"As you know many people have dreamed dreams since the War ended. It's partly the fault of the British nation—and of the Americans; we can't exonerate them from blame either—that this idea of “representative government” has got into the heads of nations who haven't the smallest notion of what its basis must be. ... I doubt if you would find it written in any book on the British Constitution that the whole essence of British Parliamentary government lies in the intention to make the thing Work. We take that for granted. We have spent hundreds of years in elaborating a system that rests on that alone. It is so deep in us that we have lost sight of it. But it is not so obvious to others. These peoples—Indians, Egyptians, and so on—study our learning. They read our history, our philosophy, and politics. They learn about our Parliamentary methods of obstruction, but nobody explains to them that when it comes to the point, all our Parliamentary parties are determined that the machinery shan't stop. “The king's government must go on,” as the Duke of Wellington said. But their idea is that the function of opposition is to stop the machine. Nothing easier of course, but hopeless."

“he energies of our system will decay, the glory of the sun will be dimmed, and the earth, tideless and inert, will no longer tolerate the race which has for a moment disturbed its solitude. Man will go down into the pit and all his thoughts will perish.”

“...this Home Rule Bill is an experiment in Federalism of the most impossible, unexampled, and preposterous character.”

“Nationality was valuable, in so far as it was a centripetal principle, in so far as it produced closer cooperation between members of the human race. It had the other side, and it must not be put on an absurd pedestal. It was not to any politician's or statesman's credit that he worked on the emotions of nationality to produce division; the proper use of the feeling of nationality was to produce union.”

“The Irish had owed their success to crime. Winston practically admitted it. They had defied British rule,—and British rulers had given in to them. How could such a state of things be said to fit in with the scheme of the Empire?”

“I cannot become another Sir Robert Peel in my Party.”

“This Government have lived on electoral bribes for six years. They have been floating helplessly down the revolutionary stream, which they have not controlled or guided in any way, snatching now at one electoral advantage and now at another electoral advantage. They have attacked the Crown, they have attacked the Second Chamber, they have bound the Representative Chamber hand and foot; and, having finished their bribes, they are now lapsing into the old Radical practice of destroying Churches, passing what they conceive to be judicious Reform Bills from the gerrymandering point of view, and generally comporting themselves as a Radical Party in difficulties always does comport itself. I do not believe the country will stand it much longer.”