William Ewart Gladstone

The hopelessness of the Turkish Government should make me witness with delight its being swept out of the countries which it tortures. Next to the Ottoman Government nothing can be more deplorable and blameworthy than jealousies between Greek and Slav and plans by the States already existing for appropriating other territory. Why not Macedonia for the Macedonians as well as Bulgaria for the Bulgarians and Serbia for the Serbians?

Letter quoted in Mr. Gladstone and The Balkan Confederation in The Times (6 February 1897), 1897

To serve Armenia is to serve the Civilization.

A letter from 1 May, 1896, Hawarden, as cited in:, 1896

All selfishness is the great curse of the human race, and when we have a real sympathy with other people less happy than ourselves that is a good sign of something like a beginning of deliverance from selfishness.

Speech at Hawarden (28 May 1890), quoted in The Times (29 May 1890), p. 12, 1890

The rule of our policy is that nothing should be done by the state which can be better or as well done by voluntary effort; and I am not aware that, either in its moral or even its literary aspects, the work of the state for education has as yet proved its superiority to the work of the religious bodies or of philanthropic individuals. Even the economical considerations of materially augmented cost do not appear to be wholly trivial.

Liberal Manifesto (September 1885), 1885

National injustice is the surest road to national downfall.

Speech, Plumstead (30 November 1878) as quoted in Congressional Record, vol. 57, p. 4503, 1878

A rational reaction against the irrational excesses and vagaries of scepticism may, I admit, readily degenerate into the rival folly of credulity. To be engaged in opposing wrong affords, under the conditions of our mental constitution, but a slender guarantee for being right.

Homeric Synchronism : An Enquiry Into the Time and Place of Homer (1876), Introduction, 1876

The idea of abolishing Income Tax is to me highly attractive, both on other grounds & because it tends to public economy.

Letter to H. C. E. Childers (3 April 1873), 1873

I am inclined to say that the personal attendance and intervention of women in election proceedings, even apart from any suspicion of the wider objects of many of the promoters of the present movement, would be a practical evil not only of the gravest, but even of an intolerable character.

Speech in the House of Commons on the Women's Disabilities Bill (3 May 1871), 1871

Hephaistos bears in Homer the double stamp of a Nature-Power, representing the element of fire, and of an anthropomorphic deity who is the god of art at a period when the only fine art known was in works of metal produced by the aid of fire.

Jeventus Mundi: The Gods and Men of the Heroic Age (1870) p. 289., 1870

We may have our own opinions about slavery; we may be for or against the South; but there is no doubt that Jefferson Davis and other leaders of the South have made an army; they are making, it appears, a navy; and they have made what is more than either—they have made a Nation... We may anticipate with certainty the success of the Southern States so far as regards their separation from the North. I cannot but believe that that event is as certain as any event yet future and countingent can be.

Speech on the American Civil War, Town Hall, Newcastle upon Tyne (7 October 1862), quoted in The Times (9 October 1862), pp. 7-8, 1862

Economy is the first and great article (economy such as I understand it) in my financial creed. The controversy between direct and indirect taxation holds a minor, though important place.

Letter to his brother Robertson of the Financial Reform Association at Liverpool (1859), as quoted in Gladstone as Financier and Economist (1931) by F. W. Hirst, p. 241, 1859

Decision by majorities is as much an expedient, as lighting by gas.

Studies on Homer and the Homeric Age (Oxford University Press, 1858), p. 116., 1858

But how is the spirit of expenditure to be exorcised? Not by preaching; I doubt if even by yours. I seriously doubt whether it will ever give place to the old spirit of economy, as long as we have the income-tax. There, or hard by, lie questions of deep practical moment.

As the British Constitution is the most subtile organism which has proceeded from the womb and the long gestation of progressive history, so the American Constitution is, so far as I can see, the most wonderful work ever struck off by the brain and purpose of man.

At last, my friends, I am come amongst you. And I am come…unmuzzled.