William Pitt, 1st Earl of Chatham Quotes

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Confidence is a plant of slow growth in an aged bosom: youth is the season of credulity.

William Pitt, 1st Earl of Chatham
If I were an American, as I am an Englishman, while a foreign troop was landed in my country, I would never lay down my arms—never, never, never! You cannot conquer America.

William Pitt, 1st Earl of Chatham
Unlimited power is apt to corrupt the minds of those who possess it; and this I know, my lords, that where laws end, tyranny begins.

William Pitt, 1st Earl of Chatham
We retain nothing, although we have conquered everything... France is chiefly, if not solely, to be dreaded by us in the light of a maritime and commercial power; and therefore by restoring to her all the valuable West India islands, and by our concessions in the Newfoundland fishery, we have given her the means of recovering her prodigious losses and of becoming once more formidable to us at sea... all the Spanish treasures and riches in America, lay at our mercy.

William Pitt, 1st Earl of Chatham
Bowing, ceremonious, formal compliments, stiff civilities, will never be politeness; that must be easy, natural, unstudied; and what will give this but a mind benevolent and attentive to exert that amiable disposition in trifles to all you converse and live with?

William Pitt, 1st Earl of Chatham
The little I know of it has not served to raise my opinion of what is vulgarly called the Monied Interest; I mean, that blood-sucker, that muckworm, that calls itself the friend of government.

William Pitt, 1st Earl of Chatham
Concession comes with better grace and more salutary effect from superior power.

William Pitt, 1st Earl of Chatham
I must now address a few words to the Solicitor; they shall be few, but they shall be daggers.

William Pitt, 1st Earl of Chatham
I love the Americans because they love liberty, and I love them for the noble efforts they made in the last war.

William Pitt, 1st Earl of Chatham
Roll up that map; it will not be wanted these ten years.

William Pitt, 1st Earl of Chatham
We have a Calvinistic creed, a Popish liturgy, and an Arminian clergy.

William Pitt, 1st Earl of Chatham
Reparation for our rights at home, and security against the like future violations.

William Pitt, 1st Earl of Chatham
Any state is better than despair. Let us at least make one effort; and if we must fall, let us fall like men.

William Pitt, 1st Earl of Chatham
The atrocious crime of being a young man, which the honorable gentleman [Walpole] has with such spirit and decency charged upon me, I shall neither attempt to palliate nor deny; but content myself with wishing that I may be one of those whose follies may cease with their youth, and not of that number who are ignorant in spite of experience.

William Pitt, 1st Earl of Chatham
I rejoice that America has resisted. Three millions of people, so dead to all the feelings of liberty, as voluntarily to submit to be slaves, would have been fit instruments to make slaves of the rest.

William Pitt, 1st Earl of Chatham
You have ransacked every corner of Lower Saxony; but forty thousand German boors never can conquer ten times the number of British freemen. You may ravage—you cannot conquer; it is impossible: you cannot conquer the Americans. You talk, my Lords, of your friends among them to annihilate the Congress, and of your powerful forces to disperse their army: I might as well talk of driving them before me with this crutch!... If you conquer them, what then? You cannot make them respect you; you cannot make them wear your cloth: you will plant an invincible hatred in their breasts against you. Coming from the stock they do, they can never respect you...

William Pitt, 1st Earl of Chatham
Our seamen have always been famous for a matchless alacrity and intrepidity in time of danger; this has saved many a British ship, when other seamen would have run below deck, and left the ship to the mercy of the waves, or, perhaps, of a more cruel enemy, a pirate.

William Pitt, 1st Earl of Chatham
My Lord, I am sure I can save this country, and no one else can.

William Pitt, 1st Earl of Chatham
Yes, I know I am young and inexperienced, but it is a fault I am remedying every day.

William Pitt, 1st Earl of Chatham
There are many things a parliament cannot do. It cannot make itself executive, nor dispose of offices which belong to the crown. It cannot take any man's property, even that of the meanest cottager, as in the case of enclosures, without his being heard.

William Pitt, 1st Earl of Chatham
It must cut up Liberty by the root and poison the Fountain of Publick Security; and who that has an English heart can ever be weary of asserting Liberty?

William Pitt, 1st Earl of Chatham
A long train of these practices has at length unwillingly convinced me that there is something behind the throne greater than the King himself.

William Pitt, 1st Earl of Chatham
The poorest man may in his cottage bid defiance to all the forces of the Crown. It may be frail — its roof may shake — the wind may blow through it — the storm may enter — the rain may enter — but the King of England cannot enter — all his force dares not cross the threshold of the ruined tenement!

William Pitt, 1st Earl of Chatham
While we had France for an enemy, Germany was the scene to employ and baffle her arms.

William Pitt, 1st Earl of Chatham
When trade is at stake, it is your last entrenchment; you must defend it, or perish... Sir, Spain knows the consequence of a war in America; whoever gains, it must prove fatal to her... is this any longer a nation? Is this any longer an English Parliament, if with more ships in your harbours than in all the navies of Europe; with above two millions of people in your American colonies, you will bear to hear of the expediency of receiving from Spain an insecure, unsatisfactory, dishonourable Convention?

William Pitt, 1st Earl of Chatham