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Quotes by Benjamin Disraeli


We are not creatures of circumstance; we are creators of circumstance.
– 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
A sophistical rhetorician, inebriated with the exuberance of his own verbosity.
– Benjamin Disraeli
Action may not always bring happiness; but there is no happiness without action.
– 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 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
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
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 you're not very clever you should be conciliatory.
– 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
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 complain and never explain.
– Benjamin Disraeli
Never take anything for granted.
– 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
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 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
The first magic of love is our ignorance that it can ever end.
– Benjamin Disraeli
The fool wonders, the wise man asks.
– Benjamin Disraeli
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.
– Benjamin Disraeli
The greatest good you can do for another is not just to share your riches but to reveal to him his own.
– Benjamin Disraeli
The health of the people is really the foundation upon which all their happiness and all their powers as a state depend.
– Benjamin Disraeli
The more you are talked about the less powerful you are.
– Benjamin Disraeli
The palace is not safe when the cottage is not happy.
– Benjamin Disraeli
The people of England are the most enthusiastic in the world.
– Benjamin Disraeli
The pursuit of science leads only to the insoluble.
– Benjamin Disraeli
The question is this - Is man an ape or an angel? My Lord, I am on the side of the angels. I repudiate with indignation and abhorrence these new fanged theories.
– Benjamin Disraeli
The secret of success is constancy to purpose.
– Benjamin Disraeli
The services in wartime are fit only for desperadoes, but in peace are only fit for fools.
– Benjamin Disraeli
The very phrase 'foreign affairs' makes an Englishman convinced that I am about to treat of subjects with which he has no concern.
– Benjamin Disraeli
The world is governed by very different personages from what is imagined by those who are not behind the scenes.
– Benjamin Disraeli
The world is weary of statesmen whom democracy has degraded into politicians.
– Benjamin Disraeli
There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics.
– Benjamin Disraeli
There can be economy only where there is efficiency.
– Benjamin Disraeli