Quote#World
Half the wrong conclusions at which mankind arrive are reached by the…
Quote byHenry Temple, 3rd Viscount Palmerston · 1784–1865
Commonly attributed — not confirmed in an authoritative edition. Cited on Wikiquote to: Letter to H. L. Bulwer (1 September 1839), quoted in Sir Henry Lytton Bulwer's Life of Palmerston (1871), vol. 2, pp. 261-62. (Palmerston was criticizing descriptions of the Ottoman Empire as "decaying," etc.).
English (original)
Half the wrong conclusions at which mankind arrive are reached by the abuse of metaphors, or by mistaking general resemblance or imaginary similarity for real identity.
— Henry Temple, 3rd Viscount Palmerston
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But he came not here a bigoted polemic, with religious tracts in one hand, and civil persecution in the other; he came to regenerate and avenge the prostrate and insulted liberties of England; he came with peace and toleration on his lips, …
Governments are not at liberty to act solely from motives of generous sympathy for the sufferings of an oppressed people, they are bound by the severer rules of general principles, to respect rights which are inherent in other nations.