William E. Gladstone Quotes
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Men are apt to mistake the strength of their feeling for the strength of their argument. The heated mind resents the chill touch and relentless scrutiny of logic.
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The errors of former times are recorded for our instruction in order that we may avoid their repition.
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The hopelessness of the Turkish Government should make me witness with delight its being swept out of the countries which it tortures. Next to the Ottoman Government nothing can be more deplorable and blameworthy than jealousies between Greek and Slav and plans by the States already existing for appropriating other territory. Why not Macedonia for the Macedonians as well as Bulgaria for the Bulgarians and Serbia for the Serbians?
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The resources of civilization are not yet exhausted.
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I am inclined to say that the personal attendance and intervention of women in election proceedings, even apart from any suspicion of the wider objects of many of the promoters of the present movement, would be a practical evil not only of the gravest, but even of an intolerable character.
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Commerce is the equalizer of the wealth of nations.
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A rational reaction against the irrational excesses and vagaries of scepticism may, I admit, readily degenerate into the rival folly of credulity. To be engaged in opposing wrong affords, under the conditions of our mental constitution, but a slender guarantee for being right.
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To be engaged in opposing wrong affords...but a slender guarantee for being right.
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I am certain, from experience, of the immense advantage of strict account-keeping in early life. It is just like learning the grammar then, which when once learned need not be referred to afterwards.
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Avarice, where it has full dominion, excludes every other passion.
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Justice delayed is justice denied.
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Thrift of time will repay you in after-life with a thousandfold of profit beyond your most sanguine dreams.
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If Germany is to become a colonizing power, all I say is, God speed her! She becomes our ally and partner in the execution of the great purposes of Providence for the advantage of mankind.
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It is difficult to see anything but infatuation in the destructive temperament which leads to the action ... that each of us is to rejoice that our several units are to be distinguished at death into countless millions of organisms; for such, it seems, is the latest revelation delivered from the fragile tripod of a modern Delphi.
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[The British constitution] presumes more boldly than any other the good sense and the good faith of those who work it.
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Ireland, Ireland. That cloud in the west, that coming storm. That minister of God's retribution upon cruel, inveterate, and but half-atoned injustice! Ireland forces upon us those great social and great religious questions. God grant that we may have courage to look them in the face!
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The oppression of a majority is detestable and odious; the oppression of a minority is only by one degree less detestable and odious.
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It is no use for the honorable member to shake his head in the teeth of his own words.
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The ravages of drink are greater than those of war pestilence and famine combined.
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From the time I took office as Chancellor of the Exchequer, I began to learn that the State held, in the face of the Bank and the City, an essentially false position as to finance. The Government itself was not to be a substantive power, but was to leave the Money Power supreme and unquestioned.
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Man is to be trained chiefly by studying and by knowing man.
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Decision by majorities is as much an expedient as lighting by gas.
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National injustice is the surest road to national downfall.
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The book must of necessity be put into a bookcase. And the bookcase must be housed. And the house must be kept. And the library must be dusted, must be arranged, must be catalogued. What a vista of toil, yet not unhappy toil!