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David Lloyd George

383 quotes

“The continued occupation of the Rhineland after the Germans had carried out their obligations was an infringement of a solemn treaty. Germany had carried out in letter and in spirit the whole of her engagements with regard to disarmament. What had the Allies done? Nothing... The Anglo-French Pact was the most sinister event since the War.”
David Lloyd George (1863–1945) first seen 1928 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Speech in Yarmouth (12 October 1928), quoted in The Times (13 October 1928), p. 7
“If it is not reserved for me to lead the people for whom I have fought all my life to the promised land, I shall feel a pang of disappointment.”
David Lloyd George (1863–1945) first seen 1913 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Letter to Frances Stevenson (22 January 1929), quoted in My Darling Pussy: The Letters of Lloyd George and Frances Stevenson, 1913–41, ed. A. J. P. Taylor (1975), p. 114
“The Labour Party cannot make up its mind whether to treat the Liberal plan as a freak or to claim its paternity. Mr. Thomas has said it is an absurd abortion, but Mr. Henderson says it is the child of the Labour Party. Mr. MacDonald, as usual tries to have it both ways. He says—often in the same speech—"This is a stunted thing." Then looking at it fondly, he says, "This is my child.”
David Lloyd George (1863–1945) first seen 1922 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Speech in the Free Trade Hall, Manchester, on the Liberal Party's "Orange Book", We Can Conquer Unemployment (12 April 1929), quoted in John Campbell, Lloyd George: The Goat in the Wilderness, 1922–1931 (1977), p. 226
“Europe and the world are spending hundreds of millions perfecting the mechanism of slaughter. Pacts of peace, covenants, treaties galore, all fixed on bayonets, and the biting steel is gleaming through it. Women must put an end to that... You cannot trust men altogether, not where fighting is concerned... The woman is the maker of peace.”
David Lloyd George (1863–1945) first seen 1929 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Speech to a Liberal "Women of Britain" Demonstration in the Albert Hall (9 May 1929), quoted in The Times (10 May 1929), p. 9
“He taunted me because I said that the proposals were not sufficiently bold. Bold! They are timid, pusillanimous and unintelligent.”
David Lloyd George (1863–1945) first seen 1929 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Speech in the House of Commons addressing the Labour government minister who had responsibility for unemployment, J. H. Thomas (4 November 1929)
“It is an incredibly bad Bill. It is really an incredible Bill at all for the Labour Government to have introduced. It contains, in my judgment, the worst features of Socialism and individualism without the redeeming features of either. It is State interference without State protection. It has all the greed of individualism without any of the stimulus of competition... The Bill is a complete surrender to one interest—a complete surrender—without regard to the general interest of the community.”
David Lloyd George (1863–1945) first seen 1929 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Speech in the House of Commons against the Coal Mines Bill (19 December 1929)
“All taxation must be a tax upon industry.”
David Lloyd George (1863–1945) first seen 1930 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Speech in the House of Commons (16 April 1930)
“In this Parliament you have the Labour Government with millions of the working population of the country behind it. If this Parliament fails—and unless some strong and energetic action is taken it must fail—then Parliament itself will be discredited among the whole of the working population of this country. They will not believe any longer in the old inadequate windmill set up by Simon de Montfort to mill the corn for the people, and they may be incited to do their own milling in their own way.”
David Lloyd George (1863–1945) first seen 1930 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Speech in Caernarvon (12 June 1930), quoted in The Times (13 June 1930), p. 16
“Whatever the Government undertake, let them undertake it boldly, like men who believe in it. It is no use doing little things in a big situation. When you have got a big emergency you must have big remedies applied with a great spirit of enterprise, with daring, with all the qualities that have made this country great. If the Government do that, I do not care what Government they are—Liberal, Conservative, Labour, or what not—I am for my country every time, and I stand up for it.”
David Lloyd George (1863–1945) first seen 1930 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Speech in Tenby, Pembrokeshire (25 October 1930), quoted in The Times (27 October 1930), p. 14
“Are you going to land in the sleepy hollow of Baldwinism or in the quagmire of protection?”
David Lloyd George (1863–1945) first seen 1930 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Speech to Liberal candidates in the National Liberal Club (5 December 1930), quoted in The Times (6 December 1930), p. 14
“The influence of Liberalism is not merely restraining. It will be recorded how, even in the days of its discomfiture, the Liberal Party undertook the surveying and prospecting of the surest paths to further progress; how it pointed these paths out to the nation and encouraged the Government boldly to tread them.”
David Lloyd George (1863–1945) first seen 1930 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Speech to Liberal candidates in the National Liberal Club (5 December 1930), quoted in The Times (6 December 1930), p. 14
“I want to urge him again not to be too frightened of the City of London. Since the War the City of London has been invariably wrong in advising the Government, not merely in the advice which it gave us, and the advice which it gave to the late Government, but in the advice it is giving now. ... [D]o not let the Government run away the moment a few volleys are fired from the City of London. It may save them trouble for a short time but no progressive Government can survive long under the protection of the white flag.”
David Lloyd George (1863–1945) first seen 1931 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Speech in the House of Commons (12 February 1931)
“If I am to die, I would rather die fighting on the left.”
David Lloyd George (1863–1945) first seen 1922 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Remark to Herbert Samuel, explaining his opposition to Liberal politicians joining the National Government (5 October 1931), quoted in John Campbell, Lloyd George: The Goat in the Wilderness, 1922–1931 (1977), p. 301
“[L]et us meanwhile do something for our country, and not always be looking forward to something happening just round the corner. Do not let this country be like that Pompeian slave just discovered in Italy who was found among the ruins clutching the leather bag of his savings. Utilise them!”
David Lloyd George (1863–1945) first seen 1932 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Speech in the House of Commons (12 July 1932)
“Death is the most convenient time to tax rich people.”
David Lloyd George (1863–1945) first seen 1918 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: In Lord Riddell's Intimate Diary of the Peace Conference and After, 1918-1923 (1933)
“They condemn him [Adolf Hitler] for persecuting the Jews, but he has not shown half the ferocity which Cromwell showed towards the Irish Catholics—as for instance, in the siege of the fortress of Drogheda and the burning alive of its inmates.”
David Lloyd George (1863–1945) first seen 1934 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Remarks to Frances Stevenson, as recorded in Stevenson's diary (6 November 1934), quoted in A. J. P. Taylor (ed.), Lloyd George: A Diary (1971), p. 287
“[Lloyd George] talked of Gladstone, and how he [Lloyd George] had attacked him in his very early days in the House of Commons on the Clergy Discipline Bill. ... When [Lloyd George] went down to Wales afterwards, & the more proper folk reproached him for his attack on Gladstone, he said: 'I give you the same reply that Cromwell gave, "If I meet the King in battle, I will fire my pistol at him".' [Lloyd George] says that he thinks Gladstone as a Churchman had a fundamental dislike for Dissenters. ... 'I admire him, but I never liked him', is [Lloyd George]'s qualifying comment always.”
David Lloyd George (1863–1945) first seen 1934 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Remarks to Frances Stevenson, as recorded in Stevenson's diary (16 November 1934), quoted in A. J. P. Taylor (ed.), Lloyd George: A Diary (1971), p. 291
“How do you propose to deal with this twofold problem [of unemployment]? I give exactly the same answer as President Roosevelt gave Congress the other day. I would find work for the workless instead of doles, and I am as convinced as he is that it can be done.”
David Lloyd George (1863–1945) first seen 1935 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Speech in Bangor launching "Lloyd George's New Deal" (17 January 1935), quoted in The Times (18 January 1935), p. 7
“I propose that where private enterprise has been proved to be palpably unable, under present conditions...to solve our national difficulties and fulfil our national needs unaided by the State, the administrative and financial resources of the nation as a whole should be made responsible for setting on foot and supporting those developments in town and country which would bring into fruitful activity our undeveloped resources and opportunities.”
David Lloyd George (1863–1945) first seen 1935 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Speech in Bangor launching "Lloyd George's New Deal" (17 January 1935), quoted in The Times (18 January 1935), p. 7
“[Lloyd George] said the Czar only got his deserts—he had ignored the just pleas of the peasants & had shot them down ruthlessly when they came unarmed to him in 1905.”
David Lloyd George (1863–1945) first seen 1935 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Remarks to Frances Stevenson, as recorded in Stevenson's diary (7 February 1935), quoted in A. J. P. Taylor (ed.), Lloyd George: A Diary (1971), p. 300
“I regret very much...that the Government seem to ignore completely one of the most important elements in the defence of the realm, and that is the provision of food. We came nearer to defeat [in the First World War] owing to food shortage than we did from anything else. I cannot understand why, when they are thinking out the whole problem of war and possible dangers, that the greatest danger of all seems to have been left out of account.”
David Lloyd George (1863–1945) first seen 1936 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Speech in the House of Commons (10 March 1936)
“Never have I had such great minds around me—Smuts, Balfour, Bonar Law...and Curzon. Curzon was perhaps not a great man, but he was a supreme Civil Servant. Compared to these men, the front benches of today are pigmies.”
David Lloyd George (1863–1945) first seen 1930 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Remarks to Harold Nicolson, as recorded in Nicolson's diary (6 July 1936), quoted in Harold Nicolson, Diaries and Letters, 1930-1939, ed. Nigel Nicolson (1966), p. 268.
“He [Hitler] is a very great man. "Fuhrer" is the proper name for him, for he is a born leader, yes, and statesman.”
David Lloyd George (1863–1945) first seen 1931 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Remarks to A. J. Sylvester, as recorded in Sylvester's diary (4 September 1936), quoted in Colin Cross (ed.), Life with Lloyd George. The Diary of A. J. Sylvester 1931-45 (1975), p. 148
“Ah, Mein Kampf is a Magna Charta.”
David Lloyd George (1863–1945) first seen 1931 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Remarks to A. J. Sylvester, as recorded in Sylvester's diary (6 September 1936), quoted in Colin Cross (ed.), Life with Lloyd George. The Diary of A. J. Sylvester 1931-45 (1975), p. 151
“L.G. said that when the earth passed through the tail of a comet it came in contact with a gas which, when it came into the atmosphere of the earth, made everybody doubly happy and feel more kindly and more well disposed. "Upon my oath," said L.G., "I am not at all sure if Hitler has not been that comet in Germany.”
David Lloyd George (1863–1945) first seen 1931 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Remarks to A. J. Sylvester, as recorded in Sylvester's diary (12 September 1936), quoted in Colin Cross (ed.), Life with Lloyd George. The Diary of A. J. Sylvester 1931-45 (1975), p. 153
“I have never met a happier people than the Germans and Hitler is one of the greatest men.”
David Lloyd George (1863–1945) first seen 1936 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: As quoted in The Daily Express (17 November 1936)
“He [Ramsay MacDonald] had sufficient conscience to bother him, but not sufficient to keep him straight.”
David Lloyd George (1863–1945) first seen 1938 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Remark to Arthur Salter and A. L. Rowse at dinner (29 August 1938), quoted in A. J. Sylvester, Life With Lloyd George (1975), p. 216
“I still look forward to an awakening in the national spirit of Britain and France which will rouse and inspire democracy throughout the world to a great combined effort to save liberty from utter overthrow in our generation.”
David Lloyd George (1863–1945) first seen 1939 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Speech in Llandudno (19 January 1939), quoted in The Times (20 January 1939), p. 14
“Hitler is a prodigious genius.”
David Lloyd George (1863–1945) first seen 1931 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Remarks to A. J. Sylvester, as recorded in Sylvester's diary (7 July 1940), quoted in Colin Cross (ed.), Life with Lloyd George. The Diary of A. J. Sylvester 1931-45 (1975), p. 275
“Anyhow, it is a different situation now to what it was then; Clemenceau had power; I shall wait until Winston is bust.”
David Lloyd George (1863–1945) first seen 1931 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Remarks to A. J. Sylvester, as recorded in Sylvester's diary (3 October 1940), quoted in Colin Cross (ed.), Life with Lloyd George. The Diary of A. J. Sylvester 1931-45 (1975), p. 281
“[Lloyd George] told me he did not see how we could get successfully through this war..."It is clear that that damn fool Neville [Chamberlain] never gave a thought to that question - whether we would win - when he declared war. I am not against war, but I am against war when we have no chance of winning.”
David Lloyd George (1863–1945) first seen 1931 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Remarks to A. J. Sylvester, as recorded in Sylvester's diary (24 January 1941), quoted in Colin Cross (ed.), Life with Lloyd George. The Diary of A. J. Sylvester 1931-45 (1975), p. 287
“Quite frankly, I think Hitler will win. I do not say that Hitler will be able to invade this country. It is a very difficult channel to cross. Lots of people have tried it, including Napoleon...I would not have gone to war without having Russia on our side. It was an idiotic thing to do.”
David Lloyd George (1863–1945) first seen 1931 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Remarks to A. J. Sylvester, as recorded in Sylvester's diary (26 November 1941), quoted in Colin Cross (ed.), Life with Lloyd George. The Diary of A. J. Sylvester 1931-45 (1975), pp. 296-298
“Y Gwir Yn Erbyn Y Byd (Welsh: The truth against the world).”
David Lloyd George (1863–1945) first seen 1945 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Welsh proverb taken as motto upon becoming Earl Lloyd George of Dwyfor (January 1945)
“Britain was the one Power in Europe that had never yet been beaten in a European war. With her immunity from attack, with her immense fleet manned by the most skilful seamen in the world, with her enormous resources, she could be reckoned upon to wear down any Power. Had Britain been able to throw into the scale a well-equipped army of a million men to support her fleet, Germany would have hesitated before she rejected terms of peace and thus brought the British Empire into the conflict on the side of her enemies.”
David Lloyd George (1863–1945) said by 1945 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“There were many of us who could hardly believe that those responsible for guiding the destiny of Germany would be so fatuous as deliberately to provoke the hostility of the British Empire with its inexhaustible reserves and with its grim tenacity of purpose once it engaged in a struggle.”
David Lloyd George (1863–1945) said by 1945 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The men drawn from that class who attained pre-eminence, like Palmerston, Randolph Churchill, Salisbury and Balfour, threw themselves into the arduous conflicts of politics and fought their way to the top, giving and taking on the way the blows that hammer character.”
David Lloyd George (1863–1945) said by 1945 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I have been a pretty hard worker all my life, from boyhood right up to the present day. But I have never worked harder than during the period when I was carrying through the organisation of our munition supplies—not even during my Premiership, strenuous and arduous as those years were.”
David Lloyd George (1863–1945) said by 1945 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Quite the most difficult problem in regard to labour was that of securing their wholehearted co-operation in the urgent task of munition production—by sticking in the same workshop, keeping good time, working steadily and avoiding strikes; and in particular by consenting to those relaxations of their trade union rules which would make possible an extensive dilution of skilled by unskilled workers, and a considerable use of overtime in cases of emergency.”
David Lloyd George (1863–1945) said by 1945 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I felt a special obligation to see that the men who volunteered to face death for their country's honour, should be equipped with the best their country could provide them with in order to fight its battles, and that the most effective use should be made of their valour in the battlefield. The events of the last few months had shaken any confidence I ever had in the wisdom of military leadership and I was full of apprehension lest the flower of Britain's youth should be mown down through professional rigidity, narrowness and lack of vision.”
David Lloyd George (1863–1945) said by 1945 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“There is no greater mistake than to try to leap an abyss in two jumps.”
David Lloyd George (1863–1945) said by 1945 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“1914 was a catastrophe for Liberalism. That was unfortunate, but the issues at stake were too big for treatment in terms of party interests. The challenge to international right and freedom was so tremendous that Liberalism—above all Liberalism—could not shirk it.”
David Lloyd George (1863–1945) said by 1945 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I realised that if the submarine menace were not checked (and there seemed at that moment no expectancy that anything could prevent it from increasing in gravity) the War as far as we were concerned might end in starvation for this country.”
David Lloyd George (1863–1945) said by 1945 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“A paralysis of will seemed to have seized the Government. Whatever the subject, it was impossible to get a move on. I am not sure that this palsy did not account for the unanimity of the Cabinet on the question of rejecting overtures for Peace. These would have meant action. The pacifist element were easily persuaded to do nothing. The Government was getting into that nervous condition where they could neither wage war nor negotiate peace.”
David Lloyd George (1863–1945) said by 1945 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“It is hard for me to convey an adequate picture of the sense of frustration and tangled impotence which oppressed me during those closing months of 1916. There are nightmares in which one welters amid a web of fettering strands and obstacles, and watches, wide-eyed, some doom approaching against which the strangled throat cannot force a sound of protest or appeal. The ineffectiveness and irresolution of our leadership in those dark weeks bred something of this nightmare feeling.”
David Lloyd George (1863–1945) said by 1945 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“There was at this time a whole series of developments and problems which were being paltered with or shelved... Firm handling of them was vital to our prospects of success, and I grew increasingly convinced that it was my duty as a responsible Minister to dispel this miasma of indecision and force these matters to a definite issue, even at the risk of resignation from the Ministry and a subsequent public exposure of the ineptitude of the Allied war direction.”
David Lloyd George (1863–1945) said by 1945 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I neither sought nor desired the Premiership... However, Mr. Bonar Law refused to listen to our combined entreaties, and I had to undertake the terrible responsibility of Premiership in a muddled war, with at least half my own party and more than half the Labour Party bitterly hostile, and a considerable section of the Tory Party—including most of their leaders—suspicious and distrustful.”
David Lloyd George (1863–1945) said by 1945 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“There was a tragic bitterness about the situation which developed through those days, and which forced a cleavage between me and colleagues with most of whom I had for long years been working in the happiest and most fruitful collaboration—a cleavage later on aggravated and perpetuated by the malice of petty-minded men with baneful effects on the future political development of our country.”
David Lloyd George (1863–1945) said by 1945 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“With a criminal prodigality we had squandered the superior man-power that had been at our disposal. We had also weakened our resources and strengthened those of the enemy by our failure to gain alliances that would have been ours for the asking, and by manoeuvring at least one potential ally to the other side. Our diplomacy was a timid and nervous thing, frightened of America, too shy to tackle Greece, and leaving the Turks and Bulgarians entirely to the allurements of the Germans. Sir William Robertson complained of the undoubted fact that the soldiers had received no help from diplomacy.”
David Lloyd George (1863–1945) said by 1945 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“If Britannia ruled the waves, she did it with a shaky trident in the days before the submarine was overcome.”
David Lloyd George (1863–1945) said by 1945 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“There is no wrath like the cold fury of the professional spirit proved wrong by outsiders, and no folly comparable to its reactions under such conditions.”
David Lloyd George (1863–1945) said by 1945 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source