29 Benjamin Disraeli Quotes on Society

Benjamin Disraeli quotes on society

8. It is knowledge that influences and equalises the social condition of man; that gives to all, however different their political position, passions which are in common, and enjoyments which are universal.

31. The characteristic of the present age is craving credulity.

32. What is the question now placed before society with the glib assurance which to me is most astonishing? That question is this: Is man an ape or an angel? I, my lord, I am on the side of the angels. I repudiate with indignation and abhorrence those new fangled theories.

36. Individualities may form communities, but it is institutions alone that can create a nation.

38. In a progressive country change is constant;: change : is inevitable.

46. Increased means and increased leisure are the two civilizers of man.

50. The most distinguishing feature, or, at least, one of the most distinguishing features, of the great change effected in 1832 was that those who effected it at once abolished all the franchises as ancient as those of the Baronage of England; and, while they abolished them, they offered and proposed no substitute. The discontent upon the subject of representation which afterwards more or less pervaded our society dates from that period, and that discontent, all will admit, has ceased. It was terminated by the Act of Parliamentary Reform of 1867-8. That act was founded on a confidence that the great body of the people of this country were 'Conservative'. I use the word in its purest and loftiest sense. I mean that the people of England, and especially the working classes of England, are proud of belonging to a great country, and wish to maintain its greatness-that they are proud of belonging to an Imperial country, and are resolved to maintain, if they can, the empire of England-that they believe, on the whole, that the greatness and the empire of England are to be attributed to the ancient institutions of this country...There are people who may be, or who at least affect to be, working men, and who, no doubt, have a certain influence with a certain portion of the metropolitan working class, who talk Jacobinism...I say with confidence that the great body of the working class of England utterly repudiate such sentiments. They have no sympathy with them. They are English to the core. They repudiate cosmopolitan principles. They adhere to national principles. They are for maintaining the greatness of the kingdom and the empire, and they are proud of being subjects of our Sovereign and members of such an Empire. Well, then, as regards the political institutions of this country, the maintenance of which is one of the chief tenets of the Tory party, so far as I can read public opinion, the feeling of the nation is in accordance with the Tory party.

56. Upon the education of the people of this country the fate of this country depends.

61. The health of the people is really the foundation upon which all their happiness and all their powers as a state depend.

83. The microcosm of a public school.

84. The Services in war time are fit only for desperadoes but, in peace, are fit only for fools.

102. The age of chivalry is past. Bores have succeeded to dragons.

     Attribution disputed; shown as originally published.

112. When men are pure, laws are useless; when men are corrupt, laws are broken.

124. I have been ever of opinion that revolutions are not to be evaded.

127. The world is governed by very different personages to what is imagined by those who are not behind the scenes.

137. 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; who are formed by a different breeding, are fed by a different food, are ordered by different manners, and are not governed by the same laws: the rich and the poor.

138. In great cities men are brought together by the desire of gain. They are not in a state of co-operation, but of isolation, as to the making of fortunes; and for all the rest they are careless of neighbours. Christianity teaches us to love our neighbour as ourself; modern society acknowledges no neighbour.

143. 'I was told,' continued Egremont, 'that an impassable gulf divided the Rich from the Poor; I was told that the Privileged and the People formed Two Nations, governed by different laws, influenced by different manners, with no thoughts or sympathies in common; with an innate inability of mutual comprehension.'

146. Predominant opinions are generally the opinions of the generation that is vanishing.

158. We moralise among ruins.

165. I have always thought that every woman should marry, and no man.

170. Nothing is going on, but everybody is afraid of something.

175. An insular country, subject to fogs, and with a powerful middle class, requires grave statesmen.

211. No man is regular in his attendance at the House of Commons until he is married.

214. Nowadays, manners are easy and life is hard.

215. On the education of the people of this country the fate of the country depends.

219. The best security for civilization is the dwelling, and upon properly appointed and becoming dwellings depends, more than anything else, the improvement of mankind.

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

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