"If there is anything...it is my training, which has given me, whether I can use it or not, a knowledge and a sympathy very difficult for any man to attain who has had an exclusively political training I regard it as of the greatest value to myself that during the formative years of my life, and during the ten and twenty years when I first started work in the world, I worked in close contact with all classes of people in this country, and enjoyed, through no credit to myself, the goodwill which I have inherited from generations that have gone before me and left behind a name for honesty, fair play, right judgment, and kindliness to those with whom they worked. Through that, whether I succeed or not, I believe I have an understanding of the mind of the people of the country which I could have gained in no other way. It is through this that I have that ineradicable belief and faith in our people which sustains me through good times and evil, and it is because of this that I have every confidence that, whatever troubles may come to this country, or in this country at any time, the native strength and virtue of our people will overcome everything. There is only one thing which I feel is worth giving one's whole strength to, and that is the binding together of all classes of our people in an effort to make life in this country better in every sense of the word. That is the main end and object of my life in politics."
Quote Details
Added by wikiquote-import-bot
Unverified quote
0 likes
Prime Ministers of the United KingdomPoliticians from EnglandAcademics from EnglandAnglicans from the United KingdomConservative Party (UK) politicians
Original Language: English
Available Languages (1)
Sources
Speech in Stourport (12 January 1925), quoted in On England, and Other Addresses (1926), pp. 15-16
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Stanley_Baldwin
Revision History
No revisions have been submitted for this quote.
Categories
Stanley Baldwin
Stanley Baldwin, 1st Earl Baldwin of Bewdley KG PC (3 August 1867 – 14 December 1947) was Prime Minister of the United Kingdom on three separate occasions (1923–24, 1924–29 and 1935–37).
307 quotes on TrueQuotesView all quotes by Stanley Baldwin →
Related Quotes
"I claim that, unlike the totalitarian States, we have managed to secure both progress and orderly development in indu…"
"The Conservatives can't talk of class war: they started it."
"...ideas may be very dangerous things. There is no country in Europe that has a constitution comparable to ours. I do…"
"The time was, when I was a boy, when people hardly dreamed that the day would come when there would be large numbers …"
"Improvements in housing—in which the Government has played a large part—is another direction in which sta…"
"My tongue, not my pen, is my instrument."
"I went out into Downing Street a happy man. Of course it was partly because an old buffer like me enjoys feeling that…"
"In the remote parts of that countryside where I was born and where old English phrases linger, though they may now be…"
"I do not think there is any single thing more important for our people, and for those who form public opinion, than t…"
"I come back to speed, and I want my last words to be on speed. I see a danger ahead that our people may become mechan…"