Benjamin Disraeli

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Verified

• "Apologies only account for that which they do not alter."
  • Source: Speech in the House of Commons

• "Change is inevitable. In a progressive country change is constant."
  • Source: speech in Edinburgh, 1867.

• "How much easier it is to be critical than to be correct."
  • Source: speech, January 24, 1860

• "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 of the prejudices of the few."
  • Source: campaign speech at High Wycombe, England, November 27, 1832.

• "My idea of an agreeable person is a person who agrees with me."
  • Source: Lothair

• "The author who speaks about his own books is almost as bad as a mother who talks about her own children."
  • Source: Speech at Glasgow

• "To be conscious that you are ignorant is a great step to knowledge."
  • Source: Sybil, 1845

• Youth is a blunder, manhood a struggle; old age a regret.
  • Source: Coningsby

• For nearly five years the present Ministers have harassed every trade, worried every profession, and assailed or menaced every class, institution, and species of property in the country. Occasionally they have varied this state of civil warfare by perpetrating some job which outraged public opinion, or by stumbling into mistakes which have been always discreditable, and sometimes ruinous. All this they call a policy, and seem quite proud of it; but the country has, I think, made up its mind to close this career of plundering and blundering.
  • Source: In a Letter to Lord Grey de Wilton, October 3, 1873.— W. F. Monypenny and George Earl Buckle, The Life of Benjamin Disraeli, vol. 5, chapter 7, p. 262 (1920).

Attributed

• "A precedent embalms a principle."

• "As a general rule the most successful man in life is the man who has the best information."

• "Cleanliness and order are not matters of instinct; they are matters of education, and like most great things, you must cultivate a taste for them."

• "Great services are not canceled by one act or by one single error."

• "Grief is the agony of an instant, the indulgence of grief the blunder of a life."

• "I repeat...that all power is a trust; that we are accountable for its exercise; that from the people, and for the people all springs, and all must exist."

• "Ignorance never settles a question."

• "Individuals may form communities, but it is institutions alone that can create a nation."

• "It is knowledge that influences and equalizes the social condition of man; that gives to all, however different their political position, passions which are in common, and enjoyments which are universal."

• "Never apologize for showing feeling. When you do so, you apologize for truth."

• "Next to knowing when to seize an opportunity, the most important thing in life is to know when to forgo an advantage."

• "No government can be long secure without formidable opposition."

• "Nurture your mind with great thoughts; to believe in the heroic makes heroes."

• "The best way to become acquainted with a subject is to write a book about it."

• "The difference of race is one of the reasons why I fear war may always exist; because race implies difference, difference implies superiority, and superiority leads to predominance."

• "The greatest good you can do for another is not just share your riches, but to reveal to him his own."

• "The hare-brained chatter of irresponsible frivolity."

• "The magic of first love is our ignorance that it can never end."

• "The more extensive a man's knowledge of what has been done, the greater will be his power of knowing what to do."

• "The wisdom of the wise, and the experience of ages, may be preserved by quotation."

• "There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics."

• "What we anticipate seldom occurs; what we least expected generally happens."

• "When men are pure, laws are useless; when men are corrupt, laws are broken."

• "When we would prepare the mind by a forcible appeal, an opening quotation is a symphony preluding on the chords those tones we are about to harmonize."

• "Dear Sir: I thank you for sending me a copy of your book, which I shall waste no time in reading."

• "Everyone likes flattery, and when you come to Royalty, you should lay it on with a thick trowel."

• "Is man an ape or an angel? Now, I am on the side of the angels!"

• "Justice is truth in action."

• "Never complain and never explain."

• "A Conservative Government is an organized hypocrisy."

• "I have always thought that every woman should marry - and no man."

• "A sound Conservative government, Tory men and Whig measures."

• "Patience is a necessary ingredient of genius."

• "When I want to read a book, I write one."