F. E. Smith, 1st Earl of Birkenhead

High Court judge presiding in a sodomy case, seeking advice on sentencing: "Could you tell me, what do you think one ought to give a man who allows himself to be buggered?" Smith: "Oh, thirty shillings or two pounds; whatever you happen to …

Nature has no cure for this sort of madness, though I have known a legacy from a rich relative work wonders.

It would be possible to say without exaggeration that the miners' leaders were the stupidest men in England if we had not frequent occasion to meet the owners.

I have always placed my highest and most permanent hopes upon the eternity of the Communal situation.

To me it is frankly inconceivable that India will ever be fit for Dominion self-government.

Like you, I believe strongly that where there is a revolutionary element expressed in action, one must act resolutely. My reading of Indian history has led me to believe that a Government founded so completely as ours is upon prestige can …

We have the highest authority for believing that the meek shall inherit the earth; though I have never found any particular corroboration of this aphorism in the records of Somerset House.

It appears that we are to reconcile ourselves to the fact that we are to have 1,300,000 unemployed in this country. There are no unemployed in the United States of America, no unemployed at all in France. There are hardly any unemployed in …

An economic creed in an imperfect world must be at least equally adapted to the purposes of war as to the purposes of peace. ... when war came in 1914, what was the situation of this country? The free-trade system had wholly failed to …

The world continues to offer glittering prizes to those who have stout hearts and sharp swords

Politically, economically and philosophically the motive of self-interest not only is but must...and ought to be the mainspring of human conduct...For as long a time as the records of history have been preserved human societies passed …

...votes are to swords exactly what bank notes are to gold—the one is effective only because the other is believed to be behind it.

Instead of seeing that men got enough to eat the Government spent the whole Session in securing that they should have nothing to drink.

We are asked to permit a hundred men to go round to the house of a man who wishes to exercise the common law right in this country to sell his labour where and when he chooses, and to 'advise' him or 'peacefully persuade' him not to work. …