Top 20 Quotes & Sayings by Joseph Chamberlain

Courage is rightly esteemed the first of human qualities - because it is the quality which guarantees all others.

Learn to think impartially.

London is the clearing-house of the world.

The day of small nations has long passed away. The day of Empires has come.

On great fields something stays.

In politics, there is no use looking beyond the next fortnight.

You cannot teach old dogs new tricks.

In great deeds something abides.

If we fail, let us try again and again until we succeed.

[Social legislation] raised the cost of production; and what can be more illogical than to raise the cost of production in the country and then to allow the products of other countries which are not surrounded by any similar legislation, which are free from any similar cost and expenditure freely to enter our country in competition with our own goods...If these foreign goods come in cheaper, one of two things must follow...either you will take lower wages or you will lose your work.

Learn to think imperially.

Let it be our endeavour, let it be our task, to keep alight the torch of imperial patriotism, to hold fast the affection and the confidence of our kinsmen across the seas; so that in every vicissitude of fortune the British Empire may present an unbroken front to all her foes, and may carry on even to distant ages the glorious traditions of the British flag.

During the last 100 years, the House of Lords has never contributed one iota to popular liberties or popular freedom, or done anything to advance the common weal; but during that time it has protected every abuse and sheltered every privilege.

Lord Salisbury constitutes himself the spokesman of a class, of the class to which he himself belongs, who'toil not neither do they spin'.

Sugar is gone; silk has gone; iron is threatened; wool is threatened; cotton will go! How long are you going to stand it? At the present moment these industries...are like sheep in a field.

I venture to claim two qualifications for the great office which I hold, which to my mind, without making invidious distinctions, is one of the most important that can be held by any Englishman; and those qualifications are that in the first place I believe in the British Empire, and in the second place I believe in the British race. I believe that the British race is the greatest of the governing races that the world has ever seen.

The day of small nations has passed away; the day of Empires has come.

We are not downhearted, but we cannot understand what is happening to our neighbours.

Provided that the City of London remains, as it is at present, the clearing-house of the world, any other nation may be its workshop.

Learn and think imperially.