United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland

Bertrand Russell

Philosophy

Analytic philosophy

1872–1970

"As soon as we abandon our own reason, and are content to rely upon authority, there is no end to our troubles."

George Orwell

performing arts

Socialism

1903–1950

"This work was strictly voluntary, but any animal who absented himself from it would have his rations reduced by half."

John Stuart Mill

Philosophy

Liberalism

1806–1873

"If I had loved any one sufficiently to make confiding my griefs a necessity, I should not have been in the condition."

John Maynard Keynes

Economics

Bloomsbury Group

1883–1946

"Markets can remain irrational longer than you can remain solvent."

Queen Victoria

Politics

1819–1901

"We are not interested in the possibilities of defeat; they do not exist."

Benjamin Creme

Art

1922–2016

"He has never left the world, but for 2,000 years has waited and planned for this immediate future time, training His disciples, and preparing Himself for the awesome task which awaits Him..."

Margaret Thatcher

Politics

1925–2013

"Economics are the method; the object is to change the heart and soul."

Douglas Adams

Literature

1853–1920

"WOKING To enter the kitchen with the precise determination to perform something only to forget what it is just before you do it."

Annie Besant

Politics

freethought

1847–1933

"I often think that woman is more free in Islam than in Christianity. Woman is more protected by Islam than by the faith which preaches monogamy. In AI Quran the law about woman is juster and more liberal."

Agatha Christie

Literature

Knox's Commandments

1890–1976

"Ah, my friend, one may live in a big house and yet have no comfort."

Benjamin Disraeli

Politics

Conservatism

1804–1881

"[I]n speaking of Italy, romance has omitted for once to exaggerate."

John Muir

Philosophy

environmentalism

1838–1914

"One day's exposure to mountains is better than cartloads of books. See how willingly Nature poses herself upon photographers' plates. No earthly chemicals are so sensitive as those of the human soul."

Letitia Elizabeth Landon

Literature

1802–1838

"Love has no power to look forward — the delicious consciousness of the present, a faint but delightful shadow of the past, form its eternity."

John Ruskin

Art

Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood

1819–1900

"Punishment is the last and least effective instrument in the hands of the legislator for the prevention of crime."

Samuel Butler (novelist)

Literature

1835–1902

"The pursuit of truth is chimerical. That is why it is so hard to say what truth is. There is no permanent absolute unchangeable truth; what we should pursue is the most convenient arrangement of our ideas."

Anthony Trollope

Politics

1815–1882

"Aid from heaven you may have," he said, "by saying your prayers; and I don't doubt you ask for this and all other things generally. But an angel won't come to tell you who ought to be Chancellor of the Exchequer."

E. M. Forster

Literature

Bloomsbury Group

1879–1970

"Axiom: Novel must have either one living character or a perfect pattern: fails otherwise."

"He does not deserve your praise, but he deserves to be treated as if someday he might."

Stanley Baldwin

Politics

1867–1947

"No country is more beautiful than England."

Charlotte Brontë

Literature

1816–1855

"I scorn your idea of love," I could not help saying, as I rose up and stood before him, leaning my back against the rock. "I scorn the counterfeit sentiment you offer; yes, St. John, and I scorn you when you offer it."

George Eliot

Journalism

Realism

1819–1880

"Come in, Adam, and rest; it has been a hard day for thee."

William Hazlitt

Literature

1778–1830

"An honest man speaks the truth, though it may give offence; a vain man, in order that it may."

P. G. Wodehouse

Religion

1881–1975

"I started back to the house, and in the drive I met Jeeves. He was at the wheel of Stiffy's car. Beside him, looking like a Scotch elder rebuking sin, was the dog Bartholomew."

John James Cowperthwaite

Economics

1915–2006

"Sir John Cowperthwaite's obituary from the Daily Telegraph"

William Stanley Jevons

Economics

1835–1882

"In this work I have attempted to treat economy as a calculus of pleasure and pain, and have sketched out,almost irrespective of previous opinions, the form which the science,as it seems to me, must ultimately take."

William John Macquorn Rankine

Science

1820–1872

"This law , and the law of the maximum efficiency of heat engines, are particular cases of a general law which regulates all transformation of energy, and is the basis of the Science of Energetics."

Joseph Priestley

Science

1733–1804

"From the fame opinion of a soul distinct from the body came the practice of praying, first for the dead, and then to them with a long train of other absurd opinions, and superstitious practices."

Jerome K. Jerome

drama

1859–1927

"It is in our faults and failings, not in our virtues, that we touch each other, and find sympathy. It is in our follies that we are one."

Charles Lyell

Philosophy

1767–1849

"It seems, then, that the Greeks had not only derived from preceding nations, but had also, in some slight degree, deduced from their own observations, the theory of great periodical revolutions in the inorganic world."

Walter Bagehot

Literature

1826–1877

"Free government is self-government. A government of the people by the people. The best government of this sort is that which the people think best."

Elizabeth Barrett Browning

Literature

1806–1861

"Love me sweet With all thou art Feeling, thinking, seeing; Love me in the Lightest part, Love me in full Being."

Thomas Fuller

Literature

1608–1661

"He knows little who will tell his wife all he knows."

H. Rider Haggard

Literature

1856–1925

"It is awkward to listen to oneself being praised, and I was always a shy man."

Rudyard Kipling

Literature

1865–1936

"A people always ends by resembling its shadow."

"We have just enough religion to make us hate, but not enough to make us love."

Florence Nightingale

Medicine

1820–1910

"Poetry and imagination begin life. A child will fall on its knees on the gravel walk at the sight of a pink hawthorn in full flower, when it is by itself, to praise God for it."

Arthur Conan Doyle

Literature

1859–1930

"Sir Arthur Conan Doyle - His Life, All His Works, And More"

Robert Browning

Religion

1812–1889

"how sad and bad and mad it was - but then, how it was sweet"

Alfred Tennyson

Politics

1809–1892

"Tis better to have loved and lost, Than never to have loved at all."