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David Lloyd George

383 quotes

“I will not say but that I eyed the assembly in a spirit similar to that in which William the Conqueror eyed England on his visit to Edward the Confessor, as the region of his future domain. Oh, vanity!”
David Lloyd George (1863–1945) first seen 1881 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Diary entry after visiting the House of Commons (12 November 1881), quoted in W. R. P. George, The Making of Lloyd George (1976), p. 101
“A free religion and a free people in a free land.”
David Lloyd George (1863–1945) first seen 1890 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Speech in Merthyr Tydfil (November 1890), quoted in Thomas Jones, Lloyd George (1951), p. 11
“Mr. Chamberlain is right in so far as he says that things are not well in this country. We cannot feed the hungry with statistics of national prosperity, or stop the pangs of famine by reciting to a man the prodigious number of cheques that pass through the clearing-house. We must therefore propose something better than Mr. Chamberlain.”
David Lloyd George (1863–1945) first seen 1904 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Speech in the House of Commons (6 January 1904)
“As our fathers had freed our trade there was another work to accomplish. This was to free the land from the chains of feudalism, the schools from the dominion of the priest, and the people from the deadly grip of drink.”
David Lloyd George (1863–1945) first seen 1904 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Speech in the Plait Hall, Luton (12 October 1904), quoted in The Times (13 October 1904), p. 9
“I believe there is a new order coming for the people of this country. It is a quiet but certain revolution.”
David Lloyd George (1863–1945) first seen 1906 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Speech in Bangor, Wales (January 1906), quoted in Thomas Jones, Lloyd George (1951), p. 34
“[The House of Lords] is the right hon. Gentleman's poodle. It fetches and carries for him. It barks for him. It bites anybody that he sets it on to. And we are told that this is a great revising Chamber, the safeguard of liberty in the country. Talk about mockeries and shams. Was there ever such a sham as that?”
David Lloyd George (1863–1945) first seen 1907 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Speech in the House of Commons (26 June 1907)
“Free Trade is a great pacificator. We have had many quarrels, many causes of quarrels, during the last fifty years, but we have not had a single war with any first-class Power. Free Trade is slowly but surely cleaving a path through the dense and dark thicket of armaments to the sunny land of brotherhood amongst nations.”
David Lloyd George (1863–1945) first seen 1908 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Speech in Manchester (21 April 1908), quoted in Better Times: Speeches by the Right Hon. D. Lloyd George, M.P., Chancellor of the Exchequer (1910), p. 43
“Free Trade may be the alpha, but it is not the omega, of Liberal policy.”
David Lloyd George (1863–1945) first seen 1908 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Speech in Manchester (21 April 1908), quoted in Thomas Jones, Lloyd George (1951), p. 35
“When I talk about trade and industry, it is not because I think trade and industry are more important than social reform. It is purely because I know that you must make wealth in the country before you can distribute it.”
David Lloyd George (1863–1945) first seen 1908 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Speech in Manchester (21 April 1908), quoted in Better Times: Speeches by the Right Hon. D. Lloyd George, M.P., Chancellor of the Exchequer (1910), p. 46
“I am a man of the people, bred amongst them, and it has been the greatest joy of my life to have had some part in fighting the battles of the class from whom I am proud to have sprung.”
David Lloyd George (1863–1945) first seen 1908 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Speech in Manchester (21 April 1908), quoted in Better Times: Speeches by the Right Hon. D. Lloyd George, M.P., Chancellor of the Exchequer (1910), p. 46
“[T]he question of civil equality. We have not yet attained to it in this country—far from it. You will not have established it in this land until the child of the poorest parent shall have the same opportunity for receiving the best education as the child of the richest. ... It will never established so long as you have 500 men nominated by the lottery of birth to exercise the right of thwarting the wishes of the majority of 40 millions of their countrymen in the determination of the best way of governing the country.”
David Lloyd George (1863–1945) first seen 1908 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Speech in Swansea (1 October 1908), quoted in Better Times: Speeches by the Right Hon. D. Lloyd George, M.P., Chancellor of the Exchequer (1910), p. 50
“This, Mr. Emmot, is a war Budget. It is for raising money to wage implacable warfare against poverty and squalidness. I cannot help hoping and believing that before this generation has passed away, we shall have advanced a great step towards that good time, when poverty, and the wretchedness and human degradation which always follows in its camp, will be as remote to the people of this country as the wolves which once infested its forests.”
David Lloyd George (1863–1945) first seen 1909 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Budget speech in the House of Commons (29 April 1909)
“I do not agree with you that we ought never to have introduced the land clauses in the fourth session. The Party had lost heart. On all hands I was told that enthusiasm had almost disappeared at meetings, and we wanted something to rouse the fighting spirit of our own forces. This the land proposals have undoubtedly succeeded in doing.”
David Lloyd George (1863–1945) first seen 1909 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Letter to J. A. Spender (16 July 1909), quoted in H. V. Emy, 'The Land Campaign: Lloyd George as a Social Reformer, 1909–14', in A. J. P. Taylor (ed.), Lloyd George: Twelve Essays (1971), p. 43
“But they say, "It is not so much the Dreadnoughts we object to, it is pensions". If they objected to pensions, why did they promise them? They won elections on the strength of their promises. It is true they never carried them out. Deception is always a pretty contemptible vice, but to deceive the poor is the meanest of all.”
David Lloyd George (1863–1945) first seen 1909 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Speech in Limehouse, East London (30 July 1909), quoted in Better Times: Speeches by the Right Hon. D. Lloyd George, M.P., Chancellor of the Exchequer (1910), p. 145
“There is another little tax called the increment tax. For the future what will happen? We mean to value all the land in the kingdom. And here you can draw no distinction between agricultural land and other land, for the simple reason that East and West Ham was agricultural land a few years ago. And if land goes up in the future by hundreds and thousands an acre through the efforts of the community, the community will get 20 per cent. of that increment.”
David Lloyd George (1863–1945) first seen 1909 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Speech in Limehouse, East London (30 July 1909), quoted in Better Times: Speeches by the Right Hon. D. Lloyd George, M.P., Chancellor of the Exchequer (1910), p. 147
“Take cases like Golder's Green and other cases of a similar kind where the value of land has gone up in the course, perhaps, of a couple of years through a new tramway or a new railway being opened. ... A few years ago there was a plot of land there which was sold at £160. Last year I went and opened a tube railway there. What was the result? This year that very piece of land has been sold for £2,100—£160 before the railway was opened—before I was there—£2,100 now. My Budget demands 20 per cent. of that.”
David Lloyd George (1863–1945) first seen 1909 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Speech in Limehouse, East London (30 July 1909), quoted in Better Times: Speeches by the Right Hon. D. Lloyd George, M.P., Chancellor of the Exchequer (1910), p. 148
“Now, all we say is this: "In future you must pay one halfpenny in the pound on the real value of your land. In addition to that, if the value goes up, not owing to your efforts—if you spend money on improving it we will give you credit for it—but if it goes up owing to the industry and the energy of the people living in that locality, one-fifth of that increment shall in future be taken as a toll by the State".”
David Lloyd George (1863–1945) first seen 1909 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Speech in Limehouse, East London (30 July 1909), quoted in Better Times: Speeches by the Right Hon. D. Lloyd George, M.P., Chancellor of the Exchequer (1910), p. 150
“Who is the landlord? The Landlord is a gentleman … who does not earn his wealth. He does not even take the trouble to receive his wealth. He has a host of agents and clerks that receive it for him. He does not even take the trouble to spend his wealth. He has a host of people around him to do the actual spending for him. He never sees it until he comes to enjoy it. His sole function, his chief pride is stately consumption of wealth produced by others.”
David Lloyd George (1863–1945) first seen 1909 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Speech in Limehouse, East London (30 July 1909), quoted in Better Times: Speeches by the Right Hon. D. Lloyd George, M.P., Chancellor of the Exchequer (1910), pp. 150-151
“The landlords are receiving eight millions a year by way of royalties. What for? They never deposited the coal in the earth. It was not they who planted these great granite rocks in Wales. Who laid the foundations of the mountains? Was it the landlord? And yet he, by some divine right, demands as his toll—for merely the right for men to risk their lives in hewing these rocks—eight millions a year.”
David Lloyd George (1863–1945) first seen 1909 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Speech in Limehouse, East London (30 July 1909), quoted in Better Times: Speeches by the Right Hon. D. Lloyd George, M.P., Chancellor of the Exchequer (1910), pp. 153-154
“They go on threatening that if we proceed, they will cut down their benefactions and discharge labour. What kind of labour? What is the labour they are going to choose for dismissal? Are they going to threaten to devastate rural England by feeding and dressing themselves? Are they going to reduce their gamekeepers? Ah, that would be sad! The agricultural labourer and the farmer might then have some part of the game that is fattened by their labour. Also what would happen to you in the season? No week-end shooting with the Duke of Norfolk or anyone.”
David Lloyd George (1863–1945) first seen 1909 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Speech in Limehouse, East London (30 July 1909), quoted in Better Times: Speeches by the Right Hon. D. Lloyd George, M.P., Chancellor of the Exchequer (1910), p. 155
“The ownership of land is not merely an enjoyment, it is a stewardship. It has been reckoned as such in the past, and if the owners cease to discharge their functions in seeing to the security and defence of the country, looking after the broken in their villages and in their neighbourhoods, the time will come to reconsider the conditions under which land is held in this country.”
David Lloyd George (1863–1945) first seen 1909 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Speech in Limehouse, East London (30 July 1909), quoted in Better Times: Speeches by the Right Hon. D. Lloyd George, M.P., Chancellor of the Exchequer (1910), p. 155
“I lay down as a proposition that most of the people who work hard for a living in the country belong to the Liberal Party. I would say, and I think, without offence, that most of the people who never worked for a living at all belong to the Tory Party.”
David Lloyd George (1863–1945) first seen 1909 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Speech in Newcastle (9 October 1909), quoted in Better Times: Speeches by the Right Hon. D. Lloyd George, M.P., Chancellor of the Exchequer (1910), p. 160
“A fully equipped Duke costs as much to keep up as two Dreadnoughts, and Dukes are just as great a terror, and they last longer.”
David Lloyd George (1863–1945) first seen 1909 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: On the peers of the House of Lords, in a speech in Newcastle (9 October 1909), quoted in printed in The Manchester Guardian (11 October 1909)
“Landlords have no nationality; their characteristics are cosmopolitan.”
David Lloyd George (1863–1945) first seen 1909 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Speech in Newcastle (9 October 1909), quoted in Better Times: Speeches by the Right Hon. D. Lloyd George, M.P., Chancellor of the Exchequer (1910), p. 168
“The question will be asked, "Should 500 men, ordinary men, chosen accidentally from among the unemployed, override the judgment...of millions of people who are engaged in the industry which makes the wealth of the country?”
David Lloyd George (1863–1945) first seen 1909 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: On the House of Lords, speech in Newcastle (9 October 1909), quoted in The Times (11 October 1909), p. 6
“Who ordained that a few should have the land of Britain as a perquisite, who made 10,000 people owners of the soil and the rest of us trespassers in the land of our birth?”
David Lloyd George (1863–1945) first seen 1909 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Speech in Newcastle (9 October 1909), quoted in The Times (11 October 1909), p. 6
“Four spectres haunt the Poor — Old Age, Accident, Sickness and Unemployment. We are going to exorcise them. We are going to drive hunger from the hearth. We mean to banish the workhouse from the horizon of every workman in the land.”
David Lloyd George (1863–1945) first seen 1910 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Speech in Reading (1 January 1910)
“I don't know exactly what I am, but I'm sure I'm not a Liberal. They have no sympathy with the people... All down History, nine-tenths of mankind have been grinding the corn for the remaining one-tenth, been paid with the husks and bidden to thank God they had the husks... As long as I was settling disputes with their workmen, which they had not got enough sense to settle themselves, these great Business Men said I was the greatest Board of Trade President of modern times. When I tried to do something for the social welfare of their workmen, they denounced me as a Welsh thief.”
David Lloyd George (1863–1945) first seen 1911 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Remarks to Charles Masterman after a Cabinet discussion on the Liverpool general transport strike (August 1911), quoted in Frank Owen, Tempestuous Journey: Lloyd George His Life and Times (1954), p. 216
“Success to your meetings. Future of this country depends on breaking up the land monopoly—it withers the land, depresses wages, destroys independence, and drives millions into dwellings which poison their strength. Godspeed to every effort to put an end to this oppression.”
David Lloyd George (1863–1945) first seen 1913 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Telegram to a national conference to promote the taxation and rating of land held in Cardiff (13 October 1913), quoted in The Times (14 October 1913), p. 10
“Labourers had diminished, game had tripled. The landlord was no more necessary to agriculture than a gold chain to a watch.”
David Lloyd George (1863–1945) first seen 1913 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Speech (late 1913), quoted in Thomas Jones, Lloyd George (1951), p. 45
“Even if Germany ever had any idea of challenging our supremacy at sea, the exigencies of the military situation must necessarily put it completely out of her head. Under these circumstances it seems to me that we can afford just quietly to maintain the superiority we possess at present, without making feverish efforts to increase it any further. The Navy is now, according to all impartial testimony, at the height of its efficiency. If we maintain that standard no one can complain, but if we went on spending and swelling its strength, we should wantonly provoke other nations.”
David Lloyd George (1863–1945) first seen 1914 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Interview with the Daily Chronicle (1 January 1914), quoted in Frank Owen, Tempestuous Journey: Lloyd George His Life and Times (1954), p. 254
“There are always clouds in the international sky. You never get a perfectly blue sky in foreign affairs. And there are clouds even now. But we feel confident that the common sense, the patience, the good-will, the forbearance which enabled us to solve greater and more difficult and more urgent problems last year will enable us to pull through these difficulties at the present moment.”
David Lloyd George (1863–1945) first seen 1914 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Speech at the City of London (17 July 1914), quoted in The Times (18 July 1914), p. 10
“I am fighting hard for peace. All the bankers and commercial people are begging us not to intervene. The Governor of the Bank of England said to me with tears in his eyes, “Keep us out of it. We shall all be ruined if we are dragged in!”
David Lloyd George (1863–1945) first seen 1908 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Remarks to George Riddell, as recorded in Riddell's diary (31 July 1914), quoted in J. M. McEwen (ed.), The Riddell Diaries 1908-1923 (1986), p. 85
“The world owes much to little nations and to little men. This theory of bigness—you must have a big empire and a big nation and a big man—well, long legs have their advantage in a retreat. Frederick the Great chose his warriors for their height, and that tradition has become a policy in Germany. Germany applies that ideal to nations. She will only allow six-feet-two nations to stand in the ranks. But all the world owes much to the little five-feet-high nations.”
David Lloyd George (1863–1945) first seen 1914 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Speech in the Queen's Hall, London (19 September 1914), quoted in The Times (20 September 1914), p. 4
“I should like to see a Welsh Army in the field. I should like to see the race who faced the Normans for hundreds of years in a struggle for freedom, the race that helped to win Crecy, the race that fought for a generation under Glendower, against the greatest captain in Europe—I should like to see that race go and give a taste of its quality in this great struggle in Europe.”
David Lloyd George (1863–1945) first seen 1914 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Speech in the Queen's Hall, London (19 September 1914), quoted in The Times (20 September 1914), p. 4
“The stern hand of fate has scourged us to an elevation where we can see the great everlasting things that matter for a nation—the great peaks of honour we had forgotten—Duty, Patriotism, and—clad in glittering white—the great pinnacle of Sacrifice, pointing like a rugged finger to Heaven.”
David Lloyd George (1863–1945) first seen 1914 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Speech in the Queen's Hall, London (19 September 1914), quoted in The Times (20 September 1914), p. 4
“What are ten, twenty, or thirty millions when the British Empire is at stake? This is an artillery war. We must have every gun we can lay hands upon.”
David Lloyd George (1863–1945) first seen 1908 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Quoted in Lord Riddell's diary entry (13 October 1914), J. M. McEwen (ed.), The Riddell Diaries 1908-1923 (London: The Athlone Press, 1986), p. 92
“A ramshackle old empire.”
David Lloyd George (1863–1945) first seen 1914 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Speech of 1914; quoted in The Brunswick and Coburg Leader (16 October 1914). The "empire" mentioned is Austria-Hungary.
“The Government were on the look-out for a good, strong business man, with some push and go in him, who will be able to put the thing through.”
David Lloyd George (1863–1945) first seen 1915 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Speech in the House of Commons (9 March 1915) on the Defence of the Realm (Amendment) Bill, quoted in The Times (10 March 1915), p. 14
“The Government can lose the war without you; they cannot win it without you.”
David Lloyd George (1863–1945) first seen 1915 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Speech to the Trades Union Congress in Bristol (9 September 1915), quoted in The Times (10 September 1915), p. 9
“You have practically taken over the whole of the engineering works of this country and controlled them by the State. I have seen resolutions passed from time to time at Trade Union Congresses [laughter] about nationalising the industries of this country. We have done it. [Cheers and laughter.]”
David Lloyd George (1863–1945) first seen 1915 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Speech to the Trades Union Congress in Bristol (9 September 1915), quoted in War Memoirs: Volume I (1938), p. 186
“What we stint in materials we squander in lives... What you spare in money you spill in blood.”
David Lloyd George (1863–1945) first seen 1915 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Speech in the House of Commons (20 December 1915)
“I wonder whether it will not be too late? Ah! two fatal words of this War! Too late in moving here. Too late in arriving there. Too late in coming to this decision. Too late in starting with enterprises. Too late in preparing. In this War the footsteps of the Allied forces have been dogged by the mocking spectre of "Too Late"; and unless we quicken our movements damnation will fall on the sacred cause for which so much gallant blood has flowed.”
David Lloyd George (1863–1945) first seen 1915 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Speech in the House of Commons (20 December 1915)
“I have always been sympathetic to the claims of Ulster, and as a Protestant Nonconformist I have a thorough appreciation of the Ulster anxieties about Home Rule.”
David Lloyd George (1863–1945) first seen 1916 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Letter to R. J. Lynn (5 June 1916), quoted in M. C. Rast, 'The Ulster Unionists "On Velvet": Home Rule and Partition in the Lloyd George Proposals, 1916', American Journal of Irish Studies, Vol. 14 (2017), p. 117
“He won't fight the Germans but he will fight for Office.”
David Lloyd George (1863–1945) first seen 1916 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: His opinion of Asquith's attempts to stay in power during the political crisis that ousted him from the premiership, recorded in Frances Stevenson's diary (5 December 1916), quoted in Frances Stevenson, Lloyd George: A …
“Haig does not care how many men he loses. He just squanders the lives of these boys. I mean to save some of them in the future. He seems to think they are his property. I am their trustee. I will never let him rest. I will raise the subject again & again until I nag him out of it—until he knows that as soon as the casualty lists get large he will get nothing but black looks and scowls and awkward questions... I should have backed Nievelle against Haig. Nievelle has proved himself to be a Man at Verdun; & when you get a Man against one who has not proved himself, why, you back the Man!”
David Lloyd George (1863–1945) first seen 1917 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Remarks to Frances Stevenson (15 January 1917), quoted in A. J. P. Taylor (ed.), Lloyd George: A Diary (1971), p. 139
“The old hide-bound Liberalism was played out; the Newcastle programme [of 1891] had been realised. The task now was to build up the country.”
David Lloyd George (1863–1945) first seen 1911 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Remarks to C. P. Scott (26 January 1917), quoted in Trevor Wilson (ed.), The Political Diaries of C. P. Scott, 1911-1928 (1970), p. 257
“[Lloyd George] was very pleased last night, for he had given the soldiers a dressing-down in the morning. He was dealing with Haig's demand for more men & informed them that Haig would get no more than had already been decided upon. 'He does not make the best use of his men. Let him learn to make better use of them. There is no danger now on land. The danger is on sea'.”
David Lloyd George (1863–1945) first seen 1917 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Frances Stevenson's diary entry (14 February 1917), A. J. P. Taylor (ed.), Lloyd George: A Diary (1971), p. 144
“The country is alive now as it has never been before to the essential value of agriculture to the community, and whatever befalls it will never again be neglected by any Government. The War, at any rate, has taught us one lesson—that the preservation of our essential industries is as important a part of the national defences as the maintenance of our Army or our Navy. So much will I say about food production.”
David Lloyd George (1863–1945) first seen 1917 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Speech in the House of Commons (23 February 1917)
“It is impossible in words to describe our sense of gratitude and the thrill of pride with which we always think about the way in which the Empire came to our assistance when we risked the life of these islands upon the struggle for liberty in Europe.”
David Lloyd George (1863–1945) first seen 1055 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Statement to the Imperial War Cabinet (20 March 1917), quoted in War Memoirs, Volume I (1938), p. 1055