William E. Gladstone Quotes

Nothing that is morally wrong can be politically right.

My only hope for the world is in bringing the human mind into contact with divine revelation.

Censure and criticism never hurt anybody. If false, they can't hurt you unless you are wanting in manly character; and if true, they show a man his weak points, and forewarn him against failure and trouble.

The disease of an evil conscience is beyond the practice of all the physicians of all the countries in the would.

The American Revolution was a vindication of liberties inherited and possessed. It was a conservative revolution.

The hopelessness of the Turkish Government should make me witness with delight its being swept out of the countries which it tortures. Next to the Ottoman Government nothing can be more deplorable and blameworthy than jealousies between Greek and Slav and plans by the States already existing for appropriating other territory. Why not Macedonia for the Macedonians as well as Bulgaria for the Bulgarians and Serbia for the Serbians?

A rational reaction against irrational excesses and vagaries of skepticism may * * * readily degenerate into the rival folly of credulity.

Never forget that the purpose for which a man lives is the improvement of the man himself, so that he may go out of this world having, in his great sphere or his small one, done some little good for his fellow creatures and labored a little to diminish the sin and sorrow that are in the world.

Budgets are not merely affairs of arithmetic, but in a thousand ways go to the root of prosperity of individuals, the relation of classes and the strength of kingdoms.

I think that the principle of the Conservative Party is jealousy of liberty and of the people , only qualified by fear ; but I think the principle of the Liberal Party is trust in the people, only qualified by prudence .

It is difficult to see anything but infatuation in the destructive temperament which leads to the action ... that each of us is to rejoice that our several units are to be distinguished at death into countless millions of organisms; for such, it seems, is the latest revelation delivered from the fragile tripod of a modern Delphi.

Ireland, Ireland. That cloud in the west, that coming storm.

You cannot fight against the future. Time is on our side.

You cannot fight against future. Time is on its side.

The resources of civilization are not yet exhausted.

I am certain, from experience, of the immense advantage of strict account-keeping in early life. It is just like learning the grammar then, which when once learned need not be referred to afterwards.

The oppression of a majority is detestable and odious; the oppression of a minority is only by one degree less detestable and odious.

Show me the manner in which a nation or a community cares for its dead and I will measure with mathematical exactness the tender sympathies of its people, their respect for the laws of the land and their loyalty to high ideals.

To serve Armenia is to serve civilization.

It is the duty of government to make it difficult for people to do wrong, easy to do right.

There should be a sympathy with freedom, a desire to give it scope, founded not upon visionary ideas, but upon the long experience of many generations within the shores of this happy isle, that in freedom you lay the firmest foundations both of loyalty and order.

He is the purest figure in history. About George Washington

There is a limit to the work that can be got out of a human body or a human brain, and he is a wise man who wastes no energy on pursuits for which he is not fitted; and he is still wiser who, from among the things that he can do well, chooses and resolut

From the time I took office as Chancellor of the Exchequer, I began to learn that the State held, in the face of the Bank and the City, an essentially false position as to finance. The Government itself was not to be a substantive power, but was to leave the Money Power supreme and unquestioned.

Be inspired with the belief that life is a great and noble calling; not a mean and groveling thing that we are to shuffle through as we can, but an elevated and lofty destiny.

All the wonders of the Greek civilization heaped together are less wonderful than the single book of Psalms. Greece had all that this world could give her; but the flowers of Paradise blossomed in Palestine alone.

[The British constitution] presumes more boldly than any other the good sense and the good faith of those who work it.

If Germany is to become a colonizing power, all I say is, God speed her! She becomes our ally and partner in the execution of the great purposes of Providence for the advantage of mankind.

To be engaged in opposing wrong affords but a slender guarantee for being right.

Commerce is the equalizer of the wealth of nations.

The book must of necessity be put into a bookcase. And the bookcase must be housed. And the house must be kept. And the library must be dusted, must be arranged, must be catalogued. What a vista of toil, yet not unhappy toil!

Remember the rights of the savage, as we call him. Remember that the happiness of his humble home, remember that the sanctity of life in the hill villages of Afghanistan, among the winter snows, is as inviolable in the eye of Almighty God, as can be your own.

It is not a life at all. It is a reticence, in three volumes.

All the world over, I will back the masses against the classes.

Swimming for his life, a man does not see much of the country through which the river winds, and I probably know little of these years through which I busily work and live, beyond this, how sin and frailty deface them, and how mercy crowns them.

It is no use for the honorable member to shake his head in the teeth of his own words.

I was tenaciously opposed by the governor and deputy-governor of the Bank, who had seats in parliament, and I had the City for an antagonist on almost every occasion.

To call a man a characteristically Oxford man is, in my opinion, to give him the highest compliment that could be paid to any human being.

Selfishness is the greatest curse of the human race.

Man is to be trained chiefly by studying and by knowing man.