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Who are we that we should invite Germany to acquiesce in the principles of "Uti Possidetis" at a moment when we possess comparatively everything and they possess comparatively nothing? It is a law as old as the world's history that those who hold valuable possessions coveted by others will hold them so long as, and no longer than, they are able to protect them by the strong arm.

— 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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