William Ewart Gladstone Quotes

62 Sourced Quotes

Socialism. Here I am at at one with you. I have always been opposed to it. It is now taking hold of both parties, in a way I much dislike: & unhappily Lord Salisbury is one of its leaders, with no Lord Hartington (see his speech at Darwen) to oppose him.

William Ewart Gladstone
The disease of an evil conscience is beyond the practice of all the physicians of all the countries in the world.

William Ewart Gladstone
Let the Turks now carry away their abuses in the only possible manner, namely by carrying off themselves…one and all, bag and baggage, shall I hope clear out from the province they have desolated and profaned.

William Ewart Gladstone
There never was a Churchill from John of Marlborough down that had either morals or principles.

William Ewart Gladstone
I venture to say that every man who is not presumably incapacitated by some consideration of personal unfitness or of political danger is morally entitled to come within the pale of the Constitution.

William Ewart Gladstone
Your business is not to govern the country but it is, if you think fit, to call to account those who do govern it.

William Ewart Gladstone
I am inclined to say that the personal attendance and intervention of women in election proceedings, even apart from any suspicion of the wider objects of many of the promoters of the present movement, would be a practical evil not only of the gravest, but even of an intolerable character.

William Ewart Gladstone
[The British Constitution] presumes more boldly than any other the good sense and the good faith of those who work it.

William Ewart Gladstone
I have always regarded that Constitution as the most remarkable work known to me in modern times to have been produced by the human intellect, at a single stroke (so to speak), in its application to political affairs.

William Ewart Gladstone
I would tell them of my own intention to keep my counsel…and I will venture to recommend them, as an old Parliamentary hand, to do the same.

William Ewart Gladstone
The errors of former times are recorded for our instruction in order that we may avoid their repition.

William Ewart Gladstone
To treat a man as the enemy of Science is to treat him as the enemy of Truth.

William Ewart Gladstone
For works of the mind really great there is no old age, no decrepitude. It is inconceivable that a time should come when Homer, Dante, Shakespeare, should not ring in the ears of civilized man.

William Ewart Gladstone
I was tenaciously opposed by the governor and deputy-governor of the Bank, who had seats in parliament, and I had the City for an antagonist on almost every occasion.

William Ewart Gladstone
The domestic use of tea is a powerful champion able to encounter alcoholic drink in a fair field and throw it in a fair fight.

William Ewart Gladstone
The idea of abolishing Income Tax is to me highly attractive, both on other grounds & because it tends to public economy.

William Ewart Gladstone
I mean this, that together with the so-called increase of expenditure there grows up what may be termed a spirit which, insensibly and unconsciously perhaps, but really, affects the spirit of the people, the spirit of parliament, the spirit of the public departments, and perhaps even the spirit of those whose duty it is to submit the estimates to parliament.

William Ewart Gladstone
Economy is the first and great article (economy such as I understand it) in my financial creed. The controversy between direct and indirect taxation holds a minor, though important place.

William Ewart Gladstone
I am sorry to say that I have a long speech fermenting in me, and I feel as a loaf might in the oven.

William Ewart Gladstone
Mediocrity is now, as formerly, dangerous, commonly fatal, to the poet; but among even the successful writers of prose, those who rise sensibly above it are the very rarest exceptions.

William Ewart Gladstone
Ideal perfection is not the true basis of English legislation. We...have too much English sense to be drawn away by those sanguine delineations of what might possibly be attained in Utopia, from a path which promises to enable us to effect great good for the people of England.

William Ewart Gladstone
The reason why the foreign producer gets his produce to market cheaper, relatively, is this — that foreign produce is collected and brought in such large quantities and is sent in great masses to the market. That is the secret of cheap carriage... We must try to make our pounds of produce into tons — or must bring together a number of producers. If you small agriculturists can collectively offer a great bulk of merchandise to the railway companies, they will give you good terms.

William Ewart Gladstone
This, if I understand it, is one of those golden moments of our history, one of those opportunities which may come and may go, but which rarely returns.

William Ewart Gladstone
The resources of civilization are not yet exhausted.

William Ewart Gladstone
One prayer absorbs all others: Ireland, Ireland, Ireland.

William Ewart Gladstone
We may be for or against the South. But there is no doubt that Jefferson Davis and other leaders of the South have made an Army; they are making, it appears, a Navy; and they have made — what is more than either — they have made a Nation... We may anticipate with certainty the success of the Southern States so far as regards their separation from the North.

William Ewart Gladstone
The hopelessness of the Turkish Government should make me witness with delight its being swept out of the countries which it tortures. Next to the Ottoman Government nothing can be more deplorable and blameworthy than jealousies between Greek and Slav and plans by the States already existing for appropriating other territory. Why not Macedonia for the Macedonians as well as Bulgaria for the Bulgarians and Serbia for the Serbians?

William Ewart Gladstone
The rule of our policy is that nothing should be done by the state which can be better or as well done by voluntary effort; and I am not aware that, either in its moral or even its literary aspects, the work of the state for education has as yet proved its superiority to the work of the religious bodies or of philanthropic individuals. Even the economical considerations of materially augmented cost do not appear to be wholly trivial.

William Ewart Gladstone
As the British Constitution is the most subtle organism which has proceeded from the womb and the long gestation of progressive history, so the American Constitution is, so far as I can see, the most wonderful work ever struck off by the brain and purpose of man.

William Ewart Gladstone
Liberalism is trust of the people, tempered by prudence; conservatism is distrust of the people, tempered by fear.

William Ewart Gladstone