Benjamin Disraeli Quotes

A Conservative Government is an organized hypocrisy.
Benjamin Disraeli

A consistent soul believes in destiny, a capricious one in chance.
Benjamin Disraeli

A great city, whose image dwells in the memory of man, is the type of some great idea. Rome represents conquest; Faith hovers over the towers of Jerusalem; and Athens embodies the pre-eminent quality of the antique world, Art.
Benjamin Disraeli

A majority is always better than the best repartee.
Benjamin Disraeli

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.
Benjamin Disraeli

A precedent embalms a principle.
Benjamin Disraeli

Action may not always bring happiness; but there is no happiness without action.
Benjamin Disraeli

An author who speaks about his own books is almost as bad as a mother who talks about her own children.
Benjamin Disraeli

An author who speaks about their own books is almost as bad as a mother who speaks about her own children.
Benjamin Disraeli

An insular country, subject to fogs, and with a powerful middle class, requires grave statesmen.
Benjamin Disraeli

As a general rule, the most successful man in life is the man who has the best information.
Benjamin Disraeli

As for our majority... one is enough.
Benjamin Disraeli

Assassination has never changed the history of the world.
Benjamin Disraeli

Be amusing: never tell unkind stories; above all, never tell long ones.
Benjamin Disraeli

Beware of endeavoring to become a great man in a hurry. One such attempt in ten thousand may succeed. These are fearful odds.
Benjamin Disraeli

Books are fatal: they are the curse of the human race. Nine-tenths of existing books are nonsense, and the clever books are the refutation of that nonsense. The greatest misfortune that ever befell man was the invention of printing.
Benjamin Disraeli

But what minutes! Count them by sensation, and not by calendars, and each moment is a day.
Benjamin Disraeli

Change is inevitable. Change is constant.
Benjamin Disraeli

Characters do not change. Opinions alter, but characters are only developed.
Benjamin Disraeli

Colonies do not cease to be colonies because they are independent.
Benjamin Disraeli

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.
Benjamin Disraeli

Courage is fire, and bullying is smoke.
Benjamin Disraeli

Damn your principles! Stick to your party.
Benjamin Disraeli

Despair is the conclusion of fools.
Benjamin Disraeli

Desperation is sometimes as powerful an inspirer as genius.
Benjamin Disraeli

Diligence is the mother of good fortune.
Benjamin Disraeli

Duty cannot exist without faith.
Benjamin Disraeli

Every man has a right to be conceited until he is successful.
Benjamin Disraeli

Every production of genius must be the production of enthusiasm.
Benjamin Disraeli

Everyone likes flattery; and when you come to Royalty you should lay it on with a trowel.
Benjamin Disraeli

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.
Benjamin Disraeli

Fear makes us feel our humanity.
Benjamin Disraeli

Finality is not the language of politics.
Benjamin Disraeli

Frank and explicit - that is the right line to take when you wish to conceal your own mind and confuse the minds of others.
Benjamin Disraeli

Great countries are those that produce great people.
Benjamin Disraeli

Grief is the agony of an instant. The indulgence of grief the blunder of a life.
Benjamin Disraeli

Had it not been for you, I should have remained what I was when we first met, a prejudiced, narrow-minded being, with contracted sympathies and false knowledge, wasting my life on obsolete trifles, and utterly insensible to the privilege of living in this wondrous age of change and progress.
Benjamin Disraeli

He traces the steam engine all the way back to the tea kettle.
Benjamin Disraeli

He was distinguished for ignorance; for he had only one idea, and that was wrong.
Benjamin Disraeli

His shortcoming is his long staying.
Benjamin Disraeli

How much easier it is to be critical than to be correct.
Benjamin Disraeli

I am prepared for the worst, but hope for the best.
Benjamin Disraeli

I feel a very unusual sensation - if it is not indigestion, I think it must be gratitude.
Benjamin Disraeli

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.
Benjamin Disraeli

I never deny. I never contradict. I sometimes forget.
Benjamin Disraeli

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.
Benjamin Disraeli

I say that justice is truth in action.
Benjamin Disraeli

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.
Benjamin Disraeli

If Gladstone fell into the Thames, that would be a misfortune; and if anybody pulled him out, that I suppose would be a calamity.
Benjamin Disraeli

If you're not very clever you should be conciliatory.
Benjamin Disraeli

In a progressive country change is constant; change is inevitable.
Benjamin Disraeli

In politics nothing is contemptible.
Benjamin Disraeli

Increased means and increased leisure are the two civilizers of man.
Benjamin Disraeli

It destroys one's nerves to be amiable every day to the same human being.
Benjamin Disraeli

It is much easier to be critical than to be correct.
Benjamin Disraeli

Justice is truth in action.
Benjamin Disraeli

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.
Benjamin Disraeli

Let the fear of a danger be a spur to prevent it; he that fears not, gives advantage to the danger.
Benjamin Disraeli

Like all great travellers, I have seen more than I remember, and remember more than I have seen.
Benjamin Disraeli

Little things affect little minds.
Benjamin Disraeli

London is a roost for every bird.
Benjamin Disraeli

Man is not the creature of circumstances, circumstances are the creatures of men. We are free agents, and man is more powerful than matter.
Benjamin Disraeli

Man is only great when he acts from passion.
Benjamin Disraeli

Mediocrity can talk, but it is for genius to observe.
Benjamin Disraeli

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.
Benjamin Disraeli

Moderation is the center wherein all philosophies, both human and divine, meet.
Benjamin Disraeli

Nationality is the miracle of political independence; race is the principle of physical analogy.
Benjamin Disraeli

Never apologize for showing feeling. When you do so, you apologize for the truth.
Benjamin Disraeli

Never complain and never explain.
Benjamin Disraeli

Never take anything for granted.
Benjamin Disraeli

Next to knowing when to seize an opportunity, the most important thing in life is to know when to forego an advantage.
Benjamin Disraeli

Nine-tenths of the existing books are nonsense and the clever books are the refutation of that nonsense.
Benjamin Disraeli

No Government can be long secure without a formidable Opposition.
Benjamin Disraeli

No man is regular in his attendance at the House of Commons until he is married.
Benjamin Disraeli

Nobody is forgotten when it is convenient to remember him.
Benjamin Disraeli

Nowadays, manners are easy and life is hard.
Benjamin Disraeli

Nurture your minds with great thoughts. To believe in the heroic makes heroes.
Benjamin Disraeli

On the education of the people of this country the fate of the country depends.
Benjamin Disraeli

Once at a social gathering, Gladstone said to Disraeli, "I predict, Sir, that you will die either by hanging or of some vile disease". Disraeli replied, "That all depends, sir, upon whether I embrace your principles or your mistress."
Benjamin Disraeli

One secret of success in life is for a man to be ready for his opportunity when it comes.
Benjamin Disraeli

Plagiarists, at least, have the merit of preservation.
Benjamin Disraeli

Power has only one duty - to secure the social welfare of the People.
Benjamin Disraeli

Protection is not a principle but an expedient.
Benjamin Disraeli

Read no history: nothing but biography, for that is life without theory.
Benjamin Disraeli

Real politics are the possession and distribution of power.
Benjamin Disraeli

Seeing much, suffering much, and studying much, are the three pillars of learning.
Benjamin Disaeli

Silence is the mother of truth.
Benjamin Disraeli

Something unpleasant is coming when men are anxious to tell the truth.
Benjamin Disraeli

Success is the child of audacity.
Benjamin Disraeli

Taking a new step, uttering a new word, is what people fear most.
Benjamin Disraeli

Talk to a man about himself and he will listen for hours.
Benjamin Disraeli

Teach us that wealth is not elegance, that profusion is not magnificence, that splendor is not beauty.
Benjamin Disraeli

The art of governing mankind by deceiving them.
Benjamin Disraeli

The best security for civilization is the dwelling, and upon properly appointed and becoming dwellings depends, more than anything else, the improvement of mankind.
Benjamin Disraeli

The choicest pleasures of life lie within the ring of moderation.
Benjamin Disraeli

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.
Benjamin Disraeli

The Duke of Wellington brought to the post of first minister immortal fame, -a quality of success which would almost seem to include all others.
Benjamin Disraeli


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