Arthur Balfour Quotations

It is unfortunate, considering that enthusiasm moves the world, that so few enthusiasts can be trusted to speak the truth.

Nothing matters very much, and few things matter at all.

I thought Winston Churchill was a young man of promise, but it appears he is a young man of promises.

Biography should be written by an acute enemy.

The General Strike has taught the working class more in four days than years of talking could have done.

He has only half learned the art of reading who has not added to it the more refined art of skipping and skimming.

I never forgive, but I always forget.

Winston has written four volumes about himself and called it 'World Crisis'.

Kant, as we all know, compared moral law to the starry heavens, and found them both sublime. On the naturalistic hypothesis we should rather compare it to the protective blotches on a beetle's back, and find them both ingenious.

He [A. J. Balfour] was eminently one of the Cole Porter school of famous men, who only fell to rise again. Picking himself up and brushing himself down became a minor art form, ruefully admired by his contemporaries.

There are plenty of cases of war being begun before it is declared.

Imperishable moments and immortal deeds, death itself and love stronger than death, will be as though they had never been. The 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 the moment disturbed its solitude. Man will go down into the pit and all his thoughts will perish. The uneasy consciousness, which in this obscure corner has for a brief space broken the contented silence of the universe, will be at rest.

It has always been desirable to tell the truth, but seldom if ever necessary.

In effort Happiness idleness life pleasure superstition support trouble work The superstition that all our hours of work are a minus quantity in the happiness of life, and all the hours of idleness are plus ones, is a most ludicrous and pernicious doctrine, and its greatest support comes from our not taking sufficient trouble, not making a real effort, to make work as near pleasure as it can be.

I am more or less happy when being praised, not very comfortable when being abused, but I have moments of uneasiness when being explained.

I'd rather take advice from my valet than from the Conservative Party Conference

And realize that life is the best thing ever, and that you have no business taking it for granted. Care so deeply about its goodness that you want to spread it around. Take money...and give it to charity. Work in a soup kitchen. Be a Big Brother or Sister...You want to do well, but if you do not do good too, then doing well will never be enough.

Though the parallel is not complete, it is safe to say that science will never touch them unaided by its practical applications. Its wonders may be catalogued for purposes of education, they may be illustrated by arresting experiments, by numbers and magnitudes which startle or fatigue the imagination but they will form no familiar portion of the intellectual furniture of ordinary men unless they be connected, however remotely, with the conduct of ordinary life.

But science is the great instrument of social change, all the greater because its object is not change but knowledge, and its silent appropriation of this dominant function, amid the din of political and religious strife, is the most vital of all the revolutions which have marked the development of modern civilisation.

Science preceded the theory of science, and is independent of it. Science preceded naturalism, and will survive it.

Man, so far as natural science by itself is able to teach us, is no longer the final cause of the universe, the Heaven-descended heir of all the ages. His very existence is an accident, his story a brief and transitory episode in the life of one of the meanest of the planets.

The tyranny of majorities may be as bad as the tyranny of kings.

I do not stare at a gentleman in distress.

No country can allow its safety to be wholly dependent on faithful observance by other states of rules to which they are obliged.

Herbert Asquith's clarity is a great liability because he has nothing to say.

His Majesty's Government looks with favour upon the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jews.

I look forward to a time when Irish patriotism will as easily combine with British patriotism as Scottish patriotism combines now.

The power of authority is never more subtle and effective than when it produces a psychological atmosphere or climate favorable to the life of certain modes of belief, unfavorable, and even fatal, to the life of others.

Every human soul is of infinite value, eternal, free; no human being, therefore, is so placed as not to have within his reach, in himself and others, objects adequate to infinite endeavor.

I do not know how it comes about, but if you sit opposite a man every day and you are engaged in fighting him, you cannot help getting a liking for him whether he deserves it or not.

Ask with urgency and passion.

Society, dead or alive, can have no charm without intimacy and no intimacy without an interest in trifles.

Advice would be more acceptable if it didn't always conflict with our plans.

Our Scottish theory ... is that every country has need of Scotchmen, but that Scotland has no need of the citizens of any other country.

His Majesty's Government views with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, and will use their best endeavours to facilitate the achievement of this object, it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine, or the rights and political status enjoyed by Jews in any other country.

Why can't the Jews and the Arabs just sit down together and settle this like good Christians?

I have done nothing important or distinguished since we met except to win the handicap prize, worth ?4 10/- at North Berwick.

Enthusiasm moves the world.

It is unfortunate, considering enthusiasm moves the world, that so few enthusiasts can be trusted to speak the truth