David Lloyd George Quotations

The finest eloquence is that which gets things done.

A young man who isn't a socialist hasn't got a heart; an old man who is a socialist hasn't got a head.

What do you want to be a sailor for? There are greater storms in politics than you will ever find at sea. Piracy, broadsides, blood on the decks. You will find them all in politics.

With me a change of trouble is as good as a vacation.

He has sat on the fence so long that the iron has entered his soul.

What is our task? To make Britain a fit country for heroes to live in.

Liberty is not merely a privilege to be conferred; it is a habit to be acquired.

Once blood is shed in a national quarrel reason and right are swept aside by the rage of angry men.

A politician is a person with whose politics you don't agree; if you agree with him he's a statesman.

Don't be afraid to take a big step if one is indicated; you can't cross a chasm in two small jumps.

There is nothing so fatal to character as half finished tasks.

It is always too late, or too little, or both. And that is the road to disaster.

There is nothing more dangerous than to leap a chasm in two jumps.

[Lloyd George] said that Harding 's speech on American naval aspirations made him feel that he would pawn his shirt rather than allow America to dominate the seas. If this was to be the outcome of the League of Nations propaganda, he was sorry for the world and in particular for America.

The League of Nations is the greatest humbug in history. They cannot even protect a little nation like Armenia. They do nothing but pass useless resolutions.

Great Britain would spend her last guinea to keep a navy superior to that of the United States or any other power.

[Proportional representation is a] device for defeating democracy, the principle of which was that the majority should rule, and for bringing faddists of all kinds into Parliament, and establishing groups and disintegrating parties.

Anything can be achieved in small, deliberate steps. But there are times you need the courage to take a great leap; you can't cross a chasm in two small jumps.

Hitler is a prodigious genius.

Of all the bigotries that savage the human temper there is none so stupid as the anti-Semitic.

Winston [Churchill] is the only remaining specimen of a real Tory.

If you listen to the neverdo's, it's never done.

The stern hand of fate has scourged us to an elevation where we can see the great everlasting things which matter for a nation - the great peaks we had forgotten, of Honor, Duty, Patriotism, and clad in glittering white, the great pinnacle of Sacrifice pointing like a rugged finger to Heaven.

He [Hitler] is a very great man. "Fuhrer" is the proper name for him, for he is a born leader, yes, and statesman.

When they circumcised Herbert Samuel they threw away the wrong bit

Doctinaires are the vultures of principle. They feed upon principle after it is dead.

Aristrocracy is like cheese. The older it is the higher it becomes.

Great men sometimes lose the reins and lose their heads. This time, let us hope that they will retain them and that when victory is assured they will sit down and reckon what the future is going to be for their countries as well as for other lands.

Wisdom is like a baobab tree; no one individual can embrace it.

The man who tries to make the flag an object of a single party is a greater traitor to that flag than any man who fires at it.

One cannot cross an abyss in two jumps.

[The General Staff] maintained three sets of casualty figures, one to fool the public, one to fool the Government and one to fool themselves.

Every man has a House of Lords in his own head. Fears, prejudices, misconceptions - those are the peers and they are hereditary.

Explain to me again the difference between superstitious beliefs or pagan incantations, and scientific ones. Be braver - you cannot cross a chasm in two small jumps.

The conventional heaven with its angels perpetually singing etc nearly drove me mad in my youth and made me an atheist for ten years. My opinion is that we shall be reincarnated.

We are fighting Germany, Austria and drink, and as far as I can see, the greatest of these three deadly foes is drink.

Believe me, Germany is unable to wage war.

If you want to understand a subject promise to speak on it.

Neville [Chamberlain] has a retail mind in a wholesale business.

The home front is always underrated by Generals in the field. And yet that is where the Great War was won and lost. The Russian, Bulgarian, Austrian and German home fronts fell to pieces before their armies collapsed.

No democracy has ever long survived the failure of its adherents to be ready to die for it. My own conviction is this, the people must either go on or go under.

The Bolshevists would blow up the fabric with high explosive, with horror. Others would pull down with the crowbars and with cranks--especially with cranks. . . . Sweating, slums, the sense of semi-slavery in labour, must go. We must cultivate a sense of manhood by treating men as men.

Unemployment, with its injustice for the man who seeks and thirsts for employment, who begs for labour and cannot get it, and who is punished for failure he is not responsible for by the starvation of his children--that torture is something that private enterprise ought to remedy for its own sake.

Death is the most convenient time to tax rich people.

I am the last man in the world to say that the succor which is given us from America is not in itself something to rejoice at greatly. But I also say that I can see more in the knowledge that America is going to win a right to be at the conference table when the terms of peace are discussed. . . . It would have been a tragedy for mankind if America had not been there, and there with all her influence and power.

God has chosen little nations as the vessels by which He carries His choicest wines to the lips of humanity to rejoice their hearts, to exalt their vision, to strengthen their faith, and if we had stood by when two little nations (Belgium and Serbia) were being crushed and broken by the brutal hands of barbarians, our shame would have rung down the everlasting ages.

Sincerity is the surest road to confidence.

Diplomats were invented simply to waste time.

You can't cross a chasm in two small jumps.

Golf is the only game where the worst player gets the best of it. He obtains more out of it as regards both exercise and enjoyment, for the good player gets worried over the slightest mistake, whereas the poor player makes too many mistakes to worry about them.

It is either Christ or chaos.

Wild men, screaming through the keyholes.

He is brilliant - to the top of his boots.

Peace must be framed on so equitable a basis, that the nations would not wish to disturb it . . . so that the confidence of the German people shall be put in the equity of their cause and not in the might of their armies.

Liberty has restraints but no frontiers.

A body of 500 men chosen at random from amongst the unemployed.

By thetest of our faith thehighest standard ofcivilization is the readiness to sacrifice for others.

You cannot trust the interests of any class entirely to another class; and you cannot trust the interests of any sex to another sex.

The government are behaving like a bevy of maiden aunts who have fallen among buccaneers.

You get to know more of the character of a man in a round of golf than in six months of political experience.

Four specters haunt the poor - old age, accident, sickness and unemployment

Who ordained that the few should have the land (of Britain) as a prerequisite; who made 10,000 people owners of the soil and the rest of us trespassers in the land of our birth?

A fully equipped duke costs as much to keep up as two Dreadnoughts, and dukes are just as great a terror - and they last longer.

Lucidity of speech is unquestionably one of the surest tests of mental precision...In my experience a confused talker is never a clear thinker.

The nations slithered over the brink into the boiling cauldron of war without any trace of apprehension or dismay... The nations backed their machines over the precipice not one of them wanted war, certainly not on this scale

The world is becoming like a lunatic asylum run by lunatics.

Do not be afraid of taking a big step-you cannot cross a chasm in two steps.

The doctors are always changing their opinions. They always have some new fad.

Independent thinking is not encouraged in a professional Army. It is a form of mutiny. Obedience is the supreme virtue.

Four specters haunt the Poor - Old Age, Accident, Sickness and Unemployment. We are going to exorcise them. We are going to drive hunger from the hearth. We mean to banish the workhouse from the horizon of every workman in the land.

One day while Lloyd George was making a political speech before a big crowd, a heckler yelled, "Wait a minute, Mr. George. Isn't it true your grandfather used to peddle tinware around here in an oxcart hauled by a donkey?" Lloyd George replied, "I digress just a moment and thank the gentlemen for calling that to my attention. It is true, my dear old grandfather used to peddle tinware with an old cart and a donkey. As a matter of fact, after this meeting is over, if my friend will come with me, I will show him that old cart, but I never knew until this minute what became of the ass."

If you want to succeed in politics you must keep your conscience firmly under control.

If the people really knew [the truth] the war would be stopped tomorrow. But of course they don't know and can't know.