Benjamin Disraeli

Benjamin Disraeli

Benjamin Disraeli, 1st Earl of Beaconsfield (21 December 1804 – 19 April 1881) was a British politician and writer who twice served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom. He played a central role in the creation of the modern Conservative Party, defining its policies and its broad outreach. He made the Conservatives the party most identified with the glory and power of the British Empire. He is the only British Prime Minister of Jewish birth.

Enjoy the best Benjamin Disraeli picture quotes.

Read more about Benjamin Disraeli on Wikipedia.

An author who speaks about their own books is almost as bad as a mother who speaks about her own children.

There is no education like adversity.

The choicest pleasures of life lie within the ring of moderation.

Like all great travellers I have seen more than I remember, and remember more than I have seen.

Travel teaches toleration.

Youth is a blunder, Manhood a struggle, Old Age a regret.

London is a modern Babylon.

Diligence is the mother of good fortune.

I never deny. I never contradict. I sometimes forget.

Despair is the conclusion of fools.

The Youth of a Nation are the trustees of posterity.

The first magic of love is our ignorance that it can ever end.

Nine-tenths of the existing books are nonsense and the clever books are the refutation of that nonsense.

Nature, like man, sometimes weeps from gladness.

Fear makes us feel our humanity.

Adventures are to the adventurous.

Assassination has never changed the history of the world.

A consistent soul believes in destiny, a capricious one in chance.

We cannot learn men from books.

Nationality is the miracle of political independence, race is the principle of physical analogy.

Let the fear of a danger be a spur to prevent it, he that fears not gives advantage to the danger.

Nurture your minds with great thoughts. To believe in the heroic makes heroes.

Desperation is sometimes as powerful an inspirer as genius.

Colonies do not cease to be colonies because they are independent.

Youth is the trustee of prosperity.

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

Characters do not change. Opinions alter but characters are only developed.

Courage is fire and bullying is smoke.

Time is precious but truth is more precious than time.

We live in an age when to be young and to be indifferent can be no longer synonymous. We must prepare for the coming hour. The claims of the Future are represented by suffering millions, and the Youth of a Nation are the trustees of Posterity.

The fool wonders the wise man asks.

Something unpleasant is coming when men are anxious to tell the truth.

If you're not very clever you should be conciliatory.

A precedent embalms a principle.

The practice of politics in the East may be defined by one word: dissimulation.

William Gladstone has not a single redeeming defect.

I repeat... that all power is a trust, that we are accountable for its exercise, that from the people and for the people all springs and all must exist.

The world is weary of statesmen whom democracy has degraded into politicians.

As a general rule the most successful man in life is the man who has the best information.

A great city whose image dwells in the memory of man is the type of some great idea. Rome represents conquest, Faith hovers over the towers of Jerusalem, and Athens embodies the pre-eminent quality of the antique world Art.

Finality is not the language of politics.

No man is regular in his attendance at the House of Commons until he is married.

Worry - a God invisible but omnipotent. It steals the bloom from the cheek and lightness from the pulse, it takes away the appetite and turns the hair gray.

Duty cannot exist without faith.

In a progressive country change is constant, change is inevitable.

There is no act of treachery or meanness of which a political party is not capable, for in politics there is no honour.

Next to knowing when to seize an opportunity the most important thing in life is to know when to forego an advantage.

To supervise people you must either surpass them in their accomplishments or despise them.

The palace is not safe when the cottage is not happy.

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

Things must be done by parties not by persons using parties as tools.

The secret of success is constancy to purpose.

There is no greater index of character so sure as the voice.

A majority is always better than the best repartee.

A University should be a place of light of liberty and of learning.

Seeing much suffering much and studying much are the three pillars of learning.

Damn your principles! Stick to your party.

I am prepared for the worst but hope for the best.

The pursuit of science leads only to the insoluble.

Life is too short to be little. Man is never so manly as when he feels deeply acts boldly and expresses himself with frankness and with fervor.

Never apologize for showing feeling. When you do so you apologize for the truth.

The secret of success in life is for a man to be ready for his opportunity when it comes.

You will find as you grow older that courage is the rarest of all qualities to be found in public life.

Action may not always bring happiness, but there is no happiness without action.

Moderation is the center wherein all philosophies both human and divine meet.

The services in wartime are fit only for desperadoes but in peace are only fit for fools.

My idea of an agreeable person is a person who agrees with me.

One secret of success in life is for a man to be ready for his opportunity when it comes.

To be conscious that you are ignorant of the facts is a great step to knowledge.

What is earnest is not always true, on the contrary error is often more earnest than truth.

If a man be gloomy let him keep to himself. No one has the right to go croaking about society or what is worse looking as if he stifled grief.

The health of the people is really the foundation upon which all their happiness and all their powers as a state depend.

Every man has a right to be conceited until he is successful.

The wisdom of the wise and the experience of the ages are perpetuated by quotations.

Never take anything for granted.

The best security for civilization is the dwelling and upon properly appointed and becoming dwellings depends more than anything else the improvement of mankind.

Frank and explicit - that is the right line to take when you wish to conceal your own mind and confuse the minds of others.

We are all born for love. It is the principle of existence and its only end.

Experience is the child of thought and thought is the child of action.

Nowadays manners are easy and life is hard.

War is never a solution, it is an aggravation.

Everyone likes flattery, and when you come to Royalty you should lay it on with a trowel.

You can tell the strength of a nation by the women behind its men.

There is moderation even in excess.

Talk to a man about himself and he will listen for hours.

The secret of success is to be ready when your opportunity comes.

Silence is the mother of truth.

It is easier to be critical than correct.

In politics nothing is contemptible.

The greatest good you can do for another is not just to share your riches but to reveal to him his own.

Every production of genius must be the production of enthusiasm.

Mediocrity can talk but it is for genius to observe.

Power has only one duty - to secure the social welfare of the People.

Without tact you can learn nothing.

The very phrase 'foreign affairs' makes an Englishman convinced that I am about to treat of subjects with which he has no concern.

Be amusing: never tell unkind stories, above all never tell long ones.

We moralize among ruins.

A Conservative Government is an organized hypocrisy.

Nobody is forgotten when it is convenient to remember him.

I say that justice is truth in action.

Moderation has been called a virtue to limit the ambition of great men and to console undistinguished people for their want of fortune and their lack of merit.

Read no history: nothing but biography for that is life without theory.

That fatal drollery called a representative government.

Taking a new step uttering a new word is what people fear most.

My objection to Liberalism is this that it is the introduction into the practical business of life of the highest kind namely politics of philosophical ideas instead of political principles.

It destroys one's nerves to be amiable every day to the same human being.

Without publicity there can be no public support and without public support every nation must decay.

Man is only great when he acts from passion.

Never complain and never explain.

There are three kinds of lies: lies damned lies and statistics.

Change is inevitable. Change is constant.

The right honourable gentleman caught the Whigs bathing and walked away with their clothes. He has left them in the full enjoyment of their liberal positions and he is himself a strict conservative of their garments.

Almost everything that is great has been done by youth.

Man is not the creature of circumstances circumstances are the creatures of men. We are free agents and man is more powerful than matter.

Two nations between whom there is no intercourse and no sympathy, who are as ignorant of each other's habits thoughts and feelings as if they were dwellers in different zones or inhabitants of different planets. The rich and the poor.

Real politics are the possession and distribution of power.

The world is governed by very different personages from what is imagined by those who are not behind the scenes.

As for our majority... one is enough.

Teach us that wealth is not elegance that profusion is not magnificence that splendor is not beauty.

The difference between a misfortune and a calamity is this: If Gladstone fell into the Thames it would be a misfortune. But if someone dragged him out again that would be a calamity.

I have brought myself by long meditation to the conviction that a human being with a settled purpose must accomplish it and that nothing can resist a will which will stake even existence upon its fulfillment.

King Louis Philippe once said to me that he attributed the great success of the British nation in political life to their talking politics after dinner.

To tax the community for the advantage of a class is not protection: it is plunder.

No Government can be long secure without a formidable Opposition.

A man may speak very well in the House of Commons and fail very completely in the House of Lords. There are two distinct styles requisite: I intend in the course of my career if I have time to give a specimen of both.

It is much easier to be critical than to be correct.

Fame and power are the objects of all men. Even their partial fruition is gained by very few, and that too at the expense of social pleasure health conscience life.

I have been ever of opinion that revolutions are not to be evaded.

There is no index of character so sure as the voice.

Justice is truth in action.

Little things affect little minds.

Man is made to adore and to obey: but if you will not command him if you give him nothing to worship he will fashion his own divinities and find a chieftain in his own passions.

We should never lose an occasion. Opportunity is more powerful even than conquerors and prophets.

Increased means and increased leisure are the two civilizers of man.

Plagiarists at least have the merit of preservation.

Circumstances are beyond human control but our conduct is in our own power.

Success is the child of audacity.

The governments of the present day have to deal not merely with other governments with emperors kings and ministers but also with the secret societies which have everywhere their unscrupulous agents and can at the last moment upset all the governments' plans.

Where knowledge ends religion begins.

Beware of endeavoring to become a great man in a hurry. One such attempt in ten thousand may succeed. These are fearful odds.

I must follow the people. Am I not their leader?

There is no waste of time in life like that of making explanations.

What we anticipate seldom occurs: but what we least expect generally happens.

He was distinguished for ignorance, for he had only one idea and that was wrong.

London is a roost for every bird.

Grief is the agony of an instant. The indulgence of grief the blunder of a life.

There can be economy only where there is efficiency.

There is no gambling like politics.

The more you are talked about the less powerful you are.

The more extensive a man's knowledge of what has been done the greater will be his power of knowing what to do.

Through perseverance many people win success out of what seemed destined to be certain failure.

How much easier it is to be critical than to be correct.

Genius when young is divine.

The view of Jerusalem is the history of the world, it is more it is the history of earth and of heaven.

When a man fell into his anecdotage it was a sign for him to retire from the world.

Great countries are those that produce great people.

Conservatism discards Prescription shrinks from Principle disavows Progress, having rejected all respect for antiquity it offers no redress for the present and makes no preparation for the future.

Search