QuotesCosmos
Letter to Viscount Granville on the Portuguese Civil War (10 August 1831), quoted in Jasper Ridley, Lord Palmerston (1970), p. 166
“

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.

— Henry Temple, 3rd Viscount Palmerston

What It Means

This is a placeholder explanation generated by the low-overhead model. It interprets "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." in the context of "Letter to Viscount Granville on the Portuguese Civil War (10 August 1831), quoted in Jasper Ridley, Lord Palmerston (1970), p. 166" to mean that wisdom is timeless.

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Source: Wikiquote: "Henry Temple, 3rd Viscount Palmerston" (Quotes, 1830s) The 'What it means' explanation text was generated by Google Gemini Flash (accessed January 18, 2026). https://gemini.google.com/app

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#Henry Temple, 3rd Viscount Palmerston#governments#sufferings#principles#oppressed#generous#sympathy#inherent#liberty#motives#severer#general

About Henry Temple, 3rd Viscount Palmerston

Henry John Temple, 3rd Viscount Palmerston (20 October 1784 - 18 October 1865) was a British statesman who served twice as Prime Minister in the mid-19th century. Popularly nicknamed "Pam", he was in government office almost continuously from 1807 until his death in 1865, beginning his parliamentary career as a Tory, switching to the Whigs in 1830, and concluding it as the first Prime Minister of the newly-formed Liberal Party from 1859.