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Stanley Baldwin

233 quotes

“Your country is a country for men from the North, the hardy virile races. Quality before quantity any day. Build up with the best. What does it matter if it is a hundred years, or two hundred years, or more, before your country is full? Keep the stock you have, and the men and women you have, and see that the coming generations are in no way inferior to them.”
Stanley Baldwin (1867–1947) first seen 1927 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Speech to the Canada Club, London (21 November 1927), quoted in Our Inheritance (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1938), p. 141.
“England totally disarmed and an easy prey to hostile forces! Can you think of anything more likely to excite cupidity and hostile intention? We should sink to the level of a fifth rate Power, our Colonies would be stripped from us, our commerce would decline, famine and unemployment would stalk the land. … I share your longing for peace. God forbid that it should be again disturbed! The constant and undivided effort of the Government is for its preservation. But I have yet to learn that the cause of peace can be served by rendering our country impotent.”
Stanley Baldwin (1867–1947) first seen 1854 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Letter to Arthur Ponsonby (16 December 1927); published in Semi-detached Idealists: The British Peace Movement and International Relations, 1854-1945 (2000) by Martin Ceadel, p. 271
“If I did not believe that our work was done in the faith and hope that at some day, it may be a million years hence, the Kingdom of God will spread over the whole world, I would have no hope, I could do no work, and I would give my office over this morning to anyone who would take it.”
Stanley Baldwin (1867–1947) first seen 1928 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Speech to the British and Foreign Bible Society (2 May 1928); published in This Torch of Freedom (1935), pp. 92 - 93
“For too long people have forgotten what a genius there is in the ordinary people of this country...the English stock is a true stock; and our people are the same people as those who built our cathedrals and our village churches: who carved the sculptures and who carved the screens inside them.”
Stanley Baldwin (1867–1947) first seen 1928 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Speech upon receiving the Freedom of the City of Winchester (6 July 1928), published in This Torch of Freedom (1935), p. 115.
“No country is more beautiful than England.”
Stanley Baldwin (1867–1947) first seen 1928 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Speech upon receiving the Freedom of the City of Winchester (6 July 1928), published in This Torch of Freedom (1935), p. 116.
“One thing that strikes me when I think of Booth is the nonsense that is talked to-day about the poverty of the Victorian age. Why the Victorian age is so unpopular to-day very largely arises from the fact that, in spite of all its faults, there was among its great men, who were numerous, a faith in goodness: there was a moral earnestness and there was a sense of duty and a performance of duty.”
Stanley Baldwin (1867–1947) first seen 1929 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Speech to the Salvation Army William Booth Centenary Celebrations, London (10 April 1929), published in This Torch of Freedom (1935), pp. 106-107.
“This is Empire Day, and we lift up our eyes beyond our immediate surroundings and our everyday tasks to behold the great inheritance which is ours. Our feet are set in a large space, and if the Titan has known moments of weariness, if our burdens are heavy, our shoulders are yet broad, and they have long been fitted to bear the vast orb of our fate.”
Stanley Baldwin (1867–1947) first seen 1902 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Speech in Hyde Park (24 May 1929), published in This Torch of Freedom (1935), p. 25. In 1902 Joseph Chamberlain said "The weary Titan staggers under the too vast orb of its fate".
“As we study [the British Empire's] destiny, we are bound to think of it less as a human achievement than as an instrument of Divine Providence for the promotion of the progress of mankind.”
Stanley Baldwin (1867–1947) first seen 1929 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Speech in Hyde Park (24 May 1929), published in This Torch of Freedom (1935), p. 26.
“Tom Mosley is a cad and a wrong 'un and they will find it out.”
Stanley Baldwin (1867–1947) first seen 1929 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: On Oswald Mosley (21 June 1929). "They" were the Labour Party which had recently won a general election. Quoted in Whitehall Diary : Volume II (1969) by Thomas Jones, p. 195.
“...that very loyalty to the past with its dream of beauty and with its real hardness and hardships. These things save us from what is the greatest peril of our age, the peril of materialism....The struggle against materialism in the hearts of our people is one of the greatest struggles of this age.”
Stanley Baldwin (1867–1947) first seen 1930 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Speech upon receiving the Freedom of the Burgh of Inverness, Scotland (13 June 1930), published in This Torch of Freedom (1935), pp. 191-192.
“In the Protestant doctrine of the infinite value of the individual soul, on the one hand, and in the assembling together of the brethren in the church congregation, on the other, you have the seed-bed of modern democracy.”
Stanley Baldwin (1867–1947) first seen 1930 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: The John Clifford Lecture at Coventry (14 July 1930), published in This Torch of Freedom (1935), p. 38.
“Our political capacity for avoiding upheavals, our gift for "animated moderation" (in Bagehot's phrase), has long been envied by our continental neighbours. They will find once again, I venture to prophesy, that we shall get together and modify presently our institutions to suit the new conditions. We are not good at planning ahead, but we have a gift for improvising and compromising.”
Stanley Baldwin (1867–1947) first seen 1930 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: The John Clifford Lecture at Coventry (14 July 1930), published in This Torch of Freedom (1935), p. 42.
“There is a saying as old as the Greeks that it is more important to form good habits than to frame good laws. There is an undercurrent of suspicion that this is true and that, like patriotism, legislation is not enough. The hopes held out when laws are framed are not always realised when laws are passed...What happens to all the laws placed on the statute book? If half the hopes of their promoters had been realised, would not the millennium have arrived ere this?”
Stanley Baldwin (1867–1947) first seen 1930 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: The John Clifford Lecture at Coventry (14 July 1930), published in This Torch of Freedom (1935), p. 46.
“All parties are deeply committed to intervention in the lives of the people. The goal of some is to convert the state into a universal Providence. Character is built up by innumerable acts of choice. If all or most of the crucial choices in life are made for you by the State, when then becomes of the democratic ideal...the management of and responsibility for our own lives, whether we be clever or stupid, good or bad?”
Stanley Baldwin (1867–1947) first seen 1930 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: The John Clifford Lecture at Coventry (14 July 1930), published in This Torch of Freedom (1935), p. 47
“All parties are alike implicated in the measures of relief now in force. All are agreed that destitution ought not to be tolerated. But are we all quite happy that in giving John Smith state benefits in this wholesale way we are not at the same time taking away from John Smith something which will make him poor indeed?”
Stanley Baldwin (1867–1947) first seen 1930 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: The John Clifford Lecture at Coventry (14 July 1930), published in This Torch of Freedom (1935), p. 48.
“I attended the Royal Opening of the Indian Conference yesterday...Our delegation is starting well, but Winston [Churchill] is in the depths of gloom. He wants the Conference to bust up quickly and the Tory Party to go back to pre-war and govern with a strong hand. He has become once more the subaltern of Hussars of '96.”
Stanley Baldwin (1867–1947) first seen 1910 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Letter to J. C. C. Davidson (13 November 1930), quoted in Robert Rhodes James (ed.), Memoirs of a Conservative: J. C. C. Davidson's Memoirs and Papers, 1910-1937 (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1969), p. 355.
“No Party is so divided as mine. I have done my utmost to keep it together, but it ranges from Imperialists of the Second Jubilee to young advanced Democrats who are all for Irwin's policy. I am for that policy myself, and mean to say so.”
Stanley Baldwin (1867–1947) first seen 1931 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Conversation with Thomas Jones (11 March 1931) about Indian Home Rule, quoted in Thomas Jones, A Diary with Letters. 1931-1950 (Oxford University Press, 1954), p. 5.
“What the proprietorship of these papers is aiming at is power, and power without responsibility — the prerogative of the harlot throughout the ages.”
Stanley Baldwin (1867–1947) first seen 1931 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Baldwin was attacking the leading press barons of his day (Lord Beaverbrook and Lord Rothermere); the phrase was suggested by Baldwin's cousin Rudyard Kipling (17 March 1931), quoted in The Times (18 March 1931), p. 18.
“The time has come for us to look after ourselves, and as the foreigner protects himself, so we must put the interests of our own people first. We will ask the country also to enter into trade agreements with our own dominions, under which we will ask them to buy our own manufactured goods, we taking in exchange foodstuffs and raw materials. ... We will ask the electorate to give us powers to stimulate wheat-growing.”
Stanley Baldwin (1867–1947) first seen 1902 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Newsreel interview (spring 1931), quoted in John Ramsden, A History of the Conservative Party: The Age of Balfour and Baldwin, 1902–1940 (1978), p. 320
“What matters is that religion should sway our motives, sustain our principles, surround and bathe our spirits like a secret atmosphere as we go about our work...Religion, as we are all agreed, is not merely an affair of Christians in churches; it is an affair of Christians in politics, in diplomacy, in trade, in industry, in school, in sport. I think the popular judgment has accepted that as axiomatic.”
Stanley Baldwin (1867–1947) first seen 1931 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Speech to the annual assembly of the Congregational Union, London (12 May 1931), published in This Torch of Freedom (1935), pp. 80-81.
“Now this country of ours has a record of which we may well be proud. When we signed the various treaties pledging ourselves to tackle that question of disarmament in sincerity, in earnest, and in honour, we justified and backed our signature, and we have done all that one country by itself can do. We have reduced all our armaments. We occupy the fifth place in the world to-day in the strength of our Air Force. We have cut our Army to the bone, and we have engaged in treaties for the limitation of our Navy, and nothing more can be done by way of unilateral disarmament.”
Stanley Baldwin (1867–1947) first seen 1931 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Speech in the City Hall, Hull (17 July 1931), quoted in The Times (18 July 1931), p. 14
“I was anxious two years ago as to the line which our party would take on the Indian question. I believed that the one course was the only one for a progressive party—and a party must be progressive to live. I believed that the other course led to the destruction of the party.”
Stanley Baldwin (1867–1947) first seen 1931 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Speech in the House of Commons (3 December 1931)
“We shall put the tariff through and if it does well it will drop out of party politics very much like Free Trade did. Then leave suitable time to change the title of our Party to National, as there will be little which really divides us from the great bulk of the Liberals.”
Stanley Baldwin (1867–1947) first seen 1931 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Remarks to Thomas Jones (28 January 1932), quoted in Thomas Jones, A Diary with Letters. 1931-1950 (1954), pp. 25-26
“Rightly or wrongly we have done with the old India; there's a new one afoot and we must make the best of it.”
Stanley Baldwin (1867–1947) first seen 1931 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Remarks to Thomas Jones (27 February 1932), quoted in Thomas Jones, A Diary with Letters. 1931-1950 (1954), p. 29
“Had they ever thought of the parallel in the origins of Mohammedanism and Bolshevism—both springing out of Christianity, one proclaiming brotherhood and the other communism, but both proclaiming death and damnation upon all unbelievers. Within a century of the death of the prophet the Mohammedans had spread from Arabia to the Pyrenees by means of the sword and were stopped by Charles Martel at Tours. Russia throws up few great men but imagine what might happen if a Bolsehvik Peter the Great appeared on the scene.”
Stanley Baldwin (1867–1947) first seen 1931 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Conversation with Thomas Jones (3 July 1932), quoted in Thomas Jones, A Diary with Letters. 1931-1950 (1954), p. 43
“I need not emphasise the extent to which the Government have not only talked of disarmament, but have put it into practice. The time has now come to an end when Great Britain can proceed with unilateral disarmament.”
Stanley Baldwin (1867–1947) first seen 1932 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Speech in the Guildhall, London (9 November 1932), quoted in The Times (10 November 1932), p. 14
“I think it is well also for the man in the street to realise that there is no power on earth that can protect him from being bombed. Whatever people may tell him, the bomber will always get through.”
Stanley Baldwin (1867–1947) first seen 1932 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Speech in the House of Commons (10 November 1932)
“The fellows I am most up against are the old gentlemen in the extreme Tory wing who sit in the smoking rooms of clubs and never do a hand's turn of work, but damn me for all I do... No country had the same stock to draw on for public works as we had. Public life could become beastly corrupt, but we could all help to keep it clean and free from graft.”
Stanley Baldwin (1867–1947) first seen 1932 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Speech to a meeting in support of the National Government in the Victoria Hall, Sunderland (2 December 1932), quoted in The Times (3 December 1932), p. 12
“I always dreaded Roosevelt's experiments and I think there will be an appalling mess up in America in a few months.”
Stanley Baldwin (1867–1947) first seen 1931 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Letter to Thomas Jones (14 September 1933), quoted in Thomas Jones, A Diary with Letters. 1931-1950 (1954), p. 115
“During the Middle Ages, and indeed, throughout later years...Our boundary was the sea; it was a fixed boundary, and a boundary which none could cross when once there was a united nation able to guard that sea frontier; and it is owing to that, primarily and principally, that we were able to develop in this country our own peculiar civilisation and our own freedom in a security which was alien, at that time, to almost every other nation of the world.”
Stanley Baldwin (1867–1947) first seen 1933 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Broadcast from London (25 September 1933), quoted in This Torch of Freedom (1935), p. 11
“I say that such qualities were never more needed in the word. Let us hold on to what we are; let us not try to be like anybody else...With our pertinacity, our love of freedom, our love of ordered freedom, our respect for law, our respect for the individual and our power of combining in service; indeed, in our strength and in our weakness, I believe, from my heart, that our people are fitted to pass through whatever trials may be before us, and to emerge—if they are true to their own best traditions—a greater people in the future than they have been in the past.”
Stanley Baldwin (1867–1947) first seen 1933 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Broadcast from London (25 September 1933), quoted in This Torch of Freedom (1935), p. 14
“It is characteristic of the British Public to look askance at any deliberate, systematic attempt to rationalise our institutions.”
Stanley Baldwin (1867–1947) first seen 1933 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Speech at the Institute of Public Administration, London (26 October 1933), quoted in This Torch of Freedom (1935), p. 52
“Perfect governments are only to be found where the prisons are full.”
Stanley Baldwin (1867–1947) first seen 1933 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Speech at the Institute of Public Administration, London (26 October 1933), quoted in This Torch of Freedom (1935), p. 53
“I am a Victorian. When I was young, I lived as everybody else did at that time, in the centre of a circle with a radius of about ten miles—so far as a pair of horses could draw me. Beyond that I hardly ever went, and I was isolated from other parts of England in a way impossible to conceive by those who have only known England as a country of motor roads and motor cars.”
Stanley Baldwin (1867–1947) first seen 1933 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Speech to the annual dinner of the Yorkshire Society, London (8 November 1933), quoted in This Torch of Freedom (1935), p. 134
“No matter what a man's conversation may be on the platform or what air of cynicism he may assume as his shield in daily life, yet underneath that surface, in ninety-nine Englishmen out of one hundred, there will be a love, which he sometimes cannot and sometimes will not explain, for the home in which either he at one time has lived or his parents or grandparents have lived before him.”
Stanley Baldwin (1867–1947) first seen 1933 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Speech to the annual dinner of the Yorkshire Society, London (8 November 1933), quoted in This Torch of Freedom (1935), p. 137
“I would say that we are the only defenders left of liberty in a world of Fascists. ... these fascists and communists are the successors today of the wars of the sects.”
Stanley Baldwin (1867–1947) first seen 1931 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Conversation with Thomas Jones (27 February 1934), quoted in Thomas Jones, A Diary with Letters. 1931-1950 (1954), p. 124
“Our freedom is our own—civil and religious. We are so accustomed to it, as to the air we breathe, that we take it for granted...And that freedom did not drop down on us like the manna from Heaven: it has been fought for from the beginning of our history, and the blood of men far better than ourselves has been shed to obtain it. It is the result of centuries of resistance to the power of the executive, and it has brought us an equal justice and trial by jury, and freedom of worship, and freedom of opinion—religious and political.”
Stanley Baldwin (1867–1947) first seen 1934 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Broadcast from London (6 March 1934), quoted in This Torch of Freedom (1935), p. 17
“Government is carried on in this country more cleanly, I believe, than in any country of the world. It is the rarest thing in our local popular government, as in the government of our country, to find men who fall by the way and yield to temptations that may come from the direction of corruption or undue influence. There is a magnificent tradition handed down from the earliest times in this country, of public service—service for the good of all our brothers in whatever their station of life.”
Stanley Baldwin (1867–1947) first seen 1934 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Broadcast from London (6 March 1934), quoted in This Torch of Freedom (1935), p. 20
“Dictatorship is like a giant beech tree—very magnificent to look at in its prime, but nothing grows underneath it.”
Stanley Baldwin (1867–1947) first seen 1934 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Broadcast from London (6 March 1934), quoted in This Torch of Freedom (1935), p. 21
“When one is young one is always in a hurry, and it may well be to-day that those two alien plants—for they neither have their roots in England—Communism and Fascism, may appeal to many of you. This is a free country. You can support either creed, and you can support it in safety, but I want to put this to you. If there be one thing certain, to my mind it is this. That if the people of this country in great numbers were to become adherents of either Communism or Fascism there could only be one end to it. And that one end would be civil war.”
Stanley Baldwin (1867–1947) first seen 1934 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Broadcast from London (6 March 1934), quoted in This Torch of Freedom (1935), p. 23
“We don't know what Germany really intends. We do know and have long known that France is pacific, and is not a potential enemy. We cannot say that about Germany.”
Stanley Baldwin (1867–1947) first seen 1931 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Conversation with Thomas Jones (28 April 1934), quoted in Thomas Jones, A Diary with Letters. 1931-1950 (1954), p. 129
“Let us never forget this; since the day of the air, the old frontiers are gone. When you think of the defence of England you no longer think of the chalk cliffs of Dover; you think of the Rhine. That is where our frontier lies.”
Stanley Baldwin (1867–1947) first seen 1934 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Speech in the House of Commons (30 July 1934)
“Never so long as I have any responsibility in governing this country will I sanction the British Navy being used for an armed blockade of any country in the world until I know what the United States of America is going to do.”
Stanley Baldwin (1867–1947) first seen 1934 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Speech in St. Andrew's Hall, Glasgow (23 November 1934), quoted in The Times (24 November 1934), p. 7
“There is no country...where there are not somewhere lovers of freedom who look to this country to carry the torch and keep it burning bright until such time as they may again be able to light their extinguished torches at our flame. We owe it not only to our own people but to the world to preserve our soul for that.”
Stanley Baldwin (1867–1947) first seen 1933 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Speech at University of Durham to the Ashridge Fellowship, as quoted in The Times (3 December 1934); also in Christian Conservatives and the Totalitarian Challenge, 1933-40 by Philip Williamson, in The English Historica…
“I should like to make an observation to right honourable and honourable Gentlemen opposite. It is that I do not think they will help to produce the atmosphere in Europe which is so desirable by issuing papers that have been issued by the National Council of Labour, headed 'Hit Hitler'.”
Stanley Baldwin (1867–1947) first seen 1935 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Speech in the House of Commons (11 March 1935); published in Hansard, House of Commons, 5th series, vol. 299 cols. 50-1.
“Magna Carta is the Law: Let the King look out." So it has always been with tyrants among our own people: when the King was tyrant, let him look out. And it has always been the same, and will be the same, whether the tyrant be the Barons, whether the tyrant be the Church, whether he be demagogue or dictator — let them look out.”
Stanley Baldwin (1867–1947) first seen 1935 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Speech at Westminster Hall (4 July 1935); published in This Torch of Freedom: Speeches and Addresses (1935), p. 4
“It is often said to-day by detractors of democracy, at home and particularly abroad, that the parliamentary system has failed. After all, this is the only country...where parliamentary government has grown up, the only country in which it is traditional and hereditary, where it is flesh of our flesh and bone of our bone. Whatever failures may have come to parliamentary government in countries which have not those traditions, and where it is not a natural growth, that is no proof that parliamentary government has failed.”
Stanley Baldwin (1867–1947) first seen 1935 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Speech to the Empire Parliamentary Association's Conference in Westminster Hall (4 July 1935); published in This Torch of Freedom: Speeches and Addresses (1935), p. 5
“We know ourselves what difficult times we live in. We know equally, and we are conscious of the fact, that with us—all of us at home and overseas—there rests the responsibility whether this form of government will remain, or whether it will fail. It is therefore good that we who meet from all corners of the world to take counsel with one another, should, at any rate among ourselves, hold this torch of freedom alight, and alive, until other nations come to see our ways.”
Stanley Baldwin (1867–1947) first seen 1935 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Speech to the Empire Parliamentary Association's Conference in Westminster Hall (4 July 1935); published in This Torch of Freedom: Speeches and Addresses (1935), pp. 5-6.
“The die-hard opinions of George III couched in the language of Edmund Burke.”
Stanley Baldwin (1867–1947) first seen 1935 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: On Winston Churchill's speech against the Government of India Bill (1935) - (Audio file at BBC)
“We live under the shadow of the last War and its memories still sicken us. We remember what modern warfare is, with no glory in it but the heroism of man.”
Stanley Baldwin (1867–1947) first seen 1935 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Speech to the Peace Society (31 October 1935), quoted in This Torch of Freedom (1935), p. 322.