Home › Authors › Benjamin Disraeli
Benjamin Disraeli Quotes
1804–1881 England
Benjamin Disraeli, 1st Earl of Beaconsfield (21 December 1804 – 19 April 1881) was a British politician, novelist, and essayist, serving twice as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom. The anniversary of his death on 19 April is known as Primrose Day.
England Biographers Converts to christianity Essayists Novelists Also known as: Disraeli, Disraeli, Benjamin, Beaconsfield, Benjamin Disraeli, 1st Earl of Beaconsfield
Random Benjamin Disraeli quote
263 quotes
London is a modern Babylon.
Tancred (1847)
We are the children of the gods, and are never more the slaves of circumstance than when we deem ourselves their masters. What may next happen in the dazzling farce of life, the Fates only know.
Nothing is more disgusting, than the habit of our officers speaking always of the inhabitants of India—many of them descended from the great races—as "niggers". It is ignorant, & brutal,—& surely most mischievous.
As for our majority... one is enough.
Endymion (1880)
And now, gentlemen, what is the condition of the great body of the people? In the first place, gentlemen, they have for centuries been in the full enjoyment of that which no other country in Europe has ever completely attained—complete rights of personal freedom.
It is the initial letters of the four points of the compass that make the word "news," and he must understand that news is that which collies from the North, East, West and South, and if it comes from only one point of the compass, then it is a class publication, and not news.
The press is not only free, it is powerful. That power is ours. It is the proudest that man can enjoy. It was not granted by monarchs, it was not gained for us by aristocracies ; but it sprang from the people, and, with an immortal instinct, it has always worked for the people.
Speech at the Printing Trade Festival (1845)
It is just settled: you have it, Madam. The French government has been out-generaled.
The divine right of kings may have been a plea for feeble tyrants; but the divine right of government is the keystone of human progress, and without it governments sink into police, and a nation is degraded into a mob.
Lothair (1870)
I see before me the statue of a celebrated minister, who said that confidence was a plant of slow growth. But I believe, however gradual may be the growth of confidence, that of credit requires still more time to arrive at maturity.
I am a Conservative to preserve all that is good in our constitution, a Radical to remove all that is bad. I seek to preserve property and to respect order, and I equally decry the appeal to the passions of the many or the prejudices of the few.
"What is care?" asked the Princess, with a smile.
[I]n speaking of Italy, romance has omitted for once to exaggerate.
Gentlemen, I am a party man. I believe that, without party, Parliamentary government is impossible. I look upon Parliamentary government as the noblest government in the world, and certainly the one most suited to England.
Our morals differ in different counties, in different towns, in different streets, even in different Acts of Parliament. What is moral in London is immoral in Montacute; what is crime among the multitude is only vice among the few.
Tancred (1847)
This man, O'Connell, is the hired instrument of the Papacy; as such, his mission is to destroy your Protestant Society, and, as such, he is a more terrible enemy to England than Napoleon, with all his inspiration. Your empire and your liberties are in more danger at this moment than when the army of invasion was encamped at Boulogne.
Remark, attributed in John Gordon Stewart Drysdale and John James Drysdale, The Protoplasmic Theory of Life (1874), p. 279 (note).
The right hon. Gentleman tells us to go back to precedents; with him a great measure is always founded on a small precedent. He traces the steam-engine always back to the tea-kettle. His precedents are generally tea-kettle precedents.
His Christianity was muscular.
Endymion (1880)
The right hon. Gentleman caught the Whigs bathing, and walked away with their clothes. He has left them in the full enjoyment of their liberal position, and he is himself a strict conservative of their garments.
Topics Benjamin Disraeli is quoted on
Works