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Either we must make up our minds that we will not take part in a European war under any circumstances, or we must have national service; but we cannot make up our minds on the first of these points unless we are prepared to do what our ancestors to their eternal glory refused to do in the days of Napoleon, acquiesce in the hegemony of Europe by one titanic Power.

— F. E. Smith, 1st Earl of Birkenhead Unionist Policy and Other Essays (1913)

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More quotes by F. E. Smith, 1st Earl of Birkenhead

Churchill has spent the best years of his life preparing impromptu remarks.

We stand for the State and for the unity which, whether in the form of kingdom or empire or class solidarity, the State alone can bring.

Unionist Policy and Other Essays (1913)

It would be possible to say without exaggeration that the miners' leaders were the stupidest men in England if we had not frequent occasion to meet the owners.

Nature has no cure for this sort of madness, though I have known a legacy from a rich relative work wonders.

We have the highest authority for believing that the meek shall inherit the earth; though I have never found any particular corroboration of this aphorism in the records of Somerset House.

Contemporary Personalities (1924)

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