46 Quotes by Arthur Balfour

Though the parallel is not complete, it is safe to say that science will never touch them unaided by its practical applications. Its wonders may be catalogued for purposes of education, they may be illustrated by arresting experiments, by numbers and magnitudes which startle or fatigue the imagination but they will form no familiar portion of the intellectual furniture of ordinary men unless they be connected, however remotely, with the conduct of ordinary life.

But science is the great instrument of social change, all the greater because its object is not change but knowledge, and its silent appropriation of this dominant function, amid the din of political and religious strife, is the most vital of all the revolutions which have marked the development of modern civilisation.

Science preceded the theory of science, and is independent of it. Science preceded naturalism, and will survive it.

Man, so far as natural science by itself is able to teach us, is no longer the final cause of the universe, the Heaven-descended heir of all the ages. His very existence is an accident, his story a brief and transitory episode in the life of one of the meanest of the planets.

The tyranny of majorities may be as bad as the tyranny of kings.

I do not stare at a gentleman in distress.

No country can allow its safety to be wholly dependent on faithful observance by other states of rules to which they are obliged.

Herbert Asquith's clarity is a great liability because he has nothing to say.

His Majesty's Government looks with favour upon the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jews.