Top 11 Quotes & Sayings by H. H. Asquith

Explore popular quotes and sayings by a British celebrity H. H. Asquith.

Last updated on April 14, 2025.

Herbert Henry Asquith, 1st Earl of Oxford and Asquith,, generally known as H. H. Asquith, was a British statesman and Liberal Party politician who served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1908 to 1916. He was the last Liberal prime minister to command a majority government, and the most recent Liberal to have served as Leader of the Opposition. He played a major role in the design and passage of major liberal legislation and a reduction of the power of the House of Lords. In August 1914, Asquith took Great Britain and the British Empire into the First World War. During 1915, his government was vigorously attacked for a shortage of munitions and the failure of the Gallipoli Campaign. He formed a coalition government with other parties but failed to satisfy critics and was forced to resign in December 1916, and never regained power.

British - Celebrity | September 12, 1852 - February 15, 1928

Source: Wikipedia

If I am asked what we are fighting for, I can reply in two sentences. In the first place, to fulfil a solemn international obligation . . . an obligation of honor which no self-respecting man could possibly have repudiated. I say, secondly, we are fighting to vindicate the principle that small nationalities are not to be crushed in defiance of international good faith at the arbitrary will of a strong and overmastering Power.

H. H. Asquith

Of all human troubles the most hateful is to feel that you have the capacity of power and yet you have no field to excercise it.

H. H. Asquith

The army will hear nothing of politics from me and in return I expect to hear nothing of politics from the army.

H. H. Asquith

At 50, don't let aging get you down. It's too hard to get back up. Happy 50th birthday.

H. H. Asquith

Youth would be an ideal state if it came a little later in life.

H. H. Asquith

Greatness is a zigzag streak of lightning in the brain.

H. H. Asquith

We are fighting to vindicate the principle that small nationalities are not to be crushed, in defiance of international good faith, by the arbitrary will of a strong and overmastering Power.

H. H. Asquith

We are within measurable, or imaginable, distance of a real Armageddon. Happily there seems to be no reason why we should be anything more than spectators.

H. H. Asquith

The War office kept three sets of figures - one to mislead the public, another to mislead the cabinet and the third to mislead itself.

H. H. Asquith

When our new armies are ready it seems folly to send them to Flanders, where they will chew barbed wire, or be wasted in futile frontal attacks.

H. H. Asquith

There is no more striking illustration of the immobility of British institutions than the House of Commons.

H. H. Asquith