Arthur Balfour quotes

Arthur Balfour was a British statesman and Prime Minister, distinguished for his role in early 20th-century politics. His policies and the Balfour Declaration had a lasting impact on international affairs, particularly concerning the Middle East. He contributed significantly to both domestic reforms in Britain and diplomatic relations abroad. Here are 59 of his quotes:

Biography should be written by an acute enemy.

Arthur Balfour

The General Strike has taught the working classes more in four days than years of talking could have done.

Arthur Balfour

His Majesty's Government views with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, and will use their best endeavours to facilitate the achievement of this object, it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of the existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine, or the rights and political status enjoyed by Jews in any other country.

Arthur Balfour

Men's wishes are not always vain, nor is every life too brief to satisfy its possessor. Only when we attempt, from the point of view permitted by physics and biology, to sum up the possibilities of collective human endeavour, do we fully realise the "vanity of vanities" proclaimed by the Preacher.

Arthur Balfour

Our admiration for natural beauty /.../ cares not to understand either the physical theories which explain what it admires, or the psychological theories which explain its admiration. It does not deny the truth of the first, nor (within due limits) the sufficiency of the second. But it requires more. It feels itself belittled unless conscious purpose can be found somewhere in its pedigree. Physics and psycho-physics, by themselves, suffice not. It longs to regard beauty as a revelation-a revelation from spirit to spirit, not from one kind of atomic agitation to the "psychic" accompaniment of another. On this condition only can its highest values be maintained.'

Arthur Balfour

Whereas reasons may, and usually do, figure among the proximate causes of belief, and thus play a part in both kinds of series (cognitive and causal), it is always possible to trace back the causal series to a point where every trace of rationality vanishes ; where we are left face to face with conditions of beliefs social, physiological, and physical- which, considered in themselves, are quite a-logical in their character. /.../ on any merely naturalistic hypothesis, the rational elements in the causal series lie always on the surface. Penetrate but a short way down, and they are found no more.

Arthur Balfour

On questions of taste there is notoriously the widest divergence of opinion./.../ if, from a survival point of view, one taste be as good as another, it is not the varieties in taste which should cause surprise so much as the uniformities. To be sure, the uniformities have often no deep aesthetic roots. They represent /.../ tendencies to agreement, which govern our social ritual, and thereby make social life possible.

Arthur Balfour

[T]he energies of our system will decay, the glory of the sun will be dimmed, and the earth, tideless and inert, will no longer tolerate the race which has for a moment disturbed its solitude. Man will go down into the pit and all his thoughts will perish.

Arthur Balfour

In politics nothing matters very much, and few things matter at all.

Arthur Balfour

I thought Winston Churchill was a young man of promise, but it appears he is a young man of promises.

Arthur Balfour

He has only half learned the art of reading who has not added to it the more refined art of skipping and skimming.

Arthur Balfour

...there were some things that were true, and some things that were trite; but what was true was trite, and what was not trite was not true...

Arthur Balfour

Logic always seems to be telling us, in language quite unnecessarily technical, what we understood much better before it was explained.

Arthur Balfour

The case which the French present to us with regard to the Left Bank of the Rhine is very forcible, but very one-sided. They draw a lurid picture of future Franco-German relations. They assume that the German population will always far outnumber the French; that as soon as the first shock of defeat has passed away, Germany will organise herself for revenge; that all our attempts to limit armaments will be unsuccessful; that the League of Nations will be impotent; and, consequently, that the invasion of France, which was fully accomplished in 1870, and partially accomplished in the recent War, will be renewed with every prospect of success.

Arthur Balfour

I am 80. I cannot take much more part in public affairs, but I rejoice to think I see growing up younger generations, one by one, who instinctively follow the great example of their forefathers and are predestined with undiminished lustre to carry to future ages the glories of the British Empire.

Arthur Balfour

It is proof of the most vital principle of the English Constitution, which no foreigner can understand, that when they are brought together in the public interest, they never get deflected from the main issue before them by the memory of ancient conflict or the impossibility of working together. That is the great secret of the paradox that in this country alone will you see the perfection of Parliamentary Government carried to the pitch it has been.

Arthur Balfour

Whether an independent Bohemia would be strong enough to hold her own, from a military as well as from a commercial point of view, against Teutonic domination-surrounded as she is at present entirely by German influence-I do not know.

Arthur Balfour

The Government have tyrannically destroyed, so far as the Parliament Bill is concerned, every real power which the Second Chamber possesses. They have in their own fashion imitated Cromwell, without either his excuses or his genius.

Arthur Balfour

It is necessary for us as a nation not merely to be organized for war but to be organized for peace, not only to be an armed nation while other nations are armed but to have our industry, our productive capacity organized while other nations are organizing their industry and their productive capacity.

Arthur Balfour

I hold that fiscal reform is, and must remain, the first constructive work of the Unionist party; That the objects of such reform are to secure more equal terms of competition for British trade and closer commercial union with the Colonies. ... the establishment of a moderate general tariff on manufactured goods, not imposed for the purpose of raising prices or giving artificial protection against legitimate competition, and the imposition of a small duty on foreign corn are not in principle objectionable, and should be adopted if shown to be necessary for the attainment of the ends in view or for the purposes of revenue.

Arthur Balfour

There are those who talk as if Irishmen were justified in disobeying the law because the law comes to them in a foreign garb. I see no reason why any local colour should be given to the Ten Commandments.

Arthur Balfour

I shall offer uncompromising resistance to any measure which may throw obstacles in the way of the teaching of religion in elementary schools. I will not consent in the name of religious freedom, to banish religion from education; or, in the name of religious equality, to plunder the Church.

Arthur Balfour