David Lloyd George Quotes

68 Sourced Quotes

[Churchill] would make a drum out of the skin of his mother in order to sound his own praises.

David Lloyd George
Death is the most convenient time to tax rich people.

David Lloyd George
On the 1905 Tory government:
They died with their drawn salaries in their hands.

David Lloyd George
Independent thinking is not encouraged in a professional Army. It is a form of mutiny. Obedience is the supreme virtue.

David Lloyd George
A politician is a person with whose politics you don't agree; if you agree with him he's a statesman.

David Lloyd George
[Lloyd George] told me he did not see how we could get successfully through this war...It is clear that that damn fool Neville [Chamberlain] never gave a thought to that question - whether we would win - when he declared war. I am not against war, but I am against war when we have no chance of winning.

David Lloyd George
Anyhow, it is a different situation now to what it was then; Clemenceau had power; I shall wait until Winston is bust.

David Lloyd George
The Prime Minister should give an example of sacrifice, because there is nothing which can contribute more to victory than that he should sacrifice the seals of office.
Of Neville Chamberlain

David Lloyd George
Lucidity of speech is unquestionably one of the surest tests of mental precision.

David Lloyd George
As we came away we ran into Lloyd George. Turning to me he said: "What are you going to do, my boy, when you grow up?" "I'm going into the Navy, sir," I replied. He frowned. "There are many greater storms in politics. If it's piracy you want, with broadsides, boarding parties, walking the plank and blood on the deck, this is the place." His words had gone home. That evening I confided to my father that what Lloyd George had said had decided my life. It would be politics for me.

David Lloyd George
The nations slithered over the brink into the boiling cauldron of war without any trace of apprehension or dismay... The nations backed their machines over the precipice not one of them wanted war, certainly not on this scale

David Lloyd George
If you want to succeed in politics, you must keep your conscience well under control.

David Lloyd George
I am making a good fight for the old country & there is no one but me who could do it.

David Lloyd George
Sufficient conscience to bother him, but not sufficient to keep him straight.
Of Ramsay Macdonald

David Lloyd George
A fully equipped Duke costs as much to keep up as two Dreadnoughts, and Dukes are just as great a terror, and they last longer.

David Lloyd George
Of all the bigotries that savage the human temper there is none so stupid as the anti-Semitic.

David Lloyd George
I sometimes wish that I were in the Labour Party. I would tear down all these institutions!

David Lloyd George
Wilson is adopting a dangerous line. He wants to pose as the great arbiter of the war. His Fourteen Points are very dangerous. He speaks of the freedom of the seas. That would involve the abolition of the right of search and seizure, and the blockade. We shall not agree to that. Such a change would not suit this country. Wilson does not see that by laying down terms without consulting the Allies, he is making their position very difficult. He had no right to reply to the German Note without consultation, and I insisted upon a cablegram being sent to him. The position is very disturbing.

David Lloyd George
[Lloyd George] then when on to say that the Imperial Conference had had a meeting that morning, and that he, Smuts, Hughes and Massey did not intend to allow the British Empire to take a back seat. Gt Britain had won the war. She had made enormous sacrifices in men and money, and they were quite determined that she should not be overshadowed by America.

David Lloyd George
Four spectres haunt the Poor — Old Age, Accident, Sickness and Unemployment. We are going to exorcise them. We are going to drive hunger from the hearth. We mean to banish the workhouse from the horizon of every workman in the land.

David Lloyd George
The Landlord is a gentleman … who does not earn his wealth. He has a host of agents and clerks that receive for him. He does not even take the trouble to spend his wealth. He has a host of people around him to do the actual spending. He never sees it until he comes to enjoy it. His sole function, his chief pride, is the stately consumption of wealth produced by others.

David Lloyd George
A politician was a person with whose politics you did not agree. When you did agree, he was a statesman.

David Lloyd George
There are always clouds in the international sky. You never get a perfectly blue sky in foreign affairs. And there are clouds even now. But we feel confident that the common sense, the patience, the good-will, the forbearance which enabled us to solve greater and more difficult and more urgent problems last year will enable us to pull through these difficulties at the present moment.

David Lloyd George
[Proportional representation is a] device for defeating democracy, the principle of which was that the majority should rule, and for bringing faddists of all kinds into Parliament, and establishing groups and disintegrating parties.

David Lloyd George
Modern warfare, we discovered, was to a far greater extent than ever before a conflict of chemists and manufacturers. Manpower, it is true, was indispensable, and generalship will always, whatever the conditions, have a vital part to play. But troops, however brave and well led, were powerless under modern conditions unless equipped with adequate and up-to-date artillery (with masses of explosive shell), machine-guns, aircraft and other supplies. Against enemy machine-gun posts and wire entanglements the most gallant and best-led men could only throw away their precious lives in successive waves of heroic martyrdom. Their costly sacrifice could avail nothing for the winning of victory.

David Lloyd George
Haig does not care how many men he loses. He just squanders the lives of these boys. I mean to save some of them in the future. He seems to think they are his property. I am their trustee. I will never let him rest. I will raise the subject again & again until I nag him out of it—until he knows that as soon as the casualty lists get large he will get nothing but black looks and scowls and awkward questions... I should have backed Nievelle against Haig. Nievelle has proved himself to be a Man at Verdun; & when you get a Man against one who has not proved himself, why, you back the Man!

David Lloyd George
Once blood is shed in a national quarrel reason and right are swept aside by the rage of angry men.

David Lloyd George
Winston [Churchill] is the only remaining specimen of a real Tory.

David Lloyd George
I have no nest-eggs. I am looking for someone else's hen-roost to rob next year.
In 1908, as Chancellor

David Lloyd George
The League of Nations is the greatest humbug in history. They cannot even protect a little nation like Armenia. They do nothing but pass useless resolutions.

David Lloyd George