"Theory of selection /.../ leaves untouched all that can be inferred from the existence of the conditions which make organic evolution possible: matter which lives, multiplies, and varies ; an environment which possesses the marvellously complex constitution required to make these processes possible. /.../ it cannot produce either the original environment or the original living matter. These must be due either to luck or to contrivance; and, if they be due to luck, the luck is great. How great we cannot say."

“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?”

“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.”

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