Benjamin Disraeli
Conservatism
"The Liberal says, in despairing disbelief: Can't you sense the world around us? Don't you care about its disapproval? The Conservative says, in despairing disbelief: Can't you sense the generations behind us? Don't you care about their disapproval? Liberals live "horizontally," spiritually in touch (they believe) with all the world's nations. Conservatives live "vertically," spiritually in touch (they believe) with their forebears and with generations to come."
Heroism
"The legacy of heroes is the memory of a great name and the inheritance of a great example."
"Nurture your mind with great thoughts; to believe in the heroic makes heroes."
Israel
« Oui, je suis juif, et quand les ancêtres du Très Honorable Gentleman étaient des brutes sauvages dans une île inconnue, les miens étaient prêtres dans le Temple de Salomon. »
- Benjamin Disraeli, réponse à Daniel O'Connell
Globalization
"The world is governed by very different personages from what is imagined by those who are not behind the scenes."
- Benjamin Disraeli, first Prime Minister of England, in a novel he published in 1844 called Coningsby, the New Generation
"The governments of the present day have to deal not merely with other governments, with emperors, kings and ministers, but also with the secret societies which have everywhere their unscrupulous agents, and can at the last moment upset all the governments' plans."
- Benjamin Disraeli, 1876
Racism
"No one may be indifferent to the racial principle, the racial question. It is the key to world history. History is often confusing because it is written by people who did not understand the racial question and the aspects relevant to it… Race is everything, and every race that does not keep its blood from being mixed will perish… Language and religion do not determine a race—blood determines it."
Truth
"There are three kinds of lies: lies, damn lies, and statistics."
- « Il y a trois sortes de mensonges : les mensonges, les mensonges maudits et les statistiques. »
- Benjamin Disraeli, cité par Mark Twain dans son Autobiographie