John Bright Quotes

1811–1889 United Kingdom

John Bright (November 16, 1811 – March 27, 1889) was a British Radical and Liberal statesman, one of the greatest orators of his generation and a promoter of free trade policies.

United Kingdom
Academics

Also known as: Bright, John

Random John Bright quote

18 quotes

The angel of death has been abroad throughout the land; you may almost hear the beating of his wings.

It is not Bradlaugh's atheism which they hate, but his unconscious Christianity.

I have never uttered a word in favour of universal suffrage either in this House or elsewhere.

I am for peace, retrenchment, and for reform — thirty years ago the great watchwords of the great Liberal Party.

What is a great love of books? It is something like a personal introduction to the great and good men of all past times.

This excessive love for "the balance of power" is neither more nor less than a gigantic system of out-door relief for the aristocracy of Great Britain.

Ireland is never unanimous but on one thing – getting something from the Imperial Exchequer.

I am the great terror of the squires, they seem to be seized with a sort of bucolic mania in dealing with me.

England is the mother of parliaments.

The right hon. Gentleman is the first of the new party who has expressed his great grief by his actions—who has retired into what may be called his political Cave of Adullam—and he has called about him every one that was in distress and every one that was discontented.

[H]is (Mr. Bright's) own opinions had always been very adverse to maintaining an armed squadron for the suppression of the slave trade.

Possibly you are not aware of the fact that the largest sum given by any contributor to the fund is but a trifle when compared with the losses suffered by nearly all the firms in the cotton trade during the disastrous years of the American war.

We may be proud that England is the ancient country of Parliaments. With scarcely any intervening period, Parliaments have met constantly for 600 years, and there was something of a Parliament before the Conquest. England is the mother of Parliaments.

The division of the land is the grand source of the property and wealth of France...probably no other country has made such strides in increasing wealth and comfort as France has since 1790.

This old aristocracy and Church-ridden, and tradition-ridden country will never grow wiser. Whilst we are fighting for supremacy in Europe the [United] States are working, and not fighting for it, but winning it all over the world.

Popular applause veers with the wind.

Attributed Forty Thousand Quotations (1917)

But there is one thing which we are responsible for, and that is for our sympathies, for the manner in which we regard it, and for the tone in which we discuss it. What shall we say, then, with regard to it? On which side shall we stand?

Attributed Forty Thousand Quotations (1917)

Well, will anybody deny now that the government at Washington, as regards its own people, is the strongest government in the world at this hour? And for this simple reason, that it is based on the will, and the good will, of an instructed people.

Attributed Forty Thousand Quotations (1917)

Attribution

Quotes and notes from Wikiquote: John Bright (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0.