same religion." "And pray, what is that?" inquired the prince. "Sensible men never tell."

Benjamin Disraeli
We owe the English peerage to three sources: the spoliation of the Church; the open and flagrant sale of honours by the elder Stuarts; and the borough-mongering of our own time.

Benjamin Disraeli