John Morley, 1st Viscount Morley of Blackburn quotes

John Morley, 1st Viscount Morley of Blackburn, was a British Liberal statesman, writer, and journalist. Known for his advocacy of classical liberalism and his opposition to imperialism, he played a key role in British politics during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. He was also a notable biographer and essayist, contributing significantly to English letters. Here are 54 of his quotes:

You cannot demonstrate an emotion or prove an aspiration.

John Morley, 1st Viscount Morley of Blackburn

Evolution is not a force but a process; not a cause but a law.

John Morley, 1st Viscount Morley of Blackburn

Where it is a duty to worship the sun it is pretty sure to be a crime to examine the laws of heat.

John Morley, 1st Viscount Morley of Blackburn

It is not enough to do good; one must do it the right way.

John Morley, 1st Viscount Morley of Blackburn

Whether France or Italy or Germany or England has made the greatest contribution in the history of modern civilisation-however that speculative controversy may be settled, this at least is certain, that those are not wrong who hold that Germany's high and strict standard of competency, the purity and vigour of her administration of affairs, her splendid efforts and great success in all branches of science, her glories-for glories they are-in art and literature, and the fixed strength of character and duty in the German people entitle her national ideals to a supreme place among the greatest-ideals that now animate and guide the world. Do not let us forget all that. German ambition is a perfectly intelligible and even lofty ambition.

John Morley, 1st Viscount Morley of Blackburn

Present party designations have become empty of all contents...Vastly extended State expenditure, vastly increased demands from the taxpayer who has to provide the money, social reform regardless of expense, cash exacted from the taxpayer already at his wits' end-when were the problems of plus and minus more desperate? How are we to measure the use and abuse of industrial organization? Powerful orators find "Liberty" the true keyword, but the I remember hearing from a learned student that of "liberty" he knew well over two hundred definitions. Can we be sure that the "haves" and the "have-nots" will agree in their selection of the right one? We can only trust to the growth of responsibility; we may look to circumstances and events to teach their lesson.

John Morley, 1st Viscount Morley of Blackburn

We all know that the besetting danger of Churches is formalism; the besetting danger of State action, of corporate action, is officialism and mechanism; and we all know that it is a drawback to many modern ideals that they rest upon materialism and a soulless secularism.

John Morley, 1st Viscount Morley of Blackburn

Excess of severity is not the path to order. On the contrary, it is the path to the bomb.

John Morley, 1st Viscount Morley of Blackburn

We are told by a Lord of the Admiralty who represents a Sheffield division that it is all over with the old Manchester school, and that we have got into new days. I do not belong to the Manchester school. I have nothing to say about the Manchester school except this- that I chanced to write the life of a very important leader of that school. and what did Mr. Cobden say upon this very point? He said:-"I am willing to spend a hundred millions on the fleet if necessary". The Radical party have never been the party who denied the great proposition that lies at the bottom of British politics- namely, that we must have absolute supremacy at sea.

John Morley, 1st Viscount Morley of Blackburn

I am, and always have been, a pretty strong individualist.

John Morley, 1st Viscount Morley of Blackburn

I have often thought that Strafford was an ideal type, both for governor of Ireland in the 17th century, and governor of India in the 20th century.

John Morley, 1st Viscount Morley of Blackburn

Germany is the power in whose strength, prosperity, and vigorous government, Europe has the most vital interest, because she is the Power best able from her position to deal with Russia.

John Morley, 1st Viscount Morley of Blackburn

Censorship...ought to be confined to the temporary suppression of military and naval news which might assist the enemy. ... Public opinion might be fallible, but it was not half as fallible as individual opinion, and, good or bad, the Government had to lean upon it; how could they do that unless public opinion had full, free, and correct information as to facts?

John Morley, 1st Viscount Morley of Blackburn

History, as Treitschke contends, is first of all the presentation of res gestae, and of active statesmen. The essential things in the statesman are strength of will, courage, massive ambition, passionate joy in the result. It needs no wizard to see how such doctrine as this lends a hand to the sinister school of political historians, who insist that the event is its own justification; that Force and Right are one.

John Morley, 1st Viscount Morley of Blackburn

But are you so sure...that when Ulster, or the corner of Ulster knows that Great Britain has made up its mind that there is to be an effective, a real self-government in Ireland-are you so sure Ulster will turn its back upon Ireland and claim to be excluded from such Government? ("No.”) I do not believe it. ... I say that a good deal of this zeal for Ulster is artificial.

John Morley, 1st Viscount Morley of Blackburn

In the American civil war partisanship with the sides there was the veil of a kind of civil war here. An unspoken instinct revealed to mutually hostile classes in England that their battle also was being fought in the contest between the free North and the slave-holding South. The triumph of the North, as has been often remarked, was the force that made English liberalism powerful enough to enfranchise the workmen, depose official Christianity in Ireland, and deal a first blow at the landlords.

John Morley, 1st Viscount Morley of Blackburn

The proper memory for a politician is one that knows what to remember and what to forget.

John Morley, 1st Viscount Morley of Blackburn

I said years ago that I would rather be the man who helped on a rational scheme which should secure the comfort of old age than I would be a general who had won ever so many victories in the field. These are, to me, the two most tragic sights in the world-a man who is able to work, and anxious to work, and who cannot get work; and the other tragic sight is that of a man who has worked until his eyes have become dim, and his natural force has become abated, and he is left to spend the declining years of a life that has been so nobly used, so honourably used, in straits, difficulties, and hardships.

John Morley, 1st Viscount Morley of Blackburn

Had they thought of the relations between Imperialism and social reform? Could we continue this process of territorial expansion with our increasing Budgets? What we wanted was resolute and sustained attention to strengthening our industrial position. What was the use of conquering new markets when it was as much as we could do to hold the markets which we had already? (Cheers.) As to the Liberal policy...the day when the Liberal party forsook its old principles of peace, economy, and reform the Liberal party would have to disband and to disappear. (Cheers.) The Socialists would take its place. ... [I]f he were to choose between the Socialist and the Militarist, with all his random aims, his profusion of national resources, his disregard for the rights and feelings of other people, he himself declared he considered the Socialist's standards were higher and their means were no less wise.

John Morley, 1st Viscount Morley of Blackburn

The evils of a military system, which, after all, every day must attenuate, are light compared with the evils of an anarchic conservatism reinstated in central Europe. Divided Germany means preponderating Russia. What can be more desirable in the interests of the highest civilisation than the interposition in the heart of the European state-system, of a powerful, industrious, intelligent, and progressive people, between the western nations and the half-barbarous Russian swarms? To the careful observer of the history of modern Europe it is plain that increasing vigour and self-conscious strength in Germany are other words for the spread eastwards of the best of those ideas, the most durable of those civilising elements, in which the difference of historic development has enabled England and France to anticipate her.

John Morley, 1st Viscount Morley of Blackburn

There is a loud cry in these days for clues that shall guide the plain man through the vast bewildering labyrinth of printed volumes.

John Morley, 1st Viscount Morley of Blackburn

Success depends on three things: who says it, what he says, how he says it; and of these three things, what he says is the least important.

John Morley, 1st Viscount Morley of Blackburn