The pursuit of science leads only to the insoluble.
— Benjamin Disraeli
Great countries are those that produce great people.
Little things affect little minds.
Power has only one duty - to secure the social welfare of the People.
Grief is the agony of an instant; the indulgence of grief the blunder of a life.
Talk to a man about himself and he will listen for hours.
A consistent soul believes in destiny, a capricious one in chance.
Nine-tenths of the existing books are nonsense and the clever books are the refutation of that nonsense.
Change is inevitable. Change is constant.
There can be economy only where there is efficiency.
The services in wartime are fit only for desperadoes, but in peace are only fit for fools.
The fool wonders, the wise man asks.
The governments of the present day have to deal not merely with other governments, with emperors, kings and ministers, but also with the secret societies which have everywhere their unscrupulous agents, and can at the last moment upset all the governments' plans.
Everyone likes flattery; and when you come to Royalty you should lay it on with a trowel.
Damn your principles! Stick to your party.
A majority is always better than the best repartee.
There is no act of treachery or meanness of which a political party is not capable; for in politics there is no honour.
I am prepared for the worst, but hope for the best.
We moralize among ruins.
Nowadays, manners are easy and life is hard.
The best security for civilization is the dwelling, and upon properly appointed and becoming dwellings depends, more than anything else, the improvement of mankind.
Frank and explicit - that is the right line to take when you wish to conceal your own mind and confuse the minds of others.
Duty cannot exist without faith.
Desperation is sometimes as powerful an inspirer as genius.
Assassination has never changed the history of the world.
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.
Courage is fire, and bullying is smoke.
Youth is a blunder; Manhood a struggle, Old Age a regret.
Something unpleasant is coming when men are anxious to tell the truth.
Read no history: nothing but biography, for that is life without theory.
I never deny. I never contradict. I sometimes forget.
No Government can be long secure without a formidable Opposition.
There is no gambling like politics.
In politics nothing is contemptible.
Nationality is the miracle of political independence; race is the principle of physical analogy.
Mediocrity can talk, but it is for genius to observe.
He was distinguished for ignorance; for he had only one idea, and that was wrong.
The health of the people is really the foundation upon which all their happiness and all their powers as a state depend.
There is no education like adversity.
Despair is the conclusion of fools.
There is no greater index of character so sure as the voice.
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.
The people of England are the most enthusiastic in the world.
Where knowledge ends, religion begins.
Without tact you can learn nothing.
The world is governed by very different personages from what is imagined by those who are not behind the scenes.
Never complain and never explain.
As a general rule, the most successful man in life is the man who has the best information.
As for our majority... one is enough.
Finality is not the language of politics.
