Benjamin Disraeli Quotes

There are three types of lies -- lies, damn lies, and statistics.

Time is precious, but truth is more precious than time.

The best way to become acquainted with a subject is to write about it.

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

The greatest good you can do for another is not just share your riches, but to reveal to him his own.

A member of Parliament to Disraeli: 'Sir, you will either die on the gallows or of some unspeakable disease.' That depends, Sir,' said Disraeli, 'whether I embrace your policies or your mistress.

All is mystery; but he is a slave who will not struggle to penetrate the dark veil.

Never apologize for showing feeling. When you do so, you apologize for the truth.

Most people die with their music still locked up inside them.

How much easier it is to be critical than to be correct.

To be conscious that you are ignorant is a great step to knowledge

Sir, I shall not defeat you - I shall transcend you.

The secret to success is constancy of purpose.

Never argue. In society nothing must be discussed; give only results. (Benjamin Disraeli, 1804–1881)

Action may not always bring happiness; but there is no happiness without action.

He was distinguished for ignorance; for he had only one idea, and that was wrong.

The secret of success in life is for a man to be ready for his opportunity when it comes.

Like all great travellers, I have seen more than I remember and remember more than I have seen.

Little things affect little minds.

The magic of first love is our ignorance that it can ever end.

One of the hardest things in this world is to admit you are wrong. And nothing is more helpful in resolving a situation than its frank admission.

When I want to read a novel, I write one.

Nurture your mind with great thoughts, for you will never go any higher than you think.

Everything comes if a man will only wait.

The European talks of progress because by the aid of a few scientific discoveries he has established a society which has mistaken comfort for civilisation.

We are all born for love. It is the principle of existence, and its only end.

The expected always happens

A canter is the cure for all evil.

My idea of an agreeable person is a person who agrees with me.

Romance has been elegantly defined as the offspring of fiction and love.

Do not read history. Read biography for it is life without theory.

Where knowledge ends, religion begins.

Talk to a man about himself and he will listen for hours

Youth is a blunder; manhood a struggle; old age a regret.

I must follow the people. Am I not their leader?

Nothing in life is more remarkable than the unnecessary anxiety which we endure, and generally create ourselves.

Desperation is sometimes as powerful an inspirer as genius.

As a rule, he or she who has the most information will have the greatest success in life.

Life is too short to be little.

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

Man is not the creature of circumstances, circumstances are the creatures of men.

Ignorance never settles a question.

Experience is the child of thought, and thought is the child of action.

Patience is a necessary ingredient of genius.

But what minutes! Count them by sensation, and not by calendars, and each moment is a day.

The most dangerous strategy is to jump a chasm in two leaps.

What we learn from history is that we do not learn from history

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

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

I am a Conservative to preserve all that is good in our constitution, a Radical to remove all that is bad. I seek to preserve property and to respect order, and I equally decry the appeal to the passions of the many or the prejudices of the few.

Man is only great when he acts from passion.

To believe in the heroic makes heroes.

Justice is truth in action.

Success is the child of audacity.

There is no education like adversity.

Through perseverance many people win success out of what seemed destined to be certain failure.

The canter is a cure for every evil.

Read no history--nothing but biography, for that is life without theory.

Man is not the creature of circumstances, circumstances are the creatures of men. We are free agents, and man is more powerful than matter.

What is earnest is not always true; on the contrary, error is often more earnest than truth.

You asked me where I generally lived. In my workshop [i.e. in his study] in the mornings and always in the library in the evening. Books are companions even if you don’t open them.

If Gladstone fell in the Thames, that would be a misfortune. But if someone fished him out again, that would be a calamity.

It is well-known what a middleman is; he is a man who bamboozles one party and plunders the other.

In politics, nothing is contemptible.

Plagiarists, at least, have the merit of preservation

It destroys one's nerves to be amiable every day to the same human being.

Grief is the agony of an instant: the indulgence of grief is the blunder of life.

Wherever is found what is called a paternal government, there is found state education. It has been discovered that the best way to insure implicit obedience is to commence tyranny in the nursery.

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

An author who speaks about their own books is almost as bad as a mother who speaks about her own children.

He who gains time gains everything.

Man is only truly great when he acts from the passions; never irresistible but when he appeals to the imagination.

Things must be done by parties, not by persons using parties as tools.

Every woman should marry ... and no man.

I feel a very unusual sensation - if it is not indigestion, I think it must be gratitude.

Life is too short to be small.      —BENJAMIN DISRAELI

Nurture your mind with great thoughts. — Benjamin Disraeli

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.

When I want to read a good book, I write one.

Like all great travellers, I have seen more than I remember, and remember more than I have seen.

Life is too short to be little. Man is never so manly as when he feels deeply, acts boldly, and expresses himself with frankness and with fervor.

Seeing much, suffering much, and studying much, are the three pillars of learning.

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

IN THE TORRID London summer of 1886, William Gladstone was up against Benjamin Disraeli for the post of prime minister of the United Kingdom. This was the Victorian era, so whoever won was going to rule half the world. In the very last week before the election, both men happened to take the same young woman out to dinner. Naturally, the press asked her what impressions the rivals had made. She said, “After dining with Mr. Gladstone, I thought he was the cleverest person in England. But after dining with Mr. Disraeli, I thought I was the cleverest person in England.” Guess who won the election? It was the man who made others feel intelligent, impressive, and fascinating: Benjamin Disraeli.

Departures should be sudden.

Give a man a fish and he will eat for a day; teach a man to fish and he will eat for a lifetime; give a man religion and he will die praying for a fish.

Nothing can resist a human will that will stake its existence on a purpose

سر النجاح أن يكون الإنسان مستعداً عندما يأتي وقته

There is no act of treachery or mean-ness of which a political party is not capable; for in politics there is no honour

England is governed not by logic but by parliament.

To be conscious that you are ignorant is a great step to knowledge.

Never complain, never explain.

Man must ever be the slave of routine: but in old days it was a routine of great thoughts, and now it is a routine of little ones.

Books are companions even if you don't open them.

There is no wisdom like frankness.

Man is created for a purpose; the object of his existence is to perfect himself. Man is imperfect by nature, because if nature had made him perfect he would have had no wants; and it is only by supplying his wants that utility can be developed. The development of utility is therefore the object of our being, and the attainment of this great end the cause of our existence.

The poor are very well off, at least the agricultural poor, very well off indeed. Their incomes are certain, that is a great point, and they have no cares, no anxieties; they always have a resource, they always have the House. People without cares do not require as much food as those whose life entails anxieties. See how long they live!

Modern researchers have identified one or more major mood disorders in John Quincy Adams, Charles Darwin, Emily Dickinson, Benjamin Disraeli, William James, William Tecumseh Sherman, Robert Schumann, Leo Tolstoy, Queen Victoria, and many others. We may accurately call these luminaries “mentally ill,” a label that has some use—as did our early diagnosis of Lincoln—insofar as it indicates the depth, severity, and quality of their trouble. However, if we get stuck on the label, we may miss the core fascination, which is how illness can coexist with marvelous well-being. In

It is the simplest phrase you can imagine,” Favreau said, “three monosyllabic words that people say to each other every day.” But the speech etched itself in rhetorical lore. It inspired music videos and memes and the full range of reactions that any blockbuster receives online today, from praise to out-of-context humor to arch mockery. Obama’s “Yes, we can” refrain is an example of a rhetorical device known as epistrophe, or the repetition of words at the end of a sentence. It’s one of many famous rhetorical types, most with Greek names, based on some form of repetition. There is anaphora, which is repetition at the beginning of a sentence (Winston Churchill: “We shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields”). There is tricolon, which is repetition in short triplicate (Abraham Lincoln: “Government of the people, by the people, and for the people”). There is epizeuxis, which is the same word repeated over and over (Nancy Pelosi: “Just remember these four words for what this legislation means: jobs, jobs, jobs, and jobs”). There is diacope, which is the repetition of a word or phrase with a brief interruption (Franklin D. Roosevelt: “The only thing we have to fear is fear itself”) or, most simply, an A-B-A structure (Sarah Palin: “Drill baby drill!”). There is antithesis, which is repetition of clause structures to juxtapose contrasting ideas (Charles Dickens: “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times”). There is parallelism, which is repetition of sentence structure (the paragraph you just read). Finally, there is the king of all modern speech-making tricks, antimetabole, which is rhetorical inversion: “It’s not the size of the dog in the fight; it’s the size of the fight in the dog.” There are several reasons why antimetabole is so popular. First, it’s just complex enough to disguise the fact that it’s formulaic. Second, it’s useful for highlighting an argument by drawing a clear contrast. Third, it’s quite poppy, in the Swedish songwriting sense, building a hook around two elements—A and B—and inverting them to give listeners immediate gratification and meaning. The classic structure of antimetabole is AB;BA, which is easy to remember since it spells out the name of a certain Swedish band.18 Famous ABBA examples in politics include: “Man is not the creature of circumstances. Circumstances are the creatures of men.” —Benjamin Disraeli “East and West do not mistrust each other because we are armed; we are armed because we mistrust each other.” —Ronald Reagan “The world faces a very different Russia than it did in 1991. Like all countries, Russia also faces a very different world.” —Bill Clinton “Whether we bring our enemies to justice or bring justice to our enemies, justice will be done.” —George W. Bush “Human rights are women’s rights and women’s rights are human rights.” —Hillary Clinton In particular, President John F. Kennedy made ABBA famous (and ABBA made John F. Kennedy famous). “Mankind must put an end to war, or war will put an end to mankind,” he said, and “Each increase of tension has produced an increase of arms; each increase of arms has produced an increase of tension,” and most famously, “Ask not what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for your country.” Antimetabole is like the C–G–Am–F chord progression in Western pop music: When you learn it somewhere, you hear it everywhere.19 Difficult and even controversial ideas are transformed, through ABBA, into something like musical hooks.

Significantly, it was Disraeli who said, "What is a crime among the multitude is only a vice among the few"—perhaps the most profound insight into the very principle by which the slow and insidious decline of nineteenth-century society into the depth of mob and underworld morality took place. Since he knew this rule, he knew also that Jews would have no better chances anywhere than in circles which pretended to be exclusive and to discriminate against them; for inasmuch as these circles of the few, together with the multitude, thought of Jewishness as a crime, this "crime" could be transformed at any moment into an attractive "vice." Disraeli's display of eroticism, strangeness, mysteriousness, magic, and power drawn from secret sources, was aimed correctly at this disposition in society.