Benjamin Disraeli Quotes

326 Sourced Quotes

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

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

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

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

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

Benjamin Disraeli
Before the civil war commenced, the United States of America were colonies, and we should not forget that such communities do not cease to be colonies because they are independent.

Benjamin Disraeli
Every one likes flattery; and when you come to Royalty you should lay it on with a trowel.

Benjamin Disraeli
The noble lord in this case, as in so many others, first destroys his opponent, and then destroys his own position afterwards. The noble lord is the Prince Rupert of parliamentary discussion: his charge is resistless, but when he returns from the pursuit he always finds his camp in the possession of the enemy.

Benjamin Disraeli
The movement of the middle classes for the abolition of slavery was virtuous, but it was not wise. It was an ignorant movement. It showed a want of knowledge both of the laws of commerce and the stipulations of treaties; and it has alike ruined the colonies and aggravated the slave trade... The history of the abolition of slavery by the English and its consequences, would be a narrative of ignorance, injustice, blundering, waste, and havoc, not easily paralleled in the history of mankind.

Benjamin Disraeli
He was fresh and full of faith that "something would turn up."

Benjamin Disraeli
I believe they went out, like all good things, with the Stuarts.

Benjamin Disraeli
To govern men, you must either excel them in their accomplishments, or despise them.

Benjamin Disraeli
The fun of talk is to find what a man really thinks, and then contrast it with the enormous lies he has been telling all dinner, and, perhaps, all his life.

Benjamin Disraeli
Without tact you can learn nothing. Tact teaches you when to be silent. Inquirers who are always inquiring never learn anything.

Benjamin Disraeli
A want of tact is worse than a want of virtue. Some women, it is said, work on pretty well without the last: I never knew one who did not sink, who ever dared to sail without the other.

Benjamin Disraeli
We live in an age when to be young and to be indifferent can be no longer synonymous. We must prepare for the coming hour. The claims of the Future are represented by suffering millions; and the Youth of a Nation are the trustees of Posterity.

Benjamin Disraeli
It is the fashion to style the present moment an extraordinary crisis.

Benjamin Disraeli
To do nothing and get something, formed a boy's ideal of a manly career.

Benjamin Disraeli
I think the author who speaks about his own books is almost as bad as a mother who talks about her own children.

Benjamin Disraeli
There is no act of treachery or meanness of which a political party is not capable; for in politics there is no honour.

Benjamin Disraeli
In a progressive country change is constant; and the great question is not whether you should resist change which is inevitable, but whether that change should be carried out in deference to the manners, the customs, the laws and the traditions of a people, or whether it should be carried out in deference to abstract principles, and arbitrary and general doctrines.

Benjamin Disraeli
I hold that the characteristic of the present age is craving credulity.

Benjamin Disraeli
Time is precious, but truth is more precious than time.

Benjamin Disraeli
Progress to what and from where…The European talks of progress because by an ingenious application of some scientific acquirements he has established a society which has mistaken comfort for civilization.

Benjamin Disraeli
Mr Kremlin himself was distinguished for ignorance, for he had only one idea,—and that was wrong.

Benjamin Disraeli
That dense population in extreme distress inhabited an island where there was an established church which was not their church; and a territorial aristocracy, the richest of whom lived in distant capitals. Thus they had a starving population, an absentee aristocracy, and an alien Church, and, in addition, the weakest executive in the world. That was the Irish question.

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

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
'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