Benjamin Disraeli Quotes

326 Sourced Quotes

London owes everything to its press: it owes as much to its press as it does to its being the seat of government and the law.

Benjamin Disraeli
A sophistical rhetorician [Gladstone], inebriated with the exuberance of his own verbosity, and gifted with an egotistical imagination that can at all times command an interminable and inconsistent series of arguments to malign an opponent and to glorify himself.

Benjamin Disraeli
Two nations, between whom there is no intercourse and no sympathy; who are as ignorant of each other's habits, thoughts, and feelings as if they were dwellers in different zones, or inhabitants of different planets; who are formed by a different breeding, are fed by a different food, are ordered by different manners, and are not governed by the same laws...

Benjamin Disraeli
Sir, it is very easy to complain of party Government, and there may be persons capable of forming an opinion on this subject who may entertain a deep objection to that Government, and know to what that objection leads. But there are others who shrug their shoulders, and talk in a slipshod style on this head, who, perhaps, are not exactly aware of what the objections lead to. These persons should understand, that if they object to party Government, they do, in fact, object to nothing more nor less than Parliamentary Government. A popular assembly without parties—500 isolated individuals—cannot stand five years against a Minister with an organized Government without becoming a servile Senate.

Benjamin Disraeli
Every man has a right to be conceited until he is successful.

Benjamin Disraeli
I have always thought that every woman should marry, and no man.

Benjamin Disraeli
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.

Benjamin Disraeli
But this principle of race is unfortunately one of the reasons why I fear war may always exist; because race implies difference, difference implies superiority, and superiority leads to predominance.

Benjamin Disraeli
We should never lose an occasion. Opportunity is more powerful even than conquerors and prophets.

Benjamin Disraeli
What is wanted in architecture, as in so many things, is a man.... One suggestion might be made-no profession in England has done its duty until it has furnished a victim.... Even our boasted navy never achieved a great victory until we shot an admiral. Suppose an architect were hanged? Terror has its inspiration, as well as competition.

Benjamin Disraeli
Man is made to adore and to obey: but if you will not command him, if you give him nothing to worship, he will fashion his own divinities, and find a chieftain in his own passions.

Benjamin Disraeli
The Continent will [not] suffer England to be the workshop of the world.

Benjamin Disraeli
You cannot choose between party government and Parliamentary government. I say, you can have no Parliamentary government if you have no party government; and, therefore, when Gentlemen denounce party government, they strike at that scheme of government which, in my opinion, has made this country great, and which I hope will keep it great.

Benjamin Disraeli
A dark horse, which had never been thought of, and which the careless St. James had never even observed in the list, rushed past the grandstand in sweeping triumph.

Benjamin Disraeli
You know who the critics are? The men who have failed in literature and art.

Benjamin Disraeli
My objection to Liberalism is this—that it is the introduction into the practical business of life of the highest kind—namely, politics—of philosophical ideas instead of political principles.

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

Benjamin Disraeli
In the 'Town' yesterday, I am told 'some one asked Disraeli, in offering himself for Marylebone, on what he intended to stand. On my head, was the reply.'

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
A consistent soul believes in destiny, a capricious one in chance.

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

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
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