"No Continental country has ever been able to understand the temper of the British people, but, while I give them a note of warning of our foreign critics, let me say what is more to the point to my own friends, that unless they bestir themselves Great Britain will be in a position of peril which it has not known in the memory of their fathers, their grandfathers, their great grandfathers, and if that position of peril should issue in some great catastrophe...this country will not again easily arise. (Hear, hear.) I do not believe there is going to be war between this country and any great foreign Power. (Hear, hear.) Heaven knows I do not desire it, but I do not believe it. Please remember the absolutely only way in which you can secure the peace which you all desire is that you shall be sure of victory if war takes place. (Cheers.)"
Quote Details
Added by wikiquote-import-bot
Unverified quote
0 likes
Prime Ministers of the United KingdomUniversity of Cambridge facultyBritish peersPhilosophers from ScotlandPoliticians from Scotland
Original Language: English
Available Languages (1)
Sources
Speech in Hanley (4 January 1910), quoted in The Times (5 January 1910), p. 7
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Arthur_Balfour
Revision History
No revisions have been submitted for this quote.
Categories
Arthur Balfour
Arthur James Balfour, 1st Earl of Balfour, KG, OM, PC (25 July 1848 – 19 March 1930) was a British Conservative statesman and Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1902 until 1905. The author of several influential works of philosophy, he was one of the most intellectual prime ministers of the 20th century. As Foreign Secretary he authored the Balfour Declaration of 1917, which supported the establishment of a homeland for the Jewish people in Palestine.
81 quotes on TrueQuotesView all quotes by Arthur Balfour →
Related Quotes
"To secure order, freedom, and safety, for the minority as well as for the majority of the Irish people, and to do so …"
"I shall offer uncompromising resistance to any measure which may throw obstacles in the way of the teaching of religi…"
"Cromwell failed because he relied solely upon repressive measures. That mistake I shall not imitate. I shall be as re…"
"There are those who talk as if Irishmen were justified in disobeying the law because the law comes to them in a forei…"
"I have never had to go back beyond the year 1885 to prove that the Irish leaders desired to obtain what they call the…"
"It is unfortunate, considering that enthusiasm moves the world, that so few enthusiasts can be trusted to speak the t…"
"Those who look forward to a period of continuous and, so to speak, inevitable progress, are bound to assign some more…"
"[T]he energies of our system will decay, the glory of the sun will be dimmed, and the earth, tideless and inert, will…"
"[I]t is Authority rather than Reason to which, in the main, we owe, not religion only, but ethics and politics; that …"
"He did not believe that any such transaction could be quoted from the annals of our political or Parliamentary histor…"