William Ewart Gladstone Zitate

Speech to the Hawarden Amateur Horticultural Society (17 August 1876), as quoted in "Mr. Gladstone On Cottage Gardening", The Times (18 August 1876), p. 9
1870s
Kontext: I am delighted to see how many young boys and girls have come forward to obtain honourable marks of recognition on this occasion, — if any effectual good is to be done to them, it must be done by teaching and encouraging them and helping them to help themselves. All the people who pretend to take your own concerns out of your own hands and to do everything for you, I won't say they are imposters; I won't even say they are quacks; but I do say they are mistaken people. The only sound, healthy description of countenancing and assisting these institutions is that which teaches independence and self-exertion... When I say you should help yourselves — and I would encourage every man in every rank of life to rely upon self-help more than on assistance to be got from his neigbours — there is One who helps us all, and without whose help every effort of ours is in vain; and there is nothing that should tend more, and there is nothing that should tend more to make us see the beneficence of God Almighty than to see the beauty as well as the usefulness of these flowers, these plants, and these fruits which He causes the earth to bring forth for our comfort and advantage.

Speech in West Calder, Scotland (27 November 1879), quoted in W. E. Gladstone, Midlothian Speeches 1879 (Leicester University Press, 1971), p. 116.
1870s
Kontext: My fourth principle is—that you should avoid needless and entangling engagements. You may boast about them, you may brag about them, you may say you are procuring consideration of the country. You may say that an Englishman may now hold up his head among the nations. But what does all this come to, gentlemen? It comes to this, that you are increasing your engagements without increasing your strength; and if you increase your engagements without increasing strength, you diminish strength, you abolish strength; you really reduce the empire and do not increase it. You render it less capable of performing its duties; you render it an inheritance less precious to hand on to future generations.

Kin Beyond Sea https://books.google.com/books?id=R5M2AQAAMAAJ&pg=PA179, published in The North American Review, pp. 179-202
1870s

Letter to his wife, Catherine Gladstone (12 October 1845), quoted in John Morley, The Life of Wiliam Ewart Gladstone: Volume I (London: Macmillan, 1903), p. 383.
1840s
Kontext: Ireland, Ireland! That cloud in the west! That coming storm! That minister of God's retribution upon cruel, inveterate, and but half-atoned injustice! Ireland forces upon us those great social and great religious questions— God grant that we may have courage to look them in the face, and to work through them.

Speech in West Calder, Scotland (27 November 1879), quoted in W. E. Gladstone, Midlothian Speeches 1879 (Leicester University Press, 1971), p. 117.
1870s
Kontext: [My sixth principle is that] the foreign policy of England should always be inspired by the love of freedom. There should be a sympathy with freedom, a desire to give it scope, founded not upon visionary ideas, but upon the long experience of many generations within the shores of this happy isle, that in freedom you lay the firmest foundations both of loyalty and order; the firmest foundations for the development of individual character; and the best provision for the happiness of the nation at large.

Speech https://api.parliament.uk/historic-hansard/commons/1884/may/12/vote-of-censure in the House of Commons (12 May 1884) during the Mahdist War.
1880s
Kontext: The right hon. Gentleman quoted repeatedly this declaration... to keep [rebellion] out of Egypt it is necessary to put it down in the Soudan; and that is the task the right hon. Gentleman desires to saddle upon England. Now, I tell hon. Gentlemen this—that that task means the reconquest of the Soudan. I put aside for the moment all questions of climate, of distance, of difficulties, of the enormous charges, and all the frightful loss of life. There is something worse than that involved in the plan of the right hon. Gentleman. It would be a war of conquest against a people struggling to be free. ["No, no!"] Yes; these are people struggling to be free, and they are struggling rightly to be free.

Speech https://api.parliament.uk/historic-hansard/commons/1864/may/11/second-reading in the House of Commons (11 May 1864)
1860s
Kontext: I venture to say that every man who is not presumably incapacitated by some consideration of personal unfitness or of political danger is morally entitled to come within the pale of the Constitution.... fitness for the franchise, when it is shown to exist—as I say it is shown to exist in the case of a select portion of the working class—is not repelled on sufficient grounds from the portals of the Constitution by the allegation that things are well as they are. I contend, moreover, that persons who have prompted the expression of such sentiments as those to which I have referred, and whom I know to have been Members of the working class, are to be presumed worthy and fit to discharge the duties of citizenship, and that to admission to the discharge of those duties they are well and justly entitled.

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
1850s
Kontext: 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.

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

Homeric Synchronism : An Enquiry Into the Time and Place of Homer (1876), Introduction
1870s
Kontext: 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.

Letter to Mrs. Gladstone (14 January 1860), as quoted in Gladstone as Financier and Economist (1931) by F. W. Hirst, p. 242
1860s
Kontext: I am certain, from experience, of the immense advantage of strict account-keeping in early life. It is just like learning the grammar then, which when once learned need not be referred to afterwards.

Attributed in The National elementary principal https://books.google.com/books?id=T8YVAQAAIAAJ&q=%22Then+will+our+world+know+the+blessings+of+peace.%22&dq=%22Then+will+our+world+know+the+blessings+of+peace.%22&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwj1iNCMvcHLAhUMcz4KHXvcCt84MhDoAQgfMAE (1948) - Volume 28 - Page 34; a similar statement has also become attributed to Jimi Hendrix: "When the power of love overcomes love of power the world will know peace." A similar quotation is found in My Heart Shall Give A Oneness-Feast (1993) by Sri Chinmoy: "My books, they all have only one message: the heart's Power Of Love must replace the mind's Love Of Power. If I have the Power Of Love, then I shall claim the whole World as my own … World Peace can be achieved when the Power Of Love replaces the Love Of Power." An even earlier statement of Chinmoy is found in Meditations: Food For The Soul (1970): "When the power of love replaces the love of power, man will have a new name: God."
Disputed
Variante: We look forward to the time when the Power of Love will replace the Love of Power. Then will our world know the blessings of peace.

No citation to Gladstone found. Hannah More https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hannah_More in 1837 in Hints Towards Forming the Character of a Young Princess https://books.google.com/books?id=lv5JAAAAcAAJ&pg=PA179&lpg=PA179&dq=%E2%80%9CNothing+that+is+morally+wrong+can+be+politically+right.%E2%80%9D&source=bl&ots=ne_BjY9onV&sig=8RyZJKi_o7AvvR3N9WcQUU5Q0TI&hl=en&sa=X&ei=84mhVIufIoahyASOrYCoAw&ved=0CEMQ6AEwBw#v=onepage&q=%E2%80%9CNothing%20that%20is%20morally%20wrong%20can%20be%20politically%20right.%E2%80%9D&f=false, The Works of Hannah More, Vol. 4, said the following on p. 179: "On the Whole, we need not hesitate to assert, that in the long course of events, nothing, that is morally wrong, can be politically right. Nothing, that is inequitable, can be finally successful."
Misattributed

Speech in Leigh, Lancashire (20 October 1868), quoted in The Times (21 October 1868), p. 11.
1860s

Speech in London (9 May 1888), quoted in The Times (10 May 1888), p. 8.
1880s

Speech at Hawarden (5 January 1884), quoted in Gladstone as Financier and Economist (1931) by F. W. Hirst, p. 258
1880s

Letter to Lord Acton (11 February 1885), quoted in The Life of William Ewart Gladstone Volume III (1903) by John Morley, p. 172
1880s

An Examination of the official reply of the Neapolitan Government (London: John Murray, 1952), p. 50.
1850s

Speech https://api.parliament.uk/historic-hansard/commons/1871/may/03/second-reading in the House of Commons (3 May 1871) on the Women's Disabilities Bill.
1870s

Speech http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/commons/1860/feb/10/customs-acts-committee-the-financial in the House of Commons (10 February 1860) on the Anglo-French Commercial Treaty
1860s

Speech, Foresters' Hall, Dalkeith, Scotland (26 November 1879) as part of the Midlothian campaign; published in "Mr Gladstone's visit to Mid-Lothian: Meeting at the Foresters' Hall" (27 November 1879), The Scotsman, p. 6; also quoted in Life of Gladstone (1903) by John Morley, II, (p. 595)
1870s

Holding up a Qur'an in the House of Commons; quoted in Rafiq Zakaria, Muhammad and the Quran (Penguin Books, 1991), p. 59.
«Gladstone...threw the Quran into a closet and said, 'There will be no quiet in the world as long as this remains.'» Reported in Army Officers in Arab Politics and Society (1970) by Eliezer Bee̓ri, p. 367.
Disputed
Variante: "As long as a copy of this accursed book survives there can be no justice in the world." Quoted in Paul G. Lauren, ed., The China Hands' Legacy: Ethics and Diplomacy (Westview Press, 1987), p. 136.

Studies on Homer and the Homeric Age (Oxford University Press, 1858), p. 116.
1850s

Attributed in "Successful Cemetery Advertising" in The American Cemetery (March 1938), p. 13; reported as unverified in Respectfully Quoted: A Dictionary of Quotations (1989)
Disputed

Letter to George William Erskine Russell (6 March 1894), quoted in G. W. E. Russell, One Look Back (Wells Gardner, Darton and Co., 1911), p. 265.
1890s

Speech on the American Civil War, Town Hall, Newcastle upon Tyne (7 October 1862), quoted in The Times (9 October 1862), pp. 7-8.
1860s

Speech in Nottingham (18 October 1887) referring to the Mitchelstown Massacre, quoted in The Times (19 October 1887), p. 6.
1880s