Benjamin Disraeli Quotes

328 Sourced Quotes

I have climbed to the top of the greasy pole.

Benjamin Disraeli
A great thing is a great book; but a greater thing than all is the talk of a great man.

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
The Athanasian Creed is the most splendid ecclesiastical lyric ever poured forth by the genius of man.

Benjamin Disraeli
Experience is the child of Thought, and Thought is the child of Action. We cannot learn men from books.

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

Benjamin Disraeli
Popular privileges are consistent with a state of society in which there is great inequality of position. Democratic rights, on the contrary, demand that there should be equality of condition as the fundamental basis of the society they regulate.

Benjamin Disraeli
Happiness is only to be found in a recurrence to the principles of human nature; and these will prompt very simple measures.

Benjamin Disraeli
Twilight makes us pensive; Aurora is the goddess of activity; despair curses at midnight; hope blesses at noon.

Benjamin Disraeli
What we call the heart is a nervous sensation, like shyness, which gradually disappears in society. It is fervent in the nursery, strong in the domestic circle, tumultuous at school.

Benjamin Disraeli
Patriotism depends as much on mutual suffering as on mutual success; and it is by that experience of all fortunes and all feelings that a great national character is created.

Benjamin Disraeli
Eloquence is the child of knowledge. When a mind is full, like a wholesome river, it is also clear.

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

Benjamin Disraeli
I do not understand how an aristocracy can exist, unless it be distinguished by some quality which no other class of the community possesses.

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
Nature is more powerful than education; time will develop everything.

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
I was told that the Privileged and the People formed Two Nations.

Benjamin Disraeli
No conjunction can possibly occur, however fearful, however tremendous it may appear, from which a man by his own energy may not extricate himself, as a mariner by the rattling of his cannon can dissipate the impending waterspout.

Benjamin Disraeli
The people of England are the most enthusiastic in the world.

Benjamin Disraeli
I will sit down now, but the time will come when you will hear me.

Benjamin Disraeli
Money is power, and rare are the heads that can withstand the possession of great power.

Benjamin Disraeli
The Duke of Wellington brought to the post of first minister immortal fame,-a quality of success which would almost seem to include all others.

Benjamin Disraeli
Real politics are the possession and distribution of power.

Benjamin Disraeli
Though I sit down now, the time will come when you will hear me.

Benjamin Disraeli