Stanley Baldwin Quotes

I am one of those who would rather sink with faith than swim without it.

Dictatorship is like a giant beech-tree - very magnificent to look at in its prime, but nothing grows underneath it.

I would rather trust a woman's instinct than a man's reason.

I think it is well . . . for the man in the street to realise there is no power on earth that can protect him from bombing, whatever people may tell him. The bomber will always get through. The only defence is in offence, which means that you have to kill more women and children more quickly than the enemy if you want to save yourselves.

The intelligent are to the intelligentsia what a gentleman is to a gent.

I would rather be an opportunist and float than go to the bottom with my principles around my neck.

Power without responsibility - the prerogative of the harlot throughout the ages.

War would end if the dead could return.

I wish Stanley Baldwin no ill, but it would have been much better if he had never lived.

The world was never more unsafe for democracy then it is today.

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.

No British Prime Minister of the last seventy years has been more harshly stereotyped than Stanley Baldwin. No one has been so much ignored, after the initial judgements of contemporaries had been made.

Had the employers of past generations all of them dealt fairly with their men there would have been no unions.

The papers conducted by Lord Rothermere and Lord Beaverbrook are not newspapers in the ordinary acceptance of the term. They are engines of propaganda for the constantly-changing policies, desires, personal wishes, and personal likes and dislikes of two men? What the proprietorship of those papers is aiming at is power, and power without responsibility the prerogative of the harlot throughout the ages.

I am a man of peace. I am longing and working and praying for peace, but I will not surrender the safety and security of the British constitution. You placed me in power eighteen months ago by the largest majority accorded to any party for many, many years. Have I done anything to forfeit that confidence? Cannot you trust me to ensure a square deal to secure even justice between man and man?

I am not struck so much by the diversity of testimony as by the many-sidedness of truth.

"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.

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.

When I was a little boy in Worcestershire reading history books I never thought I should have to interfere between a king and his mistress.

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 have yet to learn that the cause of peace can be served by rendering our country impotent.

You will find in politics that you are much exposed to the attribution of false motive. Never complain and never explain.

A platitude is simply a truth repeated till people get tired of hearing it.

The attainment of an ideal is often the beginning of a disillusion.

The work of a Prime Minister is the loneliest job in the world.

The only defense is offense, which means that you have to kill more women and children more quickly than the enemy if you wish to save yourselves.

Let us never forget this: since the day of the air, the old frontiers are gone. When you think of the defense of England you no longer think of the chalk cliffs of Dover; you think of the Rhine. That is where our frontier lies.

A statesman wants courage and a statesman wants vision; but believe me, after six months' experience, he wants first, second, third and all the time - patience.

Whether we like it or not we are consideably bound to Europe.

A lot of hard-faced men who look as if they had done very well out of the war.

Once I leave, I leave. I am not going to speak to the man on the bridge, and I am not going to spit on the deck.

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.

This country to-day [is] the last stronghold of freedom, standing like a rock in a tide that is threatened to submerge the world.

I wish for many reasons flying had never been invented.

Just as the results of inebriety are most painful to the habitually sober, and just as the greatest saints have often been the greatest sinners, so, when the first class brain does something stupid, the stupidity of that occasion is colossal.

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.

There is a wind of nationalism and freedom blowing round the world, and blowing as strongly in Asia as elsewhere.

Do not fear or misunderstand when the Government say they are looking to our defences. I give you my word that there will be no great armaments.

The die-hard opinions of George III couched in the language of Edmund Burke.