Extended excerpt [From the first part of a five-lecture series Inge delivered at Oxford University]

“A good government remains the greatest of human blessings, and no nation has ever enjoyed it. There is no ruler, says Plato, who would be unjustly condemned by his subjects. The world sways backwards and forwards between the ideals of Order and Liberty; not because anyone thinks it possible or desirable to enjoy either of those boons without the other, but because, after a brief experience of governments based on one of them, men think that no price is too high to pay for being delivered from it.” (p. 60)

Source link: Outspoken Essays (Second Series) (1922) online via Internet Archive: https://archive.org/stream/cu31924029632563#page/n71/mode/2up/search/good+government+remains

Extended excerpt [From Inge’s Romanes Lecture, delivered at Oxford University]

“If we turn to history for a confirmation of the Spencerian doctrine, we find on the contrary, that civilization is a disease which is almost invariably fatal, unless its course is checked in time.” (p. 13)

Source link: Romanes Lectures Decennial Issue (1920) online via Google Books: https://books.google.com/books?id=ww47AQAAMAAJ&pg=RA5-PA13&lpg=RA5-PA13&dq=If+we+turn+to+history+for+a+confirmation+of+the+Spencerian+doctrine

Misattribution note: British Prime Minister Winston Churchill often gets credit for coining the democracy-is-worse-except-for-all-other-governments idea, but by the time he repeated the phrase in the 1940s it was already a popular saying. 

Re-quote notes: A number of politicians and pundits have repeated different versions of the Inge quote. A few popularly cited examples include:

1935 – J.R. Clynes, English politician: “Democracy at its worst is better than dictatorship at its best.”

[Re-quote source: J.R. Clynes, English politician, in a campaign speech (17 September 1935) Manchester, England; cited in “Labour and Crisis. Willing to Defer an Election Pending Peace,” Lancashire Evening Post, 18 September 1935, No. 15,174, p. 4, column 5; online via The British Newspaper Archive [subscription service] www.britishnewspaperarchive.co.uk]

1937 – R. Brook, English deacon: “An educated democracy may or may not be the best form of government, but quite certainly an uneducated democracy is the worse.”

[Re-quote source: R. Brook, Archdeacon of Coventry, King Henry VIII School Founder’s Day sermon (24 July 1937) Coventry Cathedral; in “Be Good Sweet Child-” Archdeacon and a Foolish Maxim,” 24 July 1937, Midland Daily Telegraph, Coventry, p. 1, column 1; online via The British Newspaper Archive [subscription service] www.britishnewspaperarchive.co.uk]

1947 – A version of Inge’s quote was also famously repeated by British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, although Churchill himself noted that he was not the first to coin the idea: “Many forms of Government have been tried, and will be tried in this world of sin and woe. No one pretends that democracy is perfect or all-wise. Indeed it has been said that democracy is the worst form of Government except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time.”

[Re-quote source: Winston Churchill, House of Commons debate (11 November 1947) transcript via “Parliament Bill,” HC Deb 11 November 1947, Vol. 444, cc203-321, Hansard, sec. 207; online via Hansard, api.parliament.uk/historic-hansard]

Extended excerpt [Essay]:

“Democracy is a form of government which may be rationally defended, not as being good, but as being less bad than any other. Its strongest merits seem to be: first that the citizens of a democracy have a sense of proprietorship and responsibility in public affairs, which in times of crisis may add to their tenacity and endurance.” (pp. 5-6)

Source link [Featured source]: Outspoken Essays (1919, 3rd impression) online Internet Archive: https://archive.org/stream/outspokenessaysf00ingeuoft#page/4/mode/2up/search/democracy+is+a+form+of+government

Source link [1935 – Clynes re-quote]: “Labour and Crisis. Willing to Defer an Election Pending Peace,” (18 September 1935) Lancashire Evening Post; online via British Newspaper Archive [subscription service]: https://www.britishnewspaperarchive.co.uk/viewer/bl/0000711/19350918/126/0004

Source link [1937 – Brook re-quote]: “Be Good Sweet Child-” Archdeacon and a Foolish Maxim,” 24 July 1937, Midland Daily Telegraph; online via British Newspaper Archive [subscription service]: https://www.britishnewspaperarchive.co.uk/viewer/bl/0000337/19370724/229/0012

Source link [1947 – Churchill re-quote]: “Parliament Bill,” House of Commons (11 November 1947) online via Hansard: https://api.parliament.uk/historic-hansard/commons/1947/nov/11/parliament-bill

Extended excerpt [Essay discussing perceptions & knowledge about the past and future. Chapter 15, Part I of the “Prognostications” section, chapter subtitle: ‘Introductory.’]:

“On the other hand, what we know of the past is mostly not worth knowing. What is worth knowing is mostly uncertain. Events in the past may be roughly divided into those which probably never happened and those which do not matter. This is what makes the trade of historian so attractive. The Deity, theologians tell us, cannot alter the past, but the historian can and does. When Sir Robert Walpole was ill and his attendant offered to read to him, he said: “Anything except history; I know that can’t be true.” (pp. 148-149)

Source note: Inge’s Assessments and Anticipations preface notes: “For permission to reprint those parts of this little book which have already appeared, I have to thank the Editors of the Evening Standard, the Strand Magazine, the Spectator, and Nash’s Magazine.” To date, Repeat Right editors have not conclusively determined if this quote was included in any of the earlier magazine printings.

Source link: Assessments and Anticipations (1929) online via Internet Archive: https://archive.org/stream/in.ernet.dli.2015.184529/2015.184529.Assessments-And-Anticipations#page/n145/mode/2up/search/roughly

Extended excerpt [Commentary]:

“God does not always punish a nation by sending it adversity; more often He gives the oppressors their hearts’ desire, and sends leanness withal into their soul. At the same time, we must not suppose that the laws of nature favour the violent and unjust. In the long run nothing fails like ill-gotten success; the wolf-nations have died because they become intolerably wolfish.” (p. 58)

Source link: Personal Religion and the Life of Devotion (1924) online via Internet Archive: https://archive.org/stream/personalreligion012406mbp#page/n63/mode/2up/search/sends+leanness

Extended excerpt [Essay]:

“A more serious danger is that of vexatious and inquisitive tyranny. This is exercised partly through public opinion, a vulgar, impertinent, anonymous tyrant who deliberately makes life unpleasant for anyone who is not content to be the average man. But partly it is seen in constant interference with the legislature and the executive. No one can govern who cannot afford to be unpopular, and no democratic official can afford to be unpopular.” (p. 9)

Source link: Outspoken Essays (1919, 3rd impression) online Internet Archive: https://archive.org/stream/outspokenessaysf00ingeuoft#page/8/mode/2up/search/anonymous+tyrant+who+deliberately

Extended excerpt [From Inge’s Romanes Lecture, delivered at Oxford University]:

“As Freeman says, ‘In history every step in advance has also been a step backwards.’ (The picture is a little difficult to visualise, but the meaning is plain.) The fruit of the tree of knowledge always drives man from some paradise or other; and even the paradise of fools is not an unpleasant abode while it is habitable.” (p. 159)

Source link: Romanes Lectures Decennial Issue (1920) online via Google Books: https://books.google.com/books?id=ww47AQAAMAAJ&pg=RA5-PA5&lpg=RA5-PA13&dq=+fruit+of+the+tree

Extended excerpt [First sentences of essay]:

“The object of studying philosophy is to know one’s own mind, not other people’s. Philosophy means thinking things out for oneself.” (p. 1)

Source link: Outspoken Essays: Second Series (1922) online via Internet Archive: https://archive.org/stream/outspokenessayss00ingeuoft#page/n14/mode/1up/search/object+of+studying

Re-quote note: While Inge generally receives credit for popularizing a pity and more succinct version of an old quote, he was repeating an idea shared more than thirty years earlier by William Boyd Carpenter, The Bishop of Ripon. Inge and Carpenter were contemporaries, and had notably worked together on several occasions, including a stretch as co-chairs of England’s National Birth-Rate Commission (1913-1914).

Carpenter’s earlier version of the quote was published in an 1897 newspaper transcript of his Yorkshire College lecture:

“They ought not to be led astray by the false notion that because a thing was old, therefore it must be good, nor yet by the other folly that because a thing was old therefore it must be bad; nor by the folly of the modern, that because it was new it must be good nor yet by the folly of the obsolete gentleman who said that because it was new it must be bad. If they admired a thing they should have a reason why they admired it, and then their admiration should be the willing homage of a convinced mind, and not the blind falsehood of a tyrannised intellect.”

[Source: William Boyd Carpenter, Bishop of Ripon, Lecture, “The Yorkshire College. The Bishop of Ripon on the Art of Reading.” (16 October 1897) Yorkshire College, England; cited in The Yorkshire Post, p. 10, column 4; online via The British Newspaper Archive [subscription service] www.britishnewspaperarchive.co.uk]

Misattribution note: Author John Brunner is sometimes credited as the original quote author. Although Brunner did use the quote in his 1975 novel The Shockwave Rider, he did attribute the words directly to Inge: “DEAN INGE HE SAY “There are two kinds of fool. One says, ‘This is old, and therefore good.’ And one says, ‘This is new, and therefore better.’”

[Source: John Brunner, citing William R. Inge, The Shockwave Rider (1975) New York: Harper & Row, p. 71]

Extended excerpt [Chapter IX, ‘Some Wise Old Saws’]: “There are two kinds of fools. One says, “This is old, therefore it is good”; the other says, “This is new, therefore it is better.”

Source note – Publication date: *Most of the material in More Lay Thoughts of a Dean was reprinted from Inge’s contributions to the Evening Standard newspaper between 1928-1930. As of May 2018, Repeat Right has been unable to determine if Inge’s “old saw” quoted here appeared in any of his earlier columns.

Source note – Rehash: Please see “Re-Quote” tab for an earlier source of Inge’s “old saw.”

Source link [Featured quote]: More Lay Thoughts of a Dean (1931|1933 Putnam ed.) online via Internet Archive: https://archive.org/stream/in.ernet.dli.2015.216045/2015.216045.More-Lay#page/n201/mode/1up/search/kinds+of+fools

Source link [1897 – Carpenter speech]: “The Yorkshire College. The Bishop of Ripon on the Art of Reading.” (16 October 1897) The Yorkshire Post; online via The British Newspaper Archive [subscription service]: https://www.britishnewspaperarchive.co.uk/viewer/bl/0000687/18971016/162/0010

Source link [1975 – Brunner re-quote]: Library – The Shockwave Rider (1975) International Standard Book Number (ISBN) 0060105593

Extended excerpt [Remarks to TIME magazine reporter]:

“The world, the flesh and the devil are the natural enemies of the Church, which thrives on the struggle against them. But when traditional orthodoxy provokes the moral indignation of the enlightened conscience, and when it enrages our sense of truth and honesty by demanding our assent to scientific errors which were exploded centuries ago, then indeed the Church is in danger, and it’s well-disciplined battalions will not save it from disaster.” (p. 22, column 1)

Source link: “Logothete” (24 November 1924) TIME magazine; via ‘TheVault,’ TIME archives [subscription service]: http://time.com/vault/issue/1924-11-24/page/22/