Benjamin Disraeli on Politics

"The practice of politics in the East may be defined by one word: dissimulation."

"There is no act of treachery or meanness of which a political party is not capable; for in politics there is no honour."

"King Louis Philippe once said to me that he attributed the great success of the British nation in political life to their talking politics after dinner."

"I am neither Whig nor Tory. My politics are described by one word, and that word is ."

"The world is weary of statesmen whom democracy has degraded into politicians."

"It is only by the amplification of titles that you can often touch and satisfy the imagination of nations; and that is an element which Governments must not despise."

"he government of the world is carried on by Sovereigns and statesmen, and not by anonymous paragraph writers, or by the harebrained chatter of irresponsible frivolity."

"I suppose, to use our national motto, something will turn up."

"Real politics are the possession and distribution of power."

"That fatal drollery called a representative government."

"My objection to Liberalism is this—that it is the introduction into the practical business of life of the highest kind—namely, politics—of philosophical ideas instead of political principles."

"Finality, Sir, is not the language of politics."

"In politics nothing is contemptible."

"There is no gambling like politics."

"The divine right of kings may have been a plea for feeble tyrants; but the divine right of government is the keystone of human progress, and without it governments sink into police, and a nation is degraded into a mob."

"I entirely differ with the Government as to the value of precedents. In this case, as in others, precedents are not mere dusty phrases, which do not substantially affect the question before us. A precedent embalms a principle."

"To build up a community, not upon Liberal opinions, which any man may fashion to his fancy, but upon popular principles, which assert equal rights, civil and religious; to uphold the institutions of the country because they are the embodiment of the wants and wishes of the nation, and protect us alike from individual tyranny and popular outrage; equally to resist democracy and oligarchy; and favour that principle of free aristocracy which is the only basis and security for constitutional government; to be vigilant to guard and prompt to vindicate the honour of the country, but to hold aloof from that turbulent diplomacy which only distracts the mind of a people from internal improvement; to lighten taxation; frugally but wisely to administer the public treasure; to favour popular education, because it is the best guarantee for public order; to defend local government; and to be as jealous of the rights of the working man as of the prerogatives of the Crown and the privileges of the Senate—these were once the principles which regulated Tory statesmen, and I for one have no wish that the Tory party should ever be in power unless they practise them."

"Now, what is meant by the union between Church and State? ... I understand by it that authority is to be not merely political; that Government is to be not merely an affair of force, but is to recognize its responsibility to the Divine Power. Sir, we have discarded the divine right of Kings, and properly discarded it, because the divine right of Kings led to the abuse of supernatural power by individuals; but an intelligent age will never discard the divine right of Government. If Government is not divine, it is nothing. It is a mere affair of the police-office, of the tax-gatherer, of the guard-room."