Respectfully Quoted: A Dictionary of Quotations. 1989.
| NUMBER: | 720 |
| AUTHOR: | George Grenville (1712–70) |
| QUOTATION: | A wise government knows how to enforce with temper, or to conciliate with dignity, but a weak one is odious in the former, and contemptible in the latter. |
| ATTRIBUTION: | “Though Grenville had taken a prominent part in the early measures against Wilkes, he opposed his expulsion from the House of Commons on 3 Feb. 1769, in probably the ablest speech that he ever made.”—The Dictionary of National Biography, vol. 8, p. 559. |
| SUBJECTS: | Government |