Benjamin Disraeli Quotes (299 Quotes)

With words we govern men.

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.

A sound Conservative government... Tory men and Whig measures.

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

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

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

Finality is not the language of politics.

London is a roost for every bird.

It is well known what a middle man is he is a man who bamboozles one party and plunders the other

It was not reason that besieged Troy it was not reason that sent forth the Saracen from the desert to conquer the world that inspired the crusades that instituted the monastic orders it was not reason that produced the Jesuits above all, it was not reason that created the French Revolution. Man is only great when he acts from the passions never irresistible but when he appeals to the imagination.

I will not go down to posterity talking bad grammar.

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.

Adventures are to the adventurous.

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

Youth is the trustee of prosperity.

If the history of England be ever written by one who has the knowledge and the courage,and both qualities are equally requisite for the undertaking, the world will be more astonished than when reading the Roman annals by Niebuhr.

Never complain and never explain.

Sir, I say that justice is truth in action.

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

As I sat opposite the Treasury Bench the ministers reminded me of one of those marine landscapes not very unusual on the coasts of South America. You behold a range of exhausted volcanoes.

That doctrine of peace at any price has done more mischief than any I can well recall that have been afloat in this country. It has occasioned more wars than any of the most ruthless conquerors. It has disturbed and nearly destroyed that political equilibrium so necessary to the liberties and the welfare of the world.

Knowledge must be gained by ourselves. Mankind may supply us with facts but the results, even if they agree with previous ones, must be the work of our own mind.

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

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

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

How fair is a garden amid the toils and passions of existence.

When little is done, little is said silence is the mother of truth.

There is no gambling like politics.

The noble lord is the Rupert of debate.

News is that which comes from the North, East, West and South, and if it comes from only one point on the compass, then it is a class publication and not news

Almost everything that is great has been done by youth.

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

Inebriated with the exuberance of his own verbosity, and gifted with an egotistical imagination

We cannot learn men from books.

Books are fatal they are the curse of the human race. Nine-tenths of existing books are nonsense, and the clever books are the refutation of that nonsense. The greatest misfortune that ever befell man was the invention of printing.

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

There can be economy only where there is efficiency.

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

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

Man is a being born to believe, and if no church comes forward with the title deeds of truth, he will find altars and idols in his own heart and his own imagination

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.

Youth is a blunder, manhood is a struggle and old age a regret.

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

The Youth of a Nation are the trustees of posterity.

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

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.

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

The greatest of all evil is the weak government.

That fatal drollery called a representative government.