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Stanley Baldwin
233 quotes
“I hear sometimes of the necessity for creating an "international mind." I am afraid that my heart is too stubbornly local for me to follow that high thought...I am an impenitent patriot; like Gilbert's heroic figure, "I remain an Englishman." I do not want daily to become more and more like my neighbour, nor would it gratify my self-esteem if he became daily more like me.”
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. 332.
“The dispute between the League and Italy is real, but it is not more real than our friendship...in being true to our pledged word to the League we wish also to preserve an old friendship. But loyalty to our pledge is inescapable, for, as the Secretary of State said in his recent Note to the French Government, we look on the League as the only escape from "the senseless disasters of the past." That is the key to our whole action and to our every motive.”
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), pp. 336-337.
“We desire to go on working to maintain world peace, and to strengthen the League of Nations, and I give you my word – and I think you can trust me by now – our defence programme will be no more than is sufficient to make our country safe and enable us to fulfil our obligations. That much we must have.”
Stanley Baldwin (1867–1947) first seen 1902 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Film broadcast (31 October 1935), quoted in John Ramsden, A History of the Conservative Party: The Age of Balfour and Baldwin, 1902–1940 (1978), p. 345
“True to our traditions, we have avoided all extremes. We have steered clear of fascism, communism, dictatorship, and we have shown the world that democratic government, constitutional methods and ordered liberty are not inconsistent with progress and prosperity.”
Stanley Baldwin (1867–1947) first seen 1935 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Newsreel appearance after the general election (November 1935)
“I have seldom spoken with greater regret, for my lips are not yet unsealed. Were these troubles over I would make a case, and I guarantee that not a man would go into the Lobby against us.”
Stanley Baldwin (1867–1947) first seen 1935 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Speech in the House of Commons (10 December 1935) on the Abyssinian crisis.
“Thomas Jones: What did you mean by the sentence in your speech, when you said, if only you could tell all you knew no vote would be cast against you? Stanley Baldwin: That was not a very wise sentence; it shows the danger of rhetoric. I had in mind the menace of war; our fleet would be in real danger from the small craft of the Italians operating in a small sea. Had we gone to war our anti-aircraft munitions would have been exhausted in a week. We have hardly got any armaments firms left.”
Stanley Baldwin (1867–1947) first seen 1931 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Conversation with Thomas Jones (7 January 1936), quoted in Thomas Jones, A Diary with Letters. 1931-1950 (Oxford University Press, 1954), p. 160
“With two lunatics like Mussolini and Hitler you can never be sure of anything. But I am determined to keep the country out of war. ...[Hankey] thinks sanctions were put in [the Covenant of the League of Nations] at the request of the Americans. Likely enough, as they would be the first to run away from enforcing them. You will not get our people for a long time yet to be willing to pledge themselves to go to war for objects in the east of Europe.”
Stanley Baldwin (1867–1947) first seen 1931 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Conversation with Thomas Jones (30 April 1936), quoted in Thomas Jones, A Diary with Letters. 1931-1950 (Oxford University Press, 1954), p. 191.
“...protection of the home market? That has made mass production possible.”
Stanley Baldwin (1867–1947) first seen 1931 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Conversation with Thomas Jones (30 April 1936), quoted in Thomas Jones, A Diary with Letters. 1931-1950 (Oxford University Press, 1954), p. 192
“There is no doubt that to our people, whether they live on the sea-coast, in the great towns, or inland, the Royal Navy is in some subtle way the repository of the spirit and the tradition of our nation.”
Stanley Baldwin (1867–1947) first seen 1936 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Speech in the House of Commons (5 May 1936).
“One of these days I'll make a few casual remarks about Winston [Churchill]. Not a speech—no oratory—just a few words in passing. I've got it all ready. I am going to say that when Winston was born lots of fairies swooped down on his cradle gifts—imagination, eloquence, industry, ability, and then came a fairy who said "No one person has a right to so many gifts", picked him up and gave him such a shake and twist that with all these gifts he was denied judgment and wisdom. And that is why while we delight to listen to him in this House, we do not take his advice.”
Stanley Baldwin (1867–1947) first seen 1931 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Conversation with Thomas Jones (22 May 1936), quoted in Thomas Jones, A Diary with Letters. 1931-1950 (Oxford University Press, 1954), p. 204.
“Toryism, as we know it, was illuminated, expounded, and made a gospel for a large portion of this country by the genius of Benjamin Disraeli. Most of us who have worked for our great party have founded our beliefs on, and derived our inspiration from that statesman.”
Stanley Baldwin (1867–1947) first seen 1936 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Speech to the centenary dinner of the City of London Conservative and Unionist Association (2 July 1936), quoted in Service of Our Lives (1937), pp. 37-38.
“War is a very terrible thing, and, when once let loose in Europe, no man can tell how far it will spread, and no man can tell when or how it will stop. I am quite content in these circumstances to be called a coward if I have done what I could, in accordance with the views of every country in Europe, to keep my own people out of war.”
Stanley Baldwin (1867–1947) first seen 1936 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Speech to the centenary dinner of the City of London Conservative and Unionist Association (2 July 1936) on the Italo-Abyssinian War, quoted in Service of Our Lives (1937), pp. 41-42.
“If this country was again to be prepared to impose "sanctions" against any country, she should not do it with her eyes shut, but she should know that the imposition of "sanctions" might very possibly, very probably, bring in its train war...she must so prepare herself that she could fulfil obligations under the Covenant in any circumstances. That is why we got the mandate at the last General Election which we did, and that is why this country is now preparing herself in the event of its being necessary at any time to take up obligations under the Covenant with whatever may result.”
Stanley Baldwin (1867–1947) first seen 1936 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Speech to the centenary dinner of the City of London Conservative and Unionist Association (2 July 1936) on the Italo-Abyssinian War, quoted in Service of Our Lives (1937), p. 42.
“I cannot rival L[loyd] G[eorge] at that sort of speech—full of clever thrusts, innuendos, malicious half-truths. To L[loyd] G[eorge] and Winston [Churchill] it is all part of a game; as for me, I cannot make speeches which are sheer and mere dialectic...If I had made the sort of speech about L[loyd] G[eorge] that I could have made it would be a cruel attack on an old man and it would have done no good. All through his career, except during the War, he has done no end of harm, and his Versailles peace was iniquitous and his conduct after the peace execrable.”
Stanley Baldwin (1867–1947) first seen 1931 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Conversation with Thomas Jones (7 July 1936), quoted in Thomas Jones, A Diary with Letters. 1931-1950 (Oxford University Press, 1954), p. 227.
“We none of us know what is going on in that strange man's mind. We all know the German desire as he has come out with in his book [Mein Kampf] to move East, and if he moves East, I shall not break my heart, but that is another thing. I do not believe he wants to move West, because West would be a very difficult programme for him … If there is any fighting in Europe to be done, I should like to see the Bolsheviks and Nazis doing it.”
Stanley Baldwin (1867–1947) first seen 1936 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Baldwin to the deputation at the end of July, 1936, as quoted in Baldwin : A Biography by Keith Middlemas and John Barnes (1969), p. 947, p. 955.
“I saw the King on Monday, 16th November, and I began by giving him my view of a possible marriage. I told him that I did not think that a particular marriage was one that would receive the approbation of the country. That marriage would have involved the lady becoming Queen. I did tell His Majesty once that I might be a remnant of the old Victorians, but that my worst enemy would not say of me that I did not know what the reaction of the English people would be to any particular course of action, and I told him that so far as they went I was certain that that would be impracticable.”
Stanley Baldwin (1867–1947) first seen 1936 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Speech in the House of Commons on the Abdication of Edward VIII (10 December 1936).
“Yes, it was a success. I know it. It was almost wholly unprepared. I had a success, my dear Nicolson, at the moment I most needed it. Now is the time to go.”
Stanley Baldwin (1867–1947) first seen 1930 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Harold Nicolson's diary entry (10 December 1936) recording Baldwin's comments after listening to Baldwin's speech on the Abdication of Edward VIII. Quoted in Nigel Nicolson (ed.), Harold Nicolson: Diaries and Letters. 1…
“I claim that, unlike the totalitarian States, we have managed to secure both progress and orderly development in industry while still preserving to a large measure individual freedom and our individual enterprise, qualities upon which ultimately all our trade and industry depend.”
Stanley Baldwin (1867–1947) first seen 1937 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Speech to the Federation of British Industries (13 April 1937), quoted in Service of Our Lives (1937), p. 115.
“Improvements in housing—in which the Government has played a large part—is another direction in which standards have tended since the War to appreciate. Comfortable housing is an essential condition to the welfare and happiness of the people.”
Stanley Baldwin (1867–1947) first seen 1937 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Speech to the Federation of British Industries (13 April 1937), quoted in Service of Our Lives (1937), p. 116.
“I come back to speed, and I want my last words to be on speed. I see a danger ahead that our people may become mechanised, not only in body, but mechanised in mind. I dread the mass mind. I dread the loss of that independent individualist character which has made this nation what it is. I dread the growth of that materialistic view of life which, to my mind, is a danger both to body and to soul. We must see to it that in some way we can preserve the character of our people to meet the changed conditions of the age, and see that our character triumphs over our environment.”
Stanley Baldwin (1867–1947) first seen 1937 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Speech to the Federation of British Industries (13 April 1937), quoted in Service of Our Lives (1937), pp. 116-117.
“Dogmatism is the prerogative of youth.”
Stanley Baldwin (1867–1947) first seen 1937 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Speech to the Empire Rally of Youth at the Royal Albert Hall (18 May 1937), quoted in Service of Our Lives (1937), p. 161.
“To-day Europe is neither at war nor at peace, but stands at armed attention...That, in itself, is a sufficiently melancholy, devastating reply to all the efforts of the lovers of peace. But what is much worse is this: peace in some quarters is proclaimed as a bad dream, and war sanctified as an ideal for rational men. As long as the British Empire lasts we will raise our voices against these false gods.”
Stanley Baldwin (1867–1947) first seen 1937 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Speech to the Empire Rally of Youth at the Royal Albert Hall (18 May 1937), quoted in Service of Our Lives (1937), pp. 163-164.
“Let me proclaim my faith...Here we have ceased to be an island, but we are still an Empire. And what is the secret? Freedom, ordered freedom, within the law, with force in the background and not in the foreground...It is an Empire organised for peace...It deifies neither the State nor its rulers. The old doctrine of the divine right of Kings has gone, but we have no intention of erecting in its place a new doctrine of the divine right of States. No State that ever was is worthy of a free man's worship.”
Stanley Baldwin (1867–1947) first seen 1937 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Speech to the Empire Rally of Youth at the Royal Albert Hall (18 May 1937), quoted in Service of Our Lives (1937), pp. 164-165.
“The fruits of the free spirit of man do not grow in the garden of tyranny...As long as we have the wisdom to keep the sovereign authority of this country as the sanctuary of liberty, the sacred temple consecrated to our common faith, men will turn their faces towards us and draw their breath more freely. The association of the peoples of the Empire is rooted, and their fellowship is rooted, in this doctrine of the essential dignity of the individual human soul. That is the English secret.”
Stanley Baldwin (1867–1947) first seen 1937 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Speech to the Empire Rally of Youth at the Royal Albert Hall (18 May 1937), quoted in Service of Our Lives (1937), pp. 165-166.
“One of the reasons why our people are alive and flourishing, and have avoided many of the troubles that have fallen to less happy nations, is because we have never been guided by logic in anything we have done. If you will only do as I have done—study the history of the growth of the Constitution from the time of the Civil War until the Hanoverians came to the Throne—you will see what a country can do without the aid of logic, but with the aid of common sense.”
Stanley Baldwin (1867–1947) first seen 1937 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Speech to the Empire Day and Coronation Banquet of the Combined Empire Societies, London (24 May 1937), quoted in Service of Our Lives (1937), pp. 154-155.
“In none of these countries [Russia, Italy and Germany] was it possible to make to the people such an appeal as went home to the heart of our people, an appeal based on Christianity or ethics … The whole outlook in the dictator countries was so completely different from ours that for a long time people here could not understand how it was possible for these nations not to respond to the same kind of appeal as that to which our people responded. But they were beginning to realise it now...The only argument which appealed to the dictators was that of force.”
Stanley Baldwin (1867–1947) first seen 1937 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Baldwin to the Cabinet in 1937 during his last days as Premier, as quoted in The Collapse of British Power (1972) by Correlli Barnett, p. 449
“The real need of the day is … moral and spiritual rearmament … God's Living Spirit can transcend conflicting political systems, can reconcile order and freedom, can rekindle true patriotism, can unite all citizens in the service of the nation, and all nations in the service of mankind.”
Stanley Baldwin (1867–1947) first seen 1938 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Baldwin's response to the Munich crisis, as quoted in The Times (10 September 1938)
“I knew that I had been chosen as God's instrument for the work of the healing of the nation.”
Stanley Baldwin (1867–1947) first seen 1938 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Letter from 1938, as quoted in My Father : The True Story (1955) by A. W. Baldwin, pp. 327 - 328
“Civilisation may perish as the result of war: it would certainly perish as the result of Nazi-ism triumphant beyond the borders of the country of its birth...And now we know that should the challenge come, we shall be there. In Luther's words “we can no other.” We were there when the Spanish galleons made for Plymouth: we were on those bloody fields in the Netherlands when Louis XIV aimed at the domination of Europe: we were on duty when Napoleon bestrode the world like a demi-god, and we answered the roll call, as you did, in August, 1914. We can no other. So help us, God.”
Stanley Baldwin (1867–1947) first seen 1939 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Speech to the University of Toronto (April 1939), quoted in An Interpreter of England. The Falconer Lectures (1939), pp. 117-118.
“Did I tell you that I had quite a nice letter from Winston [Churchill]? I thought I ought to send him a line but I wasn't sure whether I should get an acknowledgement! I think he is the right man at the moment and I always did feel that war would be his opportunity. He thrives in that environment.”
Stanley Baldwin (1867–1947) first seen 1910 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Letter to J. C. C. Davidson (22 June 1940), quoted in Robert Rhodes James (ed.), Memoirs of a Conservative: J. C. C. Davidson's Memoirs and Papers, 1910-1937 (1969), p. 427
“I went out into Downing Street a happy man. Of course it was partly because an old buffer like me enjoys feeling that he is still not quite out of things. But it was also pure patriotic joy that my country at such a time should have found such a leader. The furnace of war has smelted out all base metals from him.”
Stanley Baldwin (1867–1947) first seen 1939 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: On his meeting with Winston Churchill, quoted in Harold Nicolson's diary (21 July 1943), Nigel Nicolson (ed.), Harold Nicolson: Diaries and Letters. 1939-1945 (1967), p. 286.
“My tongue, not my pen, is my instrument.”
Stanley Baldwin (1867–1947) first seen 1931 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Conversation with Thomas Jones (7 January 1946), quoted in Thomas Jones, A Diary with Letters. 1931-1950 (1954), p. 540.
“The Conservatives can't talk of class war: they started it.”
Stanley Baldwin (1867–1947) said by 1947 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: G. M. Young, Stanley Baldwin (1952), p. 31
“O how I long for the days when, if the Japs were cheeky, we showed them the guns of the China Squadron, and no more was heard.”
Stanley Baldwin (1867–1947) said by 1947 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: G. M. Young, Stanley Baldwin (1952), p. 68
“G. M. Young: It must have been clear to you, and MacDonald and Neville Chamberlain, that Churchill at all events was safer inside the Cabinet than outside. What kept him out? Baldwin: India. He had gone about threatening to smash the Tory party on India, and I did not mean to be smashed.”
Stanley Baldwin (1867–1947) said by 1947 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: G. M. Young, Stanley Baldwin (1952), pp. 186-187
“The Prime Minister was described this morning in The Times, in the words of a distinguished aristocrat, as a live wire. He was described to me, and to others, in more steady language, by the Lord Chancellor, as a dynamic force, and I accept those words. He is a dynamic force, and it is from that very fact that our troubles, in our opinion, arise. A dynamic force is a very terrible thing; it may crush you, but it is not necessarily right. It is owing to that dynamic force, and that remarkable personality, that the Liberal Party, to which he formerly belonged, had been smashed to pieces; and it is my firm conviction that, in time, the same thing will happen to our party.”
Stanley Baldwin (1867–1947) first seen 1922 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Speech at the Carlton Club (19 October 1922) on David Lloyd George, quoted in The Times (20 October 1922), p. 8
“I am myself of that somewhat flabby nature that always prefers agreement to disagreement...When the Labour Party sit on these benches, we shall all wish them well in their effort to govern the country. But I am quite certain that whether they succeed or fail there will never in this country be a Communist Government, and for this reason, that no gospel founded on hate will ever seize the hearts of our people—the people of Great Britain. It is no good trying to cure the world by spreading out oceans of bloodshed. It is no good trying to cure the world by repeating that pentasyllabic French derivative, "Proletariat." The English language is the richest in the world in thought. The English language is the richest in the world in monosyllables. Four words, of one syllable each, are words which contain salvation for this country and for the whole world, and they are "Faith," "Hope," "Love," and "Work." No Government in this country to-day, which has not faith in the people, hope in the future, love for his fellow-men, and which will not work and work and work, will ever bring this country through into better days and better times, or will ever bring Europe through or the world through.”
Stanley Baldwin (1867–1947) first seen 1923 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Speech in the House of Commons (16 February 1923), quoted in On England, and Other Addresses (1926), pp. 59-60
“...some of those to-day who are loudest in their protestations of international pacifism are loudest in their protestations that nothing but a class war can save society. No truer word was ever said by a philosopher than was said by Kant, a century ago or more, that we are civilised to the point of wearisomeness, but before we can be moralised we have a long way to go. It is to moralise the world that we all desire. ... We have to remember one more thing besides that, that since the War we must not make the mistake of thinking that what may be war weariness is necessarily an excess of innate good will, and we cannot help noting that there has arisen in Europe, in the few years since the peace, a strong local feeling in different places of an extreme nationalism which, unless corrected, may bear in what is not of itself an evil thing the seeds of much future peril for the peace and harmony of Europe.”
Stanley Baldwin (1867–1947) first seen 1923 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Speech in the House of Commons (23 July 1923)
“I have often thought, with reference to the late War...that it has shown the whole world how thin is the crust of civilisation on which this generation is walking. The realisation of that must have come with an appalling shock to most of us here. But more than that. There is not a man in this House who does not remember the first air raids and the first use of poisoned gas, and the cry that went up from this country. We know how, before the War ended, we were all using both those means of imposing our will upon our enemy. We realise that when men have their backs to the wall they will adopt any means for self-preservation. But there was left behind an uncomfortable feeling in the hearts of millions of men throughout Europe that, whatever had been the result of the War, we had all of us slipped down in our views of what constituted civilisation. We could not help feeling that future wars might provide, with further discoveries in science, a more rapid descent for the human race. There came a feeling, which I know is felt in all quarters of this House, that if our civilisation is to be saved, even at its present level, it behoves all people in all nations to do what they can by joining hands to save what we have, that we may use it as the vantage ground for further progress, rather than run the risk of all of us sliding in the abyss together.”
Stanley Baldwin (1867–1947) first seen 1923 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Speech in the House of Commons (23 July 1923).
“The great task of this generation, in my view, is to save democracy, to preserve it and to inspire it. The ideal of democracy is a very fine one, but no ideals can run of themselves...All government of the people can be presented, as it were, on the circumference of a wheel, and government runs in very varying degree from the most complete and absolute autocracy, step by step, to chaos, and you find instances in history of governments passing through every phase on that circumference...Now we are at a point in that wheel, and that point is Democracy, with representative government. We have to remember that the price of liberty is eternal vigilance, and, I may add, eternal knowledge, eternal sympathy, and eternal understanding; and it is our duty in this generation to keep the State steady at the point to which we have attained, knowing full well the risks that lie on either hand by slipping back in the one direction of the wheel or the other, the one direction drawing to a curtailment of our liberty, the other direction being that in which liberty tends to licence.”
Stanley Baldwin (1867–1947) first seen 1923 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Speech at the Philip Scott College (27 September 1923), quoted in On England, and Other Addresses (1926), pp. 149-150
“Now, surely, when we want to educate ourselves for the purpose of citizenship...If you can clear the mind of cant and detect the fallacy, whatever guise it may be wearing, I think you have made a long step forward in the education that every citizen in a democracy that may hope to endure must have. I think that we all of us realise to-day that no civilised community is bound necessarily and by an inscrutable fate to progress, and there are such things in civilisation as checks, that there is such a thing as retrogression, and that the mere existence of a civilised community is no guarantee either for its continuance or for its progress— in other words, that unless we are the faithful guardians of such civilisation as we have already attained to, we run the risk of seeing the whole of the progress that has been made with such infinite labour up to our own time gradually slipping back and back and back.”
Stanley Baldwin (1867–1947) first seen 1923 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Speech at the Philip Scott College (27 September 1923), quoted in On England, and Other Addresses (1926), pp. 150-151
“This country of ours has been the birthplace and the home of some of the greatest movements that have yet arisen for human freedom and human progress, and the strength of our race is not yet exhausted. We have confused ourselves in Great Britain of recent years by a curious diffidence, and by a fear of relying upon ourselves. The result has been that many of those who have been eager for the progress of our country have only succeeded in befogging themselves and their fellow-countrymen, by filling their bellies with the east wind of German Socialism and Russian Communism and French Syndicalism. Rather should they have looked deep into the hearts of their own people, relying on that common sense and political sense that has never failed our race. ... [That] far from following at the tail of exploded Continental theorists, is ready once more to lead the way of the world as she was destined to do from the beginning of time, and to show other peoples, many peoples who have not yet learned what real political freedom is, that the mother of political freedom is still capable of guiding the way to her children and her children's children.”
Stanley Baldwin (1867–1947) first seen 1923 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Speech at the Philip Scott College (27 September 1923), quoted in On England, and Other Addresses (1926), pp. 153-154
“...to me, at least, this unemployment problem is the most crucial problem of our country. I regard it as such. I can fight it. I am willing to fight it. I cannot fight it without weapons. I have for myself come to the conclusion that—owing to the conditions that exist to-day in the world, having regard to the economic environment, having regard to the situation of our country—if we go on pottering along as we are we shall have grave unemployment with us to the end of time. And I have come to the conclusion myself that the only way of fighting this subject is by protecting the home market. (Loud and continued cheering.)”
Stanley Baldwin (1867–1947) first seen 1923 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Speech to the National Unionist Association Conference in Plymouth (25 October 1923), quoted in The Times (26 October 1923), p. 17
“I am just one of yourselves, who has been called to special work for the country at this time. I never sought the office. I never planned out or schemed my life. I have but one idea, which was an idea that I inherited, and it was the idea of service — service to the people of this country. My father lived in the belief all his life … It is a tradition; it is in our bones; and we have to do it. That service seemed to lead one by way of business and the county council into Parliament, and it has led one through various strange paths to where one is; but the ideal remains the same, because all my life I believed from my heart the words of Browning, "All service ranks the same with God". It makes very little difference whether a man is driving a tramcar or sweeping streets or being Prime Minister, if he only brings to that service everything that is in him and performs it for the sake of mankind.”
Stanley Baldwin (1867–1947) first seen 1923 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Speech in Worcester (7 November 1923), quoted in On England, and Other Addresses (1926), p. 19
“The future lies between hon. Members opposite and ourselves. We are not afraid on this side of the House of social reform. Members of our party were fighting for the working classes when Members or the ancestors of Members opposite were shackled with laissez faire. Disraeli was advocating combination among agricultural labourers years before the agricultural labourer had the vote, and when he first began to preach the necessity of sanitation in the crowded centres of this country, the Liberal party called it a "policy of sewage." We stand on three basic principles, as we have done for two generations past—the maintenance of the institutions of our country, the preservation and the development of our Empire, and the improvement of the conditions of our own people; and we adapt those principles to the changing needs of each generation. Do my Friends behind me look like a beaten army? We shall be ready to take up the challenge from any party whenever it be issued, wherever it is issued and by whomsoever it be thrown down.”
Stanley Baldwin (1867–1947) first seen 1924 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Speech in the House of Commons (21 January 1924)
“If there is any party in the State which, by its traditions and its history, is entitled to put in the forefront of its work and its programme the betterment of the conditions of life of the working classes, it is our party. (Hear, hear.) We were fighting the battle of the factory hand long before he had a vote; and when the Liberals were tied up in the shackles of laissez faire we were speaking in favour of the combination of working men, long before the Liberals had thought of the subject. It is more than 50 years ago that Disraeli was calling the attention of the country to housing and health questions, and they mocked him with the policy of sewage. The sanitation, or let me say the spiritual sanitation, of our people should have the first call on the historic Tory Party. It is just in the measure as we can convince the country, by the service we give the country, that we are as genuinely interested in these questions and as generally prepared to sacrifice ourselves in solving these questions as any member of the Labour Party, that the country will trust us and that the country will return us again into power.”
Stanley Baldwin (1867–1947) first seen 1924 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Speech to a meeting of the Unionist Party at the Hotel Cecil (11 February 1924), quoted in The Times (12 February 1924), p. 17
“The rhetoric of to-day, the rhetoric we have to consider, is the rhetoric of the "Bulging corn bins." I suppose that this gift has been responsible for more bloodshed on this earth than all the guns and explosives that have ever been invented. If we look back only over the last century, was there anything more responsible for the French Revolution than the literary rhetoric of Rousseau, fanned by the verbal rhetoric of Robespierre and others, just as the Russian Revolution was due to the rhetoric of Kerensky—flatulent rhetoric which filled the bellies of his people with the east wind? That appalling twopenny-ha'penny gift of fluency, with the addition of a certain amount of training and of imagination in word-spinning, is the kind of rhetoric which stirs the emotions of the ignorant mob and sets it moving. It is because such forces can be set in motion by rhetoric that I have no regard for it, but a positive horror.”
Stanley Baldwin (1867–1947) first seen 1924 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Speech at the Cambridge Union (March 1924), quoted in On England, and Other Addresses (1926), pp. 95-96
“I think that throughout this country there is to-day a far greater desire than there has ever been before to hear plain, unadorned statements of cases...Let us always remember this: when we come to big things we do not need rhetoric. Truth, we have always been told, is naked. She requires very little clothing. After all, St. Paul was no orator, and yet his speeches and his teachings seem to have spread and to have lasted a long time. I cannot help feeling that if we were to go back two thousand years I would back St. Paul and the results of his teaching against all the rhetoric of a Sunday paper or of the leading orators of the age.”
Stanley Baldwin (1867–1947) first seen 1924 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Speech at the Cambridge Union (March 1924), quoted in On England, and Other Addresses (1926), pp. 96-97
“Sir Walter Scott, Wordsworth, Byron...Carlyle, Tennyson, John Henry Newman...Thackeray, Browning and Dickens. There was a galaxy of talent of the highest order in a literature that stands second to none in the world...No country can compare with our own in the literature of that period...I have always firmly held that there is no race with more ability latent than our own, or with a higher aptitude for mechanical genius. When the College was founded, Hargreaves, Arkwright and Crompton, all sons of working men, were inventing the machines which brought the cotton industry. I mention these names to show the stuff of which our people are made, and how that stuff is worth training and educating. It would be a very interesting subject, for anyone who cared to explore it, to see how many of the mechanical inventions which are light-heartedly attributed to Americans are really the product of British brains, whether they were British brains which have gone to work in that country, or the brains of children of British parents who have gone there.”
Stanley Baldwin (1867–1947) first seen 1924 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Speech at Birkbeck College (20 March 1924), quoted in On England, and Other Addresses (1926), pp. 143-144
“Now, I always think that one of the most curious contradictions about the English stock is this: that while the criticism that is often made of us is not without an element of truth, and that is that as a nation we are less open to the intellectual sense than the Latin races, yet through that may be a fact, there is no nation on earth that has had the same knack of producing geniuses. It is almost a characteristic of the English race; there is hardly any line in which the nation has not produced geniuses, and in a nation which may people might think restrained, unable to express itself, in this same nation you have a literature second to none that has ever existed in the world, and certainly in poetry supreme.”
Stanley Baldwin (1867–1947) first seen 1924 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Speech at the annual dinner of The Royal Society of St. George (6 May 1924), quoted in On England, and Other Addresses (1926), pp. 2-3