Top 73 Quotes & Sayings by William E. Gladstone

Explore popular quotes and sayings by a British leader William E. Gladstone.
Last updated on December 21, 2024.
William E. Gladstone

William Ewart Gladstone was a British statesman and Liberal politician. In a career lasting over 60 years, he served for 12 years as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, spread over four terms beginning in 1868 and ending in 1894. He also served as Chancellor of the Exchequer four times, serving over 12 years.

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.
Selfishness is the greatest curse of the human race. — © William E. Gladstone
Selfishness is the greatest curse of the human race.
Liberalism is trust of the people tempered by prudence. Conservatism is distrust of the people tempered by fear.
You cannot fight against the future. Time is on our side.
Here is my first principle of foreign policy: good government at home.
The disease of an evil conscience is beyond the practice of all the physicians of all the countries in the would.
Mediocrity is now, as formerly, dangerous, commonly fatal, to the poet; but among even the successful writers of prose, those who rise sensibly above it are the very rarest exceptions.
We are bound to lose Ireland in consequence of years of cruelty, stupidity and misgovernment and I would rather lose her as a friend than as a foe.
All the world over, I will back the masses against the classes.
No one ever became great except through many and great mistakes.
Good laws make it easier to do right and harder to do wrong.
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.
Be happy with what you have and are, be generous with both, and you won't have to hunt for happiness. — © William E. Gladstone
Be happy with what you have and are, be generous with both, and you won't have to hunt for happiness.
We look forward to the time when the Power of Love will replace the Love of Power. Then will our world know the blessings of peace.
No man ever became great or good except through many and great mistakes.
Nothing that is morally wrong can be politically right.
Justice delayed is justice denied.
It is not a life at all. It is a reticence, in three volumes.
Men are apt to mistake the strength of their feeling for the strength of their argument. The heated mind resents the chill touch and relentless scrutiny of logic.
If you are cold, tea will warm you; if you are too heated, it will cool you; If you are depressed, it will cheer you; If you are excited, it will calm you.
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!
A rational reaction against the irrational excesses and vagaries of scepticism may, I admit, readily degenerate into the rival folly of credulity. To be engaged in opposing wrong affords, under the conditions of our mental constitution, but a slender guarantee for being right.
Man is to be trained chiefly by studying and by knowing man.
To be engaged in opposing wrong affords...but a slender guarantee for being right.
My only hope for the world is in bringing the human mind into contact with divine revelation.
As the British Constitution is the most subtle organism which has proceeded from progressive history, so the American Constitution is the most wonderful work ever struck off at a given time by the brain and purpose of man.
A rational reaction against irrational excesses and vagaries of skepticism may * * * readily degenerate into the rival folly of credulity.
He is the purest figure in history. About George Washington
It is no use for the honorable member to shake his head in the teeth of his own words.
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.
I am inclined to say that the personal attendance and intervention of women in election proceedings, even apart from any suspicion of the wider objects of many of the promoters of the present movement, would be a practical evil not only of the gravest, but even of an intolerable character.
One example is worth a thousand arguments.
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.
Avarice, where it has full dominion, excludes every other passion.
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?
National injustice is the surest road to national downfall.
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. — © William E. Gladstone
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.
Be thorough in all you do; and remember that although ignorance often may be innocent, pretension is always despicable.
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.
The resources of civilization are not yet exhausted.
The American Revolution was a vindication of liberties inherited and possessed. It was a conservative revolution.
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.
The errors of former times are recorded for our instruction in order that we may avoid their repition.
Thrift of time will repay you in after-life with a thousandfold of profit beyond your most sanguine dreams.
I have known ninety-five of the world's great men in my time, and of these eighty-seven were followers of the Bible.
Books are delightful society. If you go into a room and find it full of books - even without taking them from the shelves they seem to speak to you, to bid you welcome.
The oppression of a majority is detestable and odious; the oppression of a minority is only by one degree less detestable and odious. — © William E. Gladstone
The oppression of a majority is detestable and odious; the oppression of a minority is only by one degree less detestable and odious.
Ireland, Ireland. That cloud in the west, that coming storm. That minister of God's retribution upon cruel, inveterate, and but half-atoned injustice! Ireland forces upon us those great social and great religious questions. God grant that we may have courage to look them in the face!
Nothing more surely cultivates and embellishes a man than association with refined and virtuous women.
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.
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
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.
Swimming for his life, a man does not see much of the country through which the river winds.
You cannot fight against future. Time is on its side.
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.
I venture to say that every man who is not presumably incapacitated by some consideration of personal unfitness or of political danger is morally entitled to come within the pale of the Constitution.
The ravages of drink are greater than those of war pestilence and famine combined.
Commerce is the equalizer of the wealth of nations.
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