Quotes by Benjamin Disraeli

There is moderation even in excess.
– Benjamin Disraeli
There is no act of treachery or meanness of which a political party is not capable; for in politics there is no honour.
– Benjamin Disraeli
There is no education like adversity.
– Benjamin Disraeli
There is no gambling like politics.
– Benjamin Disraeli
There is no greater index of character so sure as the voice.
– Benjamin Disraeli
There is no index of character so sure as the voice.
– Benjamin Disraeli
They that touch pitch will be defiled.
– Benjamin Disraeli
Through perseverance many people win success out of what seemed destined to be certain failure.
– Benjamin Disraeli
To be conscious that you are ignorant of the facts is a great step to knowledge.
– Benjamin Disraeli
To supervise people, you must either surpass them in their accomplishments or despise them.
– Benjamin Disraeli
To tax the community for the advantage of a class is not protection: it is plunder.
– Benjamin Disraeli
Two nations between whom there is no intercourse and no sympathy; who are as ignorant of each other's habits, thoughts, and feelings, as if they were dwellers in different zones, or inhabitants of different planets. The rich and the poor.
– Benjamin Disraeli
Upon the education of the people of this country the fate of this country depends.
– Benjamin Disraeli
War is never a solution; it is an aggravation.
– Benjamin Disraeli
We are all born for love. It is the principle of existence, and its only end.
– Benjamin Disraeli
We cannot learn men from books.
– Benjamin Disraeli
We live in an age when to be young and to be indifferent can be no longer synonymous. We must prepare for the coming hour. The claims of the Future are represented by suffering millions; and the Youth of a Nation are the trustees of Posterity.
– Benjamin Disraeli
We moralize among ruins.
– Benjamin Disraeli
We should never lose an occasion. Opportunity is more powerful even than conquerors and prophets.
– Benjamin Disraeli
What is earnest is not always true; on the contrary, error is often more earnest than truth.
– Benjamin Disraeli
What usually comes first is the contract.
– Benjamin Disraeli
What we anticipate seldom occurs: but what we least expect generally happens.
– Benjamin Disraeli
When little is done, little is said; silence is the mother of truth.
– Benjamin Disraeli
Where knowledge ends, religion begins.
– Benjamin Disraeli
William Gladstone has not a single redeeming defect.
– Benjamin Disraeli
Without publicity there can be no public support, and without public support every nation must decay.
– Benjamin Disraeli
Without tact you can learn nothing.
– Benjamin Disraeli
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.
– Benjamin Disraeli
You will find as you grow older that courage is the rarest of all qualities to be found in public life.
– Benjamin Disraeli
Youth is a blunder; Manhood a struggle, Old Age a regret.
– Benjamin Disraeli
Youth is the trustee of prosperity.
– Benjamin Disraeli
As a general rule the most successful man in life is the man who has the best information.
– Benjamin Disraeli
Bore: one who has the power of speech but not the capacity for conversation.
– Benjamin Disraeli
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.
– Benjamin Disraeli
Great services are not canceled by one act or by one single error.
– 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
Ignorance never settles a question.
– Benjamin Disraeli
Individuals may form communities, but it is institutions alone that can create a nation.
– Benjamin Disraeli
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.
– Benjamin Disraeli
My idea of an agreeable person is a person who agrees with me.
– Benjamin Disraeli
Never apologize for showing feeling. When you do so, you apologize for truth.
– Benjamin Disraeli
Next to knowing when to seize an opportunity, the most important thing in life is to know when to forgo an advantage.
– Benjamin Disraeli
No government can be long secure without formidable opposition.
– Benjamin Disraeli
Nurture your mind with great thoughts; to believe in the heroic makes heroes.
– Benjamin Disraeli
The best way to become acquainted with a subject is to write a book about it.
– Benjamin Disraeli
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.
– Benjamin Disraeli
The hare-brained chatter of irresponsible frivolity.
– Benjamin Disraeli
The more extensive a man's knowledge of what has been done, the greater will be his power of knowing what to do.
– Benjamin Disraeli
The most dangerous strategy is to jump a chasm in two leaps.
– Benjamin Disraeli
The wisdom of the wise, and the experience of ages, may be preserved by quotation.
– Benjamin Disraeli
What we anticipate seldom occurs; what we least expected generally happens.
– Benjamin Disraeli
When men are pure, laws are useless; when men are corrupt, laws are broken.
– Benjamin Disraeli
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.
– Benjamin Disraeli
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.
– Benjamin Disraeli
A conservative government is an organized hypocrisy.
– Benjamin Disraeli
Change is inevitable. In a progressive country change is constant.
– Benjamin Disraeli
To be conscious that you are ignorant is a great step to knowledge.
– Benjamin Disraeli
You can tell the strength of a nation by the women behind its men.
– Benjamin Disraeli
Travel teaches toleration.
– Benjamin Disraeli
Time is precious, but truth is more precious than time.
– Benjamin Disraeli
There is no waste of time in life like that of making explanations.
– Benjamin Disraeli
The view of Jerusalem is the history of the world it is more, it is the history of earth and of heaven.
– Benjamin Disraeli
The practice of politics in the East may be defined by one word: dissimulation.
– Benjamin Disraeli
That fatal drollery called a representative government.
– Benjamin Disraeli
Nature, like man, sometimes weeps from gladness.
– Benjamin Disraeli
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.
– Benjamin Disraeli
Experience is the child of thought, and thought is the child of action.
– Benjamin Disraeli
Circumstances are beyond human control, but our conduct is in our own power.
– Benjamin Disraeli
Almost everything that is great has been done by youth.
– Benjamin Disraeli
A University should be a place of light, of liberty, and of learning.
– Benjamin Disraeli