Words matter. These are the best Benjamin Disraeli Quotes, and they’re great for sharing with your friends.
Assassination has never changed the history of the world.
You can tell the strength of a nation by the women behind its men.
There is no waste of time in life like that of making explanations.
Beware of endeavoring to become a great man in a hurry. One such attempt in ten thousand may succeed. These are fearful odds.
Colonies do not cease to be colonies because they are independent.
Silence is the mother of truth.
The secret of success is to be ready when your opportunity comes.
Adventures are to the adventurous.
I have brought myself, by long meditation, to the conviction that a human being with a settled purpose must accomplish it, and that nothing can resist a will which will stake even existence upon its fulfillment.
The very phrase ‘foreign affairs’ makes an Englishman convinced that I am about to treat of subjects with which he has no concern.
Fame and power are the objects of all men. Even their partial fruition is gained by very few; and that, too, at the expense of social pleasure, health, conscience, life.
Man is made to adore and to obey: but if you will not command him, if you give him nothing to worship, he will fashion his own divinities, and find a chieftain in his own passions.
A majority is always better than the best repartee.
The best security for civilization is the dwelling, and upon properly appointed and becoming dwellings depends, more than anything else, the improvement of mankind.
There is no index of character so sure as the voice.
In a progressive country change is constant; change is inevitable.
It is much easier to be critical than to be correct.
The people of England are the most enthusiastic in the world.
The first magic of love is our ignorance that it can ever end.
Without publicity there can be no public support, and without public support every nation must decay.
Finality is not the language of politics.
We moralize among ruins.
Everyone likes flattery; and when you come to Royalty you should lay it on with a trowel.
Damn your principles! Stick to your party.
I am prepared for the worst, but hope for the best.
In politics nothing is contemptible.
A Conservative Government is an organized hypocrisy.
As a general rule, the most successful man in life is the man who has the best information.
Teach us that wealth is not elegance, that profusion is not magnificence, that splendor is not beauty.
Grief is the agony of an instant; the indulgence of grief the blunder of a life.
There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics.
My idea of an agreeable person is a person who agrees with me.
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.
I have been ever of opinion that revolutions are not to be evaded.
Youth is a blunder; Manhood a struggle, Old Age a regret.
An author who speaks about their own books is almost as bad as a mother who speaks about her own children.
Justice is truth in action.
Moderation has been called a virtue to limit the ambition of great men, and to console undistinguished people for their want of fortune and their lack of merit.
The Youth of a Nation are the trustees of posterity.
London is a modern Babylon.
I must follow the people. Am I not their leader?
Next to knowing when to seize an opportunity, the most important thing in life is to know when to forego an advantage.
Never take anything for granted.
A man may speak very well in the House of Commons, and fail very completely in the House of Lords. There are two distinct styles requisite: I intend, in the course of my career, if I have time, to give a specimen of both.
We should never lose an occasion. Opportunity is more powerful even than conquerors and prophets.
That fatal drollery called a representative government.
The pursuit of science leads only to the insoluble.
To supervise people, you must either surpass them in their accomplishments or despise them.
It is easier to be critical than correct.
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.
Nature, like man, sometimes weeps from gladness.
Mediocrity can talk, but it is for genius to observe.
Every production of genius must be the production of enthusiasm.
Without tact you can learn nothing.
As for our majority… one is enough.
Little things affect little minds.
Never complain and never explain.
Taking a new step, uttering a new word, is what people fear most.
No Government can be long secure without a formidable Opposition.
Like all great travellers, I have seen more than I remember, and remember more than I have seen.
Duty cannot exist without faith.
War is never a solution; it is an aggravation.
Man is made to adore and to obey: but if you will not command him, if you give him nothing to worship, he will fashion his own divinities, and find a chieftain in his own passions.
King Louis Philippe once said to me that he attributed the great success of the British nation in political life to their talking politics after dinner.
London is a roost for every bird.
There is no gambling like politics.
Action may not always bring happiness; but there is no happiness without action.
Things must be done by parties, not by persons using parties as tools.
Experience is the child of thought, and thought is the child of action.
The practice of politics in the East may be defined by one word: dissimulation.
The greatest good you can do for another is not just to share your riches but to reveal to him his own.
The view of Jerusalem is the history of the world; it is more, it is the history of earth and of heaven.
Power has only one duty – to secure the social welfare of the People.
Conservatism discards Prescription, shrinks from Principle, disavows Progress; having rejected all respect for antiquity, it offers no redress for the present, and makes no preparation for the future.
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.
Frank and explicit – that is the right line to take when you wish to conceal your own mind and confuse the minds of others.
Man is only great when he acts from passion.
Through perseverance many people win success out of what seemed destined to be certain failure.
The choicest pleasures of life lie within the ring of moderation.
Man is not the creature of circumstances, circumstances are the creatures of men. We are free agents, and man is more powerful than matter.
The more extensive a man’s knowledge of what has been done, the greater will be his power of knowing what to do.
The health of the people is really the foundation upon which all their happiness and all their powers as a state depend.
Time is precious, but truth is more precious than time.
There can be economy only where there is efficiency.
Upon the education of the people of this country the fate of this country depends.
Characters do not change. Opinions alter, but characters are only developed.
Genius, when young, is divine.
The world is governed by very different personages from what is imagined by those who are not behind the scenes.
The world is weary of statesmen whom democracy has degraded into politicians.
Success is the child of audacity.
Great countries are those that produce great people.
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.
Travel teaches toleration.
Almost everything that is great has been done by youth.
The services in wartime are fit only for desperadoes, but in peace are only fit for fools.
One secret of success in life is for a man to be ready for his opportunity when it comes.
What we anticipate seldom occurs: but what we least expect generally happens.
Something unpleasant is coming when men are anxious to tell the truth.
What is earnest is not always true; on the contrary, error is often more earnest than truth.
Circumstances are beyond human control, but our conduct is in our own power.
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