Quotes from John Bright

This excessive love for "the balance of power" is neither more nor less than a gigantic system of out-door relief for the aristocracy of Great Britain.

I am the great terror of the squires, they seem to be seized with a sort of bucolic mania in dealing with me.

Ireland is never unanimous but on one thing -- getting something from the Imperial Exchequer.

Since I have taken a part in public affairs, the fact of the vast weight of the poverty and ignorance that exists at the bottom of the social scale has been a burden on my mind, and is so now. I have always hoped that the policy which I have advocated, and has been accepted in principle, will tend gradually but greatly to relieve the pauperism and the suffering which we still see among the working classes of society.

The knowledge of the ancient languages is mainly a luxury.

My opinion is that the Northern States will manage somehow to muddle through.

The Government and the Parliament, even the House of Lords, will consent to a large increase of electors and men who have not considered the subject fully will imagine they have gained much by the concession.

It was in the year 1820, when I was nearly nine years old, that I first went to a regular school.

I. cannot stoop to reply to the folly and the slander of every poor Tory partisan who assails me, and I should not have noticed you but for the fact that you are a member of the House of Commons.

Force is not a remedy.

With regard to the ballot, it is worthy of remark that no meeting has been held in favour of Reform at which the ballot has not been strongly insisted upon.

Possibly you are not aware of the fact that the largest sum given by any contributor to the fund is but a trifle when compared with the losses suffered by nearly all the firms in the cotton trade during the disastrous years of the American war.

He is a self-made man and worships his creator.

Popular applause veers with the wind.

Any Reform Bill which is worth a moment's thought, or the smallest effort to carry it, must at least double, and it ought to do much more than double, the representation of the metropolitan boroughs and of all the great cities of the United Kingdom.

I hope this view of the question may be a mistaken one, because it does not seem to me very unlikely that the suffrage will be granted to women.

A year ago I was in the city of Genoa, and I found that it returned seven representatives to the Sardinian Parliament at Turin, seven being its fair share, calculated according to the population of the various cities and districts of the Sardinian kingdom.

The Government and the Parliament, even the House of Lords, will consent to a large increase of electors; and men who have not considered the subject fully will imagine they have gained much by the concession.

Training and development: The best development programmes change the way people see themselves

The angel of death has been abroad throughout the land; you may almost hear the beating of his wings.

Demand the ballot as the undeniable right of every man who is called to the poll, and take special care that the old constitutional rule and principle, by which majorities alone shall decide in Parliamentary elections, shall not be violated.

What is a great love of books? It is something like a personal introduction to the great and good men of all past times. Books, it is true, are silent as you see them on their shelves; but, silent as they are, when I enter a library I feel as if almost the dead were present, and I know if I put questions to these books they will answer me with all the faithfulness and fulness which has been left in them by the great men who have left the books with us.

In the houses of the humble a little library in my opinion is a most precious possession.

I would prefer to have one comfortable room well stocked with books to all you could give me in the way of decoration which the highest art could supply.