Quote#Success & Failure
Statesmanship […] must consider first the fortunes of the common…
Quote byJohn Buchan · 1875–1940
Commonly attributed — not confirmed in an authoritative edition. Cited on Wikiquote to: Midwinter (1923), Ch. II.
English (original)
Statesmanship […] must consider first the fortunes of the common people. No statesman has a right to risk these fortunes unless he be reasonably assured of success.
— John Buchan
More from John Buchan
The secret of life is to find out what one really wants.
Happiness lies only in a divine unrest; and if you are lapped in comfort you stagnate and miss it.
The robe of flesh wears thin, and with the years God shines through all things.
The Simple Life is the last refuge of complicated and restless souls.
The task of leadership is not to put greatness into humanity, but to elicit it, for the greatness is already there.
In our modern world we have seen inaugurated the reign of a dull bourgeois rationalism, which finds some inadequate reason for all things in heaven and earth and makes a god of its own infallibility.