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George Curzon, 1st Marquess Curzon of Kedleston
72 quotes
“The race of India branched out and multiplied into that of the great Indo-European family. . . . The Aryans, at a period as yet undetermined, advanced towards and invaded the countries to the west and north- west of India, [and] conquered the various tribes who occupied the land... They must have imposed their religion, institutions, and language, which later obliterated nearly all the traces of the former non-Aryan language, or languages, of the conquered tribes.”
George Curzon, 1st Marquess Curzon of Kedleston (1859–1925) first seen 1855 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: George Curzon, 1st Marquess Curzon of Kedleston, Curzon, A. 1855. "On the Original Extension of the Sanskrit Language over Certain Portions of Asia and Europe." Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society 16:172-201. quoted in…
“When the figure of Lord Beaconsfield vanishes from the House of Lords and when that of Mr. Gladstone ceases to rise from the front bench on either side of the table in the House of Commons—the country will confess that its two greatest and only Statesmen have gone. Parliament will go on as before, public business will be transacted, speeches made, policies challenged and vindicated, Budgets expounded, Motions brought forward, passed, rejected, but the pre-eminent importance attaching to the doings and sayings of a Statesman will be wanting—and men will lament the degeneracy of the age.”
George Curzon, 1st Marquess Curzon of Kedleston (1859–1925) first seen 1879 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Paper read at the Canning Club (18 February 1879), quoted in The Earl of Ronaldshay, The Life of Lord Curzon: Being the Authorized Biography of George Nathaniel, Marquess Curzon of Kedleston, K.G. (1928), p. 103
“The strength and omnipotence of England everywhere in the East is amazing. No other country or people is to be compared with her. We control everything, and are liked as well as respected and feared.”
George Curzon, 1st Marquess Curzon of Kedleston (1859–1925) first seen 1887 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Letter to his father from Singapore (1887), quoted in Kenneth Rose, Superior Person: A Portrait of Curzon and his Circle in late Victorian England (1969), p. 202
“The Taj is incomparable, designed like a palace and finished like a jewel—a snow-white emanation starting from a bed of cypresses and backed by a turquoise sky, pure, perfect and unutterably lovely. One feels the same sensation as in gazing at a beautiful woman, one who has that mixture of loveliness and sadness which is essential to the highest beauty.”
George Curzon, 1st Marquess Curzon of Kedleston (1859–1925) first seen 1888 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Letter to St John Brodrick (1 January 1888), quoted in The Earl of Ronaldshay, The Life of Lord Curzon: Being the Authorized Biography of George Nathaniel, Marquess Curzon of Kedleston, K.G. (1928), p. 64
“Whatever be Russia's designs upon India, whether they be serious and inimical or imaginary and fantastic, I hold that the first duty of English statesmen is to render any hostile intentions futile, to see that our own position is secure, and our frontier impregnable, and so to guard what is without doubt the noblest trophy of British genius, and the most splendid appanage of the Imperial Crown.”
George Curzon, 1st Marquess Curzon of Kedleston (1859–1925) first seen 1889 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Russia in Central Asia in 1889 and the Anglo-Russian Question (1889), pp. 13-14
“Oh! it has been an amazing tour; all new; Korea, Peking, Tonking, Annam, Cochin China, Cambogia; visits to fading oriental courts; audiences with dragon-robed emperors and kings; long hard rides all the day; vile, sleepless, comfortless nights; excursions by sea boat, by river boat, on horseback, pony back and elephant back; in chairs, hammocks and palanquins.”
George Curzon, 1st Marquess Curzon of Kedleston (1859–1925) first seen 1893 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Letter to Miss Leiter (14 January 1893), quoted in The Earl of Ronaldshay, The Life of Lord Curzon: Being the Authorized Biography of George Nathaniel, Marquess Curzon of Kedleston, K.G. (1928), p. 191
“I have just been up in the interior of Siam to some amazing ruins, the finest in the world. It is a place called Angkor, and there a race that has since perished came some 1,700 years ago from India, founded a mighty empire and built palaces and temples that rival those of Nineveh or Karnak. Now they are buried in a tropical forest, and one has to cut a path with a billhook to see their ruins.”
George Curzon, 1st Marquess Curzon of Kedleston (1859–1925) first seen 1893 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Letter to Miss Leiter (14 January 1893), quoted in The Earl of Ronaldshay, The Life of Lord Curzon: Being the Authorized Biography of George Nathaniel, Marquess Curzon of Kedleston, K.G. (1928), p. 192
“Rightly or wrongly, it appears to me that the continued existence of this country is bound up in the maintenance—aye I will go further and say even in the extension of the British Empire.”
George Curzon, 1st Marquess Curzon of Kedleston (1859–1925) first seen 1893 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Speech in Southport (15 March 1893), quoted in The Earl of Ronaldshay, The Life of Lord Curzon: Being the Authorized Biography of George Nathaniel, Marquess Curzon of Kedleston, K.G. (1928), p. 192
“It is only when you get to see and realise what India is—that she is the strength and the greatness of England—it is only then that you feel that every nerve a man may strain, every energy he may put forward, cannot be devoted to a nobler purpose than keeping tight the cords that hold India to ourselves.”
George Curzon, 1st Marquess Curzon of Kedleston (1859–1925) first seen 1893 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Speech in Southport (15 March 1893), quoted in The Earl of Ronaldshay, The Life of Lord Curzon: Being the Authorized Biography of George Nathaniel, Marquess Curzon of Kedleston, K.G. (1928), p. 193
“Above all we must remember that the ways of Orientals are not our ways, nor their thoughts our thoughts. Often when we think them backward and stupid, they think us meddlesome and absurd. The loom of time moves slowly with them, and they care not for high pressure and the roaring of the wheels. Our system may be good for us; but it is neither equally, nor altogether good for them. Satan found it better to reign in hell than to serve in heaven: and the normal Asiatic would sooner be misgoverned by Asiatics than well governed by Europeans.”
George Curzon, 1st Marquess Curzon of Kedleston (1859–1925) said by 1925 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I have said that the people are shamefully ill-educated. I have shown that they live in an atmosphere of corruption. Civilisation will not be popular until it is taught in the schools. Respect for law, regard for contract, or faith in honesty will not be generated until the institutions by which they can be safeguarded have been called into being. This will be a work of time; but in due time it will come.”
George Curzon, 1st Marquess Curzon of Kedleston (1859–1925) said by 1925 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Such is the street life of Peking, a phantasmagoria of excruciating incident, too bewildering to grasp, too aggressive to acquiesce in, too absorbing to escape.”
George Curzon, 1st Marquess Curzon of Kedleston (1859–1925) said by 1925 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Placed at a maritime coign of vantage upon the flank of Asia, precisely analogous to that occupied by Great Britain on the flank of Europe, exercising a powerful influence over the adjoining continent, but not necessarily involved in its responsibilities, she [Japan] sets before herself the supreme ambition of becoming, on a smaller scale, the Britain of the Far East.”
George Curzon, 1st Marquess Curzon of Kedleston (1859–1925) said by 1925 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I regarded the conservation of ancient monuments as one of the primary obligations of Government. We have a duty to our forerunners, as well as to our contemporaries and to our descendants,—nay, our duty to the two latter classes in itself demands the recognition of an obligation to the former, since we are the custodians for our own age of that which has been bequeathed to us by an earlier, and since posterity will rightly blame us if, owing to our neglect, they fail to reap the same advantages that we have been privileged to enjoy.”
George Curzon, 1st Marquess Curzon of Kedleston (1859–1925) first seen 1898 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Speech to the Asiatic Society of Bengal (7 February 1900), quoted in Lord Curzon in India, Being A Selection from His Speeches as Viceroy & Governor-General of India 1898–1905 (1906), pp. 182-183
“The British Government are fortunately exempt from any such promptings, either of religious fanaticism, of restless vanity, or of dynastic and personal pride. But in proportion as they have been unassailed by such temptations, so is their responsibility the greater for inaugurating a new era and for displaying that tolerant and enlightened respect to the treasures of all which is one of the main lessons that the returning West has been able to teach to the East.”
George Curzon, 1st Marquess Curzon of Kedleston (1859–1925) first seen 1898 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Speech to the Asiatic Society of Bengal (7 February 1900), quoted in Lord Curzon in India, Being A Selection from His Speeches as Viceroy & Governor-General of India 1898–1905 (1906), pp. 188-189
“[Duty and interest make me] an Imperialist heart and soul. Imperial expansion seems to me an inevitable necessity and carries a noble and majestic obligation. I do not see how any Englishman, contrasting India as it is with what it was or might have been, can fail to see that we came here in obedience to what I call the decree of Providence for the lasting benefit of millions of the human race. We often make great mistakes here; but I do firmly believe that there is no Government in the World that rests on so secure a moral basis, or is more fiercely animated by duty.”
George Curzon, 1st Marquess Curzon of Kedleston (1859–1925) first seen 1898 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Letter to John Morley (17 June 1900), quoted in S. Gopal, 'Lord Curzon and Indian Nationalism – 1898–1905', in S. N. Mukherjee (ed.), South Asian Affairs, Number Two: The Movement for National Freedom in India (1966), p…
“[The Indian Empire is] the biggest thing that the English are doing anywhere in the world.”
George Curzon, 1st Marquess Curzon of Kedleston (1859–1925) first seen 1898 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Letter to Arthur Balfour (31 March 1901), quoted in S. Gopal, 'Lord Curzon and Indian Nationalism – 1898–1905', in S. N. Mukherjee (ed.), South Asian Affairs, Number Two: The Movement for National Freedom in India (1966…
“As long as we rule India we are the greatest Power in the world. If we lose it, we shall drop straight away to a third-rate Power.”
George Curzon, 1st Marquess Curzon of Kedleston (1859–1925) first seen 1898 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Letter to Arthur Balfour (31 March 1901), quoted in S. Gopal, 'Lord Curzon and Indian Nationalism – 1898–1905', in S. N. Mukherjee (ed.), South Asian Affairs, Number Two: The Movement for National Freedom in India (1966…
“[The Indian Empire is] the miracle of the world.”
George Curzon, 1st Marquess Curzon of Kedleston (1859–1925) first seen 1898 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Letter to Sir Francis Younghusband (19 September 1901), quoted in S. Gopal, 'Lord Curzon and Indian Nationalism – 1898–1905', in S. N. Mukherjee (ed.), South Asian Affairs, Number Two: The Movement for National Freedom …
“We are ordained to walk here in the same track together for many a long day to come. You cannot do without us. We should be impotent without you. Let the Englishman and the Indian accept the consecration of a union that is so mysterious as to have in it something of the divine, and let our common ideal be a united country and a happier people.”
George Curzon, 1st Marquess Curzon of Kedleston (1859–1925) first seen 1898 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Speech as the Chancellor of the University of Calcutta (15 February 1902), quoted in Lord Curzon in India, Being A Selection from His Speeches as Viceroy & Governor-General of India 1898–1905 (1906), p. 489
“Powerful empires existed and flourished here while Englishmen were still wandering painted in the woods, and when the British Colonies were wilderness and jungle; and India has left a deeper mark upon the history, the philosophy, and the religion of mankind than any other terrestrial unit in the universe.”
George Curzon, 1st Marquess Curzon of Kedleston (1859–1925) first seen 1902 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Address at the state banquet in Delhi (1 January 1903), quoted in Speeches by Lord Curzon of Kedleston, Viceroy and Governor General of India. Vol. III. 1902–1904 (1904), p. 99
“I have never wavered in a strict and inflexible justice between the two races. It is the sole justification and the only stable foundation for our rule.”
George Curzon, 1st Marquess Curzon of Kedleston (1859–1925) first seen 1859 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Letter to Lord George Hamilton (23 September 1903), quoted in David Gilmour, Curzon: Imperial Statesman 1859–1925 (1994; 2003), p. 172
“As a pilgrim at the shrine of beauty I have visited them, but as a priest in the temple of duty have I charged myself with their reverent custody and their studious repair.”
George Curzon, 1st Marquess Curzon of Kedleston (1859–1925) first seen 1898 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Speech in the Legislative Council at Calcutta on the Ancient Monuments Preservation Act 1904 (18 March 1904), quoted in Lord Curzon in India, Being A Selection from His Speeches as Viceroy & Governor-General of India 18…
“Since I came to India we have spent upon repairs at Agra alone a sum of between £40,000 and £50,000. Every rupee has been an offering of reverence to the past and a gift of recovered beauty to the future.”
George Curzon, 1st Marquess Curzon of Kedleston (1859–1925) first seen 1898 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Speech in the Legislative Council at Calcutta (18 March 1904), quoted in Lord Curzon in India, Being A Selection from His Speeches as Viceroy & Governor-General of India 1898–1905 (1906), p. 199
“If I had done nothing else in India I have written my name here, and the letters are a living joy.”
George Curzon, 1st Marquess Curzon of Kedleston (1859–1925) first seen 1859 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Letter to Mrs Curzon on his restoration of the Taj Mahal (4 April 1905), quoted in David Gilmour, ‘Curzon, George Nathaniel, Marquess Curzon of Kedleston (1859–1925)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford Uni…
“If I were asked to sum up what were the lessons which Eastern government had given to me, I should say they were these. In the first place, remember always that you are not in India or in any foreign dependency, any more than the Americans are in the Philippines, for the benefit of what in diplomacy are called your own "nationals." You are there for the benefit of the people of the country.”
George Curzon, 1st Marquess Curzon of Kedleston (1859–1925) first seen 1906 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Speech in London (6 April 1906), quoted in Subjects of the Day: Being a Selection of Speeches and Writings by Earl Curzon of Kedleston, ed. Desmond M. Chapman-Huston (1915), p. 32
“Never sacrifice a subject interest—that is, the interest of a subject dependency or possession—to exclusively British interests. Do not force upon your dependencies a policy which may be distasteful or unsuitable to them, merely because it is advantageous to yourselves. The meaning of empire is not to impose on dependencies the will of the Mother Country or master power, but to effect a harmonious co-ordination of the interests of the whole.”
George Curzon, 1st Marquess Curzon of Kedleston (1859–1925) first seen 1906 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Speech in London (6 April 1906), quoted in Subjects of the Day: Being a Selection of Speeches and Writings by Earl Curzon of Kedleston, ed. Desmond M. Chapman-Huston (1915), p. 33
“No one believes more firmly than we do that the safety and welfare of India depend on the permanence of British administration.”
George Curzon, 1st Marquess Curzon of Kedleston (1859–1925) first seen 1907 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Letter to Lord Minto (1907), quoted in Nicholas Mansergh, The Commonwealth Experience (1969), p. 256
“Never let it be forgotten that the result of the Mutiny was not merely an England victorious, but an India pacified, united, and started once more upon a wondrous career of advance and expansion.”
George Curzon, 1st Marquess Curzon of Kedleston (1859–1925) first seen 1907 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Speech in the Albert Hall, London (23 December 1907), quoted in Subjects of the Day: Being a Selection of Speeches and Writings by Earl Curzon of Kedleston, ed. Desmond M. Chapman-Huston (1915), p. 46
“But it does matter to us and to the entire world a great deal that men have been found in this as in earlier and perhaps more virile ages to run great risks for a great idea, to count life itself as dust in the balance compared with supreme human endeavour, and to meet death without repining even on the threshold of victory and fame.”
George Curzon, 1st Marquess Curzon of Kedleston (1859–1925) first seen 1913 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Speech in London on Captain Scott (24 February 1913), quoted in Subjects of the Day: Being a Selection of Speeches and Writings by Earl Curzon of Kedleston, ed. Desmond M. Chapman-Huston (1915), pp. 210-211
“The question may be asked why some of us are so keen about preserving beauty-spots like Colley Hill for the people. The answer is simple. In the first place, we desire to keep them because they are a part of the history of our country, a portion of the national heritage of England. They are a survival of the days before the countryside was cut up by roads and hedges and built over with houses. They remind us of the England which our forefathers saw and lived in hundreds of years ago.”
George Curzon, 1st Marquess Curzon of Kedleston (1859–1925) first seen 1913 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Speech in Reigate (31 May 1913), quoted in Subjects of the Day: Being a Selection of Speeches and Writings by Earl Curzon of Kedleston, ed. Desmond M. Chapman-Huston (1915), p. 114
“I believe that the people of this country will be very loth to condemn those whose only disloyalty it will be to have been excessive in their loyalty to the King. I do not think that the people of this country will call those "rebels" whose only form of rebellion it is to insist on remaining under the Imperial Parliament under which we all live. And depend upon it when the first blow is struck—and my argument is that it will be struck—when the first blow is struck you will kindle a flame that will rush through the country like a forest fire and will not stop until you have been consumed.”
George Curzon, 1st Marquess Curzon of Kedleston (1859–1925) first seen 1913 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Speech in the House of Lords on the Irish Home Rule Bill (15 July 1913)
“While the material forces which hold the Empire together, with the single exception of the Crown, are as precarious and as inchoate as I have shown them to be, there is one force and one only upon which we can rely to fill the gap, and to supply the cohesive influence we desire; and that is the sense, to which you appeal, of brotherhood between men and women, our fellow-subjects all round the great circumference of our Empire.”
George Curzon, 1st Marquess Curzon of Kedleston (1859–1925) first seen 1914 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Speech in London (25 May 1914), quoted in Subjects of the Day: Being a Selection of Speeches and Writings by Earl Curzon of Kedleston, ed. Desmond M. Chapman-Huston (1915), p. 19
“From all parts of the earth we see this great march of the armies, white, yellow, brown, no longer any distinction of colour, all marching to the common centre, all inspired by the same cause, all bent on doing service on the same battlefield. Never before in history has there been anything to compare with this.”
George Curzon, 1st Marquess Curzon of Kedleston (1859–1925) first seen 1914 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Speech in Glasgow (10 September 1914), quoted in Subjects of the Day: Being a Selection of Speeches and Writings by Earl Curzon of Kedleston, ed. Desmond M. Chapman-Huston (1915), p. 392
“The British people realise that they are fighting for the hegemony of the Empire. If necessary we shall continue the war single-handed.”
George Curzon, 1st Marquess Curzon of Kedleston (1859–1925) first seen 1916 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Remarks recorded in King Albert I of Belgium's diary (7 February 1916), quoted in R. van Overstraeten (ed.), The War Diaries of Albert I King of the Belgians (1954), p. 85
Also quoted by: Albert I of Belgium
“I agree with you about the absurdity of shunting the Jews back into Palestine, a tiny country which has lost its fertility and only supports meagre herds of sheep and goats with occasional terraced plots of cultivation. You cannot expel the present Moslem occupation. You cannot turn the Jews into small cultivators and grazers. You cannot turn all the various sects, religion and denominations out of Jerusalem. I cannot conceive a worse bondage to which to relegate an advanced and intellectual community than to exile in Palestine.”
George Curzon, 1st Marquess Curzon of Kedleston (1859–1925) first seen 1917 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Letter to Edwin Montagu (8 September 1917), quoted in David Gilmour, 'The Unregarded Prophet: Lord Curzon and the Palestine Question', Journal of Palestine Studies, Vol. 25, No. 3 (Spring 1996), p. 63
“How was it proposed to get rid of the existing majority of Mussulman inhabitants and to introduce the Jews in their place? How many would be willing to return and in what pursuits would they engage? To secure for the Jews already in Palestine equal civil and religious rights seemed to him a better policy than to aim at repatriation on a large scale. He regarded the latter as sentimental idealism, which would never be realised, and that His Majesty's Government should have nothing to do with.”
George Curzon, 1st Marquess Curzon of Kedleston (1859–1925) first seen 1859 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Remarks to the Cabinet (4 October 1917), quoted in David Gilmour, 'The Unregarded Prophet: Lord Curzon and the Palestine Question', Journal of Palestine Studies, Vol. 25, No. 3 (Spring 1996), p. 64 and David Gilmour, Cu…
“[Japan is] a restless and aggressive Power, full of energy, somewhat like the Germans in mentality, seeking in every direction to push out and find an outlet for her ambitions.”
George Curzon, 1st Marquess Curzon of Kedleston (1859–1925) first seen 1921 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Statement to the 1921 Imperial Conference, quoted in William Farmer Whyte, William Morris Hughes: His Life and Times (1957), p. 436
“Not even a public figure. A man of no experience. And of the utmost insignificance. The utmost insignificance.”
George Curzon, 1st Marquess Curzon of Kedleston (1859–1925) first seen 1919 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Reaction after Stanley Baldwin was appointed Prime Minister (22 May 1923), quoted in Harold Nicolson, Curzon: The Last Phase 1919–1925: A Study in Post-War Diplomacy (1934), p. 355
“No one is a more profound believer than myself in the policy of the Entente: and I do not rest that belief merely on the memories of the war, or on principles of self-interest; my conviction is based on the widest considerations of world peace and world progress. If France and ourselves permanently fall out, I see no prospect of the recovery of Europe or of the pacification of the world. To maintain that unity we have made innumerable sacrifices. During the last two years I have preached no other doctrine and I have pursued no other practice.”
George Curzon, 1st Marquess Curzon of Kedleston (1859–1925) first seen 1923 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Statement to the members of the 1923 Imperial Conference (5 October 1923), quoted in The Earl of Ronaldshay, The Life of Lord Curzon: Being the Authorized Biography of George Nathaniel, Marquess Curzon of Kedleston, Vol…
“The obstacle has been Mackenzie King, the Canadian, who is both obstinate, tiresome and stupid.”
George Curzon, 1st Marquess Curzon of Kedleston (1859–1925) first seen 1923 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Letter to his wife during the 1923 Imperial Conference (8 November 1923), quoted in Terry Reardon, Winston Churchill and Mackenzie King: So Similar, So Different (2012), pp. 52-53
“For where else in the world has a race gone forth and subdued, not a country or a kingdom, but a continent peopled, not by savage tribes, but by races with traditions and a civilisation older than our own, with a history not inferior to ours in dignity or romance; subduing them not to the law of the sword, but to the rule of justice, bringing peace and order and good government to nearly one-fifth of the entire human race, and holding them with so mild a restraint that the rulers are the merest handful against the ruled, a tiny speck of white foam upon a dark and thunderous ocean?"59”
George Curzon, 1st Marquess Curzon of Kedleston (1859–1925) said by 1925 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“and to feel that somewhere among these millions you have left a little justice or happiness or prosperity, a sense of manliness or moral dignity, a spring of patriotism, a dawn of intellectual enlightenment, or a stirring of duty, where it did not before exist-that is enough, that is the Englishman's justification in India. It is good enough for his watchword while he is here, for his epitaph when he is gone. I have worked for no other aim. Let India be my judge."62”
George Curzon, 1st Marquess Curzon of Kedleston (1859–1925) said by 1925 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“[Frenchmen] are not the sort of people one would go tiger-shooting with.”
George Curzon, 1st Marquess Curzon of Kedleston (1859–1925) said by 1925 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Leonard Mosley, Curzon: The End of an Epoch (1960), p. 210
“Is it legitimate . . . to infer that because the Aryans early spread to the South . . . and extended themselves over the peninsula, they also originally invaded, from some unknown region and conquered India itself? If so, the same argument might be applied to the origin and spread of the Romans, who might be presumed to have invaded Italy from some external unknown region, because they early spread their conquests to the south. . . . But we know from authentic history that the Romans arose from one city and region in Italy: that . . . they gradually extended themselves over and subjugated those territories which subsequently formed one vast empire. (189)”
George Curzon, 1st Marquess Curzon of Kedleston (1859–1925) first seen 1855 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: A. Curzon (1855) quoted in Bryant, E. F. (2001). The Quest for the Origins of Vedic Culture : the Indo-Aryan migration debate. Oxford University Press. ch 3 Curzon, A. 1855. "On the Original Extension of the Sanskrit La…
“They had heard about the barbarities of the crowbar, and the smoking thatch; but, in his opinion, there were worse barbarities still—namely, those of the loaded gun, the mutilated animals, and the murdered women and men. Irish Members raised a great clamour about the former; but through the latter they sat as silent as stones. Nothing showed more clearly the hollowness of this agitation than the conduct of hon. Members now and their former attitude. In face of this Plan of Campaign, which had been so cleverly organized, was it not permissible that Conservative Members should have their Plan of Campaign also?”
George Curzon, 1st Marquess Curzon of Kedleston (1859–1925) first seen 1887 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Maiden speech in the House of Commons (31 January 1887)
“The Persian character presents many complex features, elsewhere rarely united in the same individual. They are an amiable and a polished race, and have the manners of gentlemen. They are vivacious in temperament, intelligent in conversation, and acute in conduct. If their hearts are soft, which is, I believe, undeniable, there is no corresponding weakness of the head. On the other hand, they are consummate hypocrites, very corrupt, and lamentably deficient in stability or courage... Whilst, as individuals, they present many attractive features, as a community they are wholly wanting in elements of real nobility or grandeur. With one gift only can they be credited on a truly heroic scale; and this, though it may endear them to the student of human nature as a fine art, will excite the stern repugnance of the moralist. I allude to their faculty for what a Puritan might call mendacious, but what I prefer to style imaginative, utterance. This is inconceivable and enormous.”
George Curzon, 1st Marquess Curzon of Kedleston (1859–1925) said by 1925 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I am convinced that a true son of Iran would sooner lie than tell the truth; and that he feels twinges of desperate remorse when, upon occasions, he has thoughtlessly strayed into veracity. Yet they are an agreeable people—agreeable to encounter, agreeable to associate with; perhaps not least agreeable to leave behind. From this composite presentment it is perhaps difficult to extract any really reliable basis of sanguine prognostication. Nevertheless there remain three attributes of the Persian character which lead me to think that that people are not yet, as has been asserted, wholly 'played out'; that they are neither sunk in the sombre atrophy of the Turk, nor threatened with the ignoble doom of the Tartar; but that there are chances of a possible redemption. These are their irrepressible vitality; an imitativeness long notorious in the East, and capable of honourable utilisation; and, in spite of occasional testimony to the contrary, a healthy freedom from deep-seated prejudice or bigotry. History suggests that the Persians will insist upon surviving themselves; present indications that they will gradually absorb the accomplishments of others.”
George Curzon, 1st Marquess Curzon of Kedleston (1859–1925) said by 1925 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The future of China is a problem the very inverse of that involved in the future of Japan. The one is a country intoxicated with the modern spirit, and requiring above all things the stamina to understand the shock of too sudden an upheaval of ancient ideas and plunge into the unknown. The other is a country stupefied with the pride of the past, and standing in need of the very impulse to which its neighbour too incontinently yields. Japan is eager to bury the past; China worships its embalmed and still life-like corpse. Japan wants to be reformed out of all likeness to herself. China declines to be reformed at all. She is a monstrous but mighty anachronism, defiantly planted on the fringe of a world to whose contact she is indifferent and whose influence she abhors; much as the stones of Solomon's Temple look down upon an alley in modern Jerusalem, or as the Column of Trajan rears its head in the heart of nineteenth-century Rome.”
George Curzon, 1st Marquess Curzon of Kedleston (1859–1925) said by 1925 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“If there be any one who says to me that there is no duty devolving upon a Christian Government to preserve the monuments of a pagan art or the sanctuaries of an alien faith, I cannot pause to argue with such a man. Art and beauty, and the reverence that is owing to all that has evoked human genius or has inspired human faith, are independent of creeds, and, in so far as they touch the sphere of religion, are embraced by the common religion of all mankind. Viewed from this standpoint, the rock temple of the Brahmans stands on precisely the same footing as the Buddhist Vihara, and the Mohammedan Musjid as the Christian Cathedral. There is no principle of artistic discrimination between the mausoleum of the despot and the sepulchre of the saint. What is beautiful, what is historic, what tears the mask off the face of the past and helps us to read its riddles and to look it in the eyes—these, and not the dogmas of a combative theology, are the principal criteria to which we must look.”
George Curzon, 1st Marquess Curzon of Kedleston (1859–1925) first seen 1898 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Speech to the Asiatic Society of Bengal (7 February 1900), quoted in Lord Curzon in India, Being A Selection from His Speeches as Viceroy & Governor-General of India 1898–1905 (1906), pp. 183-184