Benjamin Disraeli Political Quotations

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.

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

What we anticipate seldom occurs: but what we least expect generally happens.

Nobody is forgotten when it is convenient to remember him.

The palace is not safe when the cottage is not happy.

I say that justice is truth in action.

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

You will find as you grow older that courage is the rarest of all qualities to be found in public life.

We should never lose an occasion. Opportunity is more powerful even than conquerors and prophets.

William Gladstone has not a single redeeming defect.

No Government can be long secure without a formidable Opposition.

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.

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

The world is weary of statesmen whom democracy has degraded into politicians.

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

There is no index of character so sure as the voice.

The very phrase 'foreign affairs' makes an Englishman convinced that I am about to treat of subjects with which he has no concern.

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

We cannot learn men from books.

I look upon parliamentary government as the noblest government in the world, and certainly one most suited to England. But without the discipline of political connection, animated by the principle of private honor, I feel certain that a popular assembly would sink before the power or the corruption of a minister.

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

There is no gambling like politics.

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.

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.

Damn your principles! Stick to your party.

As for our majority... one is enough.

Real politics are the possession and distribution of power.

A majority is always better than the best repartee.

The test of political institutions is the condition of the country whose future they regulate.

'A sound Conservative government,' said Taper, musingly. 'I understand: Tory men and Whig measures.'

A Conservative Government is an organized hypocrisy.

You will in due season find your property is less valuable, and your freedom less complete.

There is no act of treachery or meanness of which a political party is not capable; for in politics there is no honour.

Never complain and never explain.