Robert Peel Quotes

32 Sourced Quotes

There seem to me very few facts, at least ascertainable facts, in politics.

Robert Peel
Agitation is the marshalling of the conscience of a people to mold its laws.

Robert Peel
The police are the public and the public are the police

Robert Peel
Philosophers are very regardless of expense when the public has to bear it.

Robert Peel
I feel and know that the Repeal [of the Act of Union 1801] must lead to the dismemberment of this great empire; must make Great Britain a fourth-rate power in Europe, and Ireland a savage wilderness.

Robert Peel
The great art of government is to work by such instruments as the world supplies.

Robert Peel
The distinction of being without an honour is becoming a rare and valuable one and should not become extinct.

Robert Peel
Of all vulgar arts of government, that of solving every difficulty which might arise by thrusting the hand into the public purse is the most delusory and contemptible.

Robert Peel
The real truth is, the number of convicts is too overwhelming for the means of proper and effectual punishment. I despair of any remedy but that which I wish I could hope for - a great reduction in the amount of crime.

Robert Peel
I have read all that has been written by the gravest authorities on political economy on the subject of rent, wages, taxes, tithes.

Robert Peel
The hasty inordinate demand for peace might be just as dangerous as the clamour for war.

Robert Peel
Can there be a more lamentable picture than that of a Chancellor of the Exchequer seated on an empty chest by a pool of bottomless deficiency fishing for a budget?

Robert Peel
There will always be found a permanent fund of discontent and dissatisfaction in every country.

Robert Peel
There are those who seem to have nothing else to do but to suggest modes of taxation to men in office.

Robert Peel
There is not a single law connected with my name which has not had as its object some mitigation of the severity of the criminal law; some prevention of abuse in the exercise of it; or some security for its impartial administration.

Robert Peel
Great public measures cannot be carried by the influence of mere reason.

Robert Peel
A cordial and good understanding between France and England is essential to the peace and welfare of Europe.

Robert Peel
So far as the great majority of his audience was concerned, he had blocks to cut, and he chose a fitter instrument than a razor to cut them with.
Of Robert Walpole

Robert Peel
No man attached to his country could always acquiesce in the opinions of the majority.

Robert Peel
There are many parties in Ireland who desire to have a grievance and prefer the grievance to the remedy.

Robert Peel
We are here to consult the interests and not to obey the will of the people, if we honestly believe that that will conflicts with those interests.

Robert Peel
Speaking with that caution with which I am sometimes taunted but which I find a great convenience.

Robert Peel
If the spirit of the Reform Bill implies merely, a careful review of institutions, civil and ecclesiastical, undertaken in a friendly temper, combining, with the firm maintenance of established rights, the correction of proved abuses, and the redress of real grievances,—in that case, I can for myself and colleagues undertake to act in such a spirit and with such intentions.

Robert Peel
An Irishman has no sense of the ridiculous when office is in question.

Robert Peel
It was impossible to reconcile the repeal of the Corn Laws by me with the keeping together of the Conservative party, and I had no hesitation in sacrificing the subordinate object, and with it my own political interests.

Robert Peel
All my experience in public life is in favour of the employment of what the world would call young men instead of old ones.

Robert Peel
Priests are not above sublunary considerations. Priests have nephews.

Robert Peel
If you had to constitute new societies, you might on moral and social grounds prefer cornfields to cotton factories, an agricultural to a manufacturing population. But our lot is cast, and we cannot recede.

Robert Peel
No government can exist which does not control and restrain the popular sentiments.

Robert Peel
My object, having a surplus to deal with, is to consider how I can deal with it to the greatest advantage to the consumer— how, without inflicting any injury on Canada, I can secure the most substantial benefit to this country, to the manufacturing, to the commercial, and to the agricultural interests... The real way in which we can benefit the working and manufacturing classes is, unquestionably, by removing the burden that presses on the springs of manufactures and commerce.

Robert Peel