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Popular Quotables
- “Wealth and Poverty,” speech, National… (6,894)
- “The Lesson for Today,” A Witness Tree (1942) (5,813)
- Agamemnon, ll. 175-183 [tr. Johnston (2007)] (5,731)
- Nobel prize acceptance speech (10 Dec 1962) (4,870)
- “The Triumph of Stupidity” (10 May 1933) (4,840)
- “On The Conduct of Life” (1822) (3,923)
- “In Search of a Majority,” Speech,… (3,814)
- “Get a Knife, Get a Dog, but Get Rid of… (3,670)
- “The Historian as Participant,” Daedalus… (3,080)
- “Hallowed Ground” (1825) (3,063)
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Adams, John • Bacon, Francis • Bible • Bierce, Ambrose • Billings, Josh • Butcher, Jim • Chesterton, Gilbert Keith • Churchill, Winston • Einstein, Albert • Eisenhower, Dwight David • Emerson, Ralph Waldo • Franklin, Benjamin • Fuller, Thomas (1654) • Gaiman, Neil • Galbraith, John Kenneth • Gandhi, Mohandas • Goethe, Johann von • Hazlitt, William • Heinlein, Robert A. • Hoffer, Eric • Huxley, Aldous • Ingersoll, Robert Green • James, William • Jefferson, Thomas • Johnson, Lyndon • Johnson, Samuel • Kennedy, John F. • King, Martin Luther • La Rochefoucauld, Francois • Lewis, C.S. • Lincoln, Abraham • Mencken, H.L. • Orwell, George • Pratchett, Terry • Roosevelt, Eleanor • Roosevelt, Theodore • Russell, Bertrand • Seneca the Younger • Shakespeare, William • Shaw, George Bernard • Stevenson, Adlai • Stevenson, Robert Louis • Twain, Mark • Watterson, Bill • Wilde, Oscar- Only the 45 most quoted authors are shown above. Full author list.
Recent Feedback
- 24-Jul-20 - Italian proverb | WIST on Réflexions ou sentences et maximes morales [Maxims], # 89 (1665-1678).
- 6-Jul-20 - (Attributed) | WIST on Quoted in Plutarch, Parallel Lives, “The Life of Solon,” sec. 18.5 [tr. Perrin (1914)].
- 6-Jul-20 - Agamemnon, l. 928 | WIST on Oedipus Rex, l. 1529 (concluding words).
- 20-May-20 - Introduction to the Art of Thinking, ch. 1, "Friendship" (1761) | WIST on John 15:13 (KJV).
- 18-May-20 - Chamblee54 on Clouds, ll. 998-999 (423 BC) [tr. Athenian Soc. (1912)].
- 18-May-20 - Chamblee54 on Mills E. Godwin, Governor of Virginia (Dec 1966).
Quotations by Disraeli, Benjamin
The most dangerous strategy is to jump a chasm in two leaps.
Benjamin Disraeli (1804-1881) English politician and author
(Attributed)
Never apologize for showing feeling. When you do so, you apologize for truth.
Benjamin Disraeli (1804-1881) English politician and author
(Attributed)
Action may not always bring happiness; but there is no happiness without action.
Benjamin Disraeli (1804-1881) English politician and author
(Attributed)
Nurture your mind with great thoughts, for you will never go any higher than you think.
Benjamin Disraeli (1804-1881) English politician and author
(Attributed)
Predominant opinions are generally the opinions of the generation that is vanishing.
Benjamin Disraeli (1804-1881) English politician and author
(Attributed)
I am bound to furnish my antagonists with arguments, but not with comprehension.
Benjamin Disraeli (1804-1881) English politician and author
(Attributed)
An frequently used saying of his. Quoted in Wilfrid Meynell, Benjamin Disraeli: An Unconventional Biography (1903). Also attributed to Samuel Johnson.
There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics.
Benjamin Disraeli (1804-1881) English politician and author
(Attributed)
(Source)Attributed by Mark Twain in "Chapters from My Autobiography," April 1904, North American Review (7 Sep 1906), later in : "Figures often beguile me, particularly when I have the arranging of them myself; in which case the remark attributed to Disraeli would often apply with justice and force: 'There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics.'"
The phrase has not been found in any of Disraeli's works, and he is considered unlikely to be the originator (see here and here for more discussion).
Never complain and never explain.
Benjamin Disraeli (1804-1881) English politician and author
(Attributed)
Regarding attacks on him in Parliament. Quoted in John Morley, Life of William Ewart Gladstone (1903).
Characters never change. Opinions alter — characters are only developed.
Benjamin Disraeli (1804-1881) English politician and author
(Attributed)
Quoted in Joseph Waldo Denny, Wearing The Blue in The Twenty-Fifth Mass. Volunteer Infantry (1879).
Youth is a blunder; Manhood a struggle; Old Age a regret.
Benjamin Disraeli (1804-1881) English politician and author
Coningsby: Or, The New Generation, Book 3, ch. 1 (1844)
Nurture your mind with great thoughts; to believe in the heroic makes heroes.
Benjamin Disraeli (1804-1881) English politician and author
Coningsby, bk. 3, ch. 1 (1844)
Never apologize for showing feeling, my friend. Remember that when you do so, you apologize for truth.
Benjamin Disraeli (1804-1881) English politician and author
Contarini Fleming, ch. 13 (1832)
(Source)
The wisdom of the wise, and the experience of ages, may be preserved by quotation.
Benjamin Disraeli (1804-1881) English politician and author
Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 2, Part 4 (1835)
Full text.
Tact teaches you when to be silent.
Benjamin Disraeli (1804-1881) English politician and author
Endymion, ch. 61 (1880)
What we anticipate seldom occurs; what we least expected generally happens.
Benjamin Disraeli (1804-1881) English politician and author
Henrietta Temple, bk. 2, ch. 4 (1837)
My idea of an agreeable person is a person who agrees with me.
Benjamin Disraeli (1804-1881) English politician and author
Lothair, ch. 41 (Lothair) (1870)
Frank and explicit: That is the right line to take when you wish to conceal your mind and confuse the minds of others.
Benjamin Disraeli (1804-1881) English politician and author
Sybil, “The Gentleman in Downing Street,” bk 6, ch 1 (1845)
Next to knowing when to seize an opportunity, the most important thing in life is to know when to forego an advantage.
Benjamin Disraeli (1804-1881) English politician and author
The Infernal Marriage (1834)
Man is not the creature of circumstances, circumstances are the creatures of men. We are free agents, and man is more powerful than matter.
Benjamin Disraeli (1804-1881) English politician and author
Vivian Grey Part 6, ch. 7 (1826)
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.
Benjamin Disraeli (1804-1881) English politician and author
Campaign speech, High Wycombe, England (27 Nov. 1832)
http://www.bartleby.com/73/314.html
Man is a being born to believe. And if no church comes forward with its title-deeds of truth to guide him, he will find altars and idols in his own heart and his own imagination.
Benjamin Disraeli (1804-1881) English politician and author
Speech (25 Nov. 1864)
I think the author who speaks about his own books is almost as bad as a mother who talks about her own children.
Benjamin Disraeli (1804-1881) English politician and author
Speech, Banquet to Lord Rector, University of Glasgow (19 Nov 1870)
(Source)
To tax the community for the advantage of a class is not protection: it is plunder.
Benjamin Disraeli (1804-1881) English politician and author
Speech, House of Commons (14 Mar 1850)
It is much easier to be critical than to be correct.
Benjamin Disraeli (1804-1881) English politician and author
Speech, House of Commons (24 Jan 1860)
