David Lloyd George quotes: top 71 famous quotes by David Lloyd George

Don't be afraid to take a big step if one is indicated. You can't cross a chasm in two small jumps.

— David Lloyd George

“The finest eloquence is that which gets things done; the worst is that which delays them.”

— David Lloyd George

“Lucidity of speech is unquestionably one of the surest tests of mental precision ... In my experience a confused talker is never a clear thinker.”

— David Lloyd George

“A young man who isn't a socialist hasn't got a heart; an old man who is a socialist hasn't got a head.”

— David Lloyd George

What do you want to be a sailor for? There are greater storms in politics than you will ever find at sea. Piracy, broadsides, blood on the decks. You will find them all in politics.

— David Lloyd George

He has sat on the fence so long that the iron has entered his soul.

— David Lloyd George

“What is our task? To make Britain a fit country for heroes to live in.”

— David Lloyd George

Liberty is not merely a privilege to be conferred; it is a habit to be acquired.

— David Lloyd George

Liberty has restraints but no frontiers.

— David Lloyd George

Once blood is shed in a national quarrel reason and right are swept aside by the rage of angry men.

— David Lloyd George

If the people really knew [the truth] the war would be stopped tomorrow. But of course they don't know and can't know.

— David Lloyd George

“You cannot trust the interests of any class entirely to another class; and you cannot trust the interests of any sex to another sex.”

— David Lloyd George

“Four specters haunt the Poor - Old Age, Accident, Sickness and Unemployment. We are going to exorcise them. We are going to drive hunger from the hearth. We mean to banish the workhouse from the horizon of every workman in the land.”

— David Lloyd George

“The nations slithered over the brink into the boiling cauldron of war without any trace of apprehension or dismay ... The nations backed their machines over the precipice not one of them wanted war, certainly not on this scale”

— David Lloyd George

“Do not be afraid of taking a big step-you cannot cross a chasm in two steps.”

— David Lloyd George

Who ordained that the few should have the land (of Britain) as a prerequisite; who made 10,000 people owners of the soil and the rest of us trespassers in the land of our birth?

— David Lloyd George

“It is either Christ or chaos.”

— David Lloyd George

Sincerity is the surest road to confidence.

— David Lloyd George

“Peace must be framed on so equitable a basis, that the nations would not wish to disturb it ... so that the confidence of the German people shall be put in the equity of their cause and not in the might of their armies.”

— David Lloyd George

Golf is the only game where the worst player gets the best of it. He obtains more out of it as regards both exercise and enjoyment, for the good player gets worried over the slightest mistake, whereas the poor player makes too many mistakes to worry about them.

— David Lloyd George

“[Lloyd George] said that Harding 's speech on American naval aspirations made him feel that he would pawn his shirt rather than allow America to dominate the seas. If this was to be the outcome of the League of Nations propaganda, he was sorry for the world and in particular for America.”

— David Lloyd George

“Great Britain would spend her last guinea to keep a navy superior to that of the United States or any other power.”

— David Lloyd George

“We are fighting Germany, Austria and drink, and as far as I can see, the greatest of these three deadly foes is drink.”

— David Lloyd George

“A fully equipped duke costs as much to keep up as two Dreadnoughts, and dukes are just as great a terror - and they last longer.”

— David Lloyd George

“The man who tries to make the flag an object of a single party is a greater traitor to that flag than any man who fires at it.”

— David Lloyd George

“Explain to me again the difference between superstitious beliefs or pagan incantations, and scientific ones. Be braver - you cannot cross a chasm in two small jumps.”

— David Lloyd George

If you want to understand a subject promise to speak on it.

— David Lloyd George

“Of all the bigotries that savage the human temper there is none so stupid as the anti-Semitic.”

— David Lloyd George

“Winston [Churchill] is the only remaining specimen of a real Tory.”

— David Lloyd George

“Doctinaires are the vultures of principle. They feed upon principle after it is dead.”

— David Lloyd George

Aristrocracy is like cheese. The older it is the higher it becomes.

— David Lloyd George

“[Proportional representation is a] device for defeating democracy, the principle of which was that the majority should rule, and for bringing faddists of all kinds into Parliament, and establishing groups and disintegrating parties.”

— David Lloyd George

“Wisdom is like a baobab tree; no one individual can embrace it.”

— David Lloyd George

When they circumcised Herbert Samuel they threw away the wrong bit

— David Lloyd George

“Every man has a House of Lords in his own head. Fears, prejudices, misconceptions - those are the peers and they are hereditary.”

— David Lloyd George

“I am the last man in the world to say that the succor which is given us from America is not in itself something to rejoice at greatly. But I also say that I can see more in the knowledge that America is going to win a right to be at the conference table when the terms of peace are discussed ... It would have been a tragedy for mankind if America had not been there, and there with all her influence and power.”

— David Lloyd George

You get to know more of the character of a man in a round of golf than in six months of political experience.

— David Lloyd George

“The doctors are always changing their opinions. They always have some new fad.”

— David Lloyd George

“Unemployment, with its injustice for the man who seeks and thirsts for employment, who begs for labour and cannot get it, and who is punished for failure he is not responsible for by the starvation of his children
that torture is something that private enterprise ought to remedy for its own sake.”

— David Lloyd George

The world is becoming like a lunatic asylum run by lunatics.

— David Lloyd George

“Neville [Chamberlain] has a retail mind in a wholesale business.”

— David Lloyd George

“If you listen to the neverdo's, it's never done.”

— David Lloyd George

The home front is always underrated by Generals in the field. And yet that is where the Great War was won and lost. The Russian, Bulgarian, Austrian and German home fronts fell to pieces before their armies collapsed.

— David Lloyd George

“Believe me, Germany is unable to wage war.”

— David Lloyd George

“If you want to succeed in politics you must keep your conscience firmly under control.”

— David Lloyd George

“The Bolshevists would blow up the fabric with high explosive, with horror. Others would pull down with the crowbars and with cranks
especially with cranks ... Sweating, slums, the sense of semi-slavery in labour, must go. We must cultivate a sense of manhood by treating men as men.”

— David Lloyd George

“The government are behaving like a bevy of maiden aunts who have fallen among buccaneers.”

— David Lloyd George

“Hitler is a prodigious genius.”

— David Lloyd George

“Great men sometimes lose the reins and lose their heads. This time, let us hope that they will retain them and that when victory is assured they will sit down and reckon what the future is going to be for their countries as well as for other lands.”