British Politician Quotes

Winston Churchill

Margaret Thatcher

Tony Blair

David Cameron

Anne of Great Britain

Benjamin Disraeli

Neville Chamberlain

No amount of study or learning will make a man a leader unless he has the natural qualities of one.

Archibald Wavell, 1st Earl Wavell

No Western nation has to build a wall round itself to keep its people in.

Margaret Thatcher

It is impossible that the whisper of a faction should prevail against the voice of a nation.

John Russell, 1st Earl Russell

Television? The word is half Latin and half Greek. No good can come of it.

Socialists make the mistake of confusing individual worth with success. They believe you cannot allow people to succeed in case those who fail feel worthless.

Kenneth Baker, Baron Baker of Dorking

I am of opinion that it is highly requisite forthwith to pass a law, prohibiting upon great penalties all trade with our enemies, and more especially the supplying of them with arms, ammunition or provisions of any kind whatsoever.

William Shirley

The basic drive behind real philosophy is curiosity about the world, not interest in the writings of philosophers. Each of us emerges from the preconsciousness of babyhood and simply finds himself here, in it, in the world. That experience alone astonishes some people. What is all this — what is the world? And what are we? From the beginning of humanity some have been under a compulsion to ask these questions, and have felt a craving for the answers. This is what is really meant by any such phrase as "mankind's need for metaphysics."

People are very interested in politics, they just don't like it labelled 'politics'.

In Great Britain, governments often change their policies without changing their men. In France, they usually change their men without changing their policy.

Winston Churchill

During the days of his last illness:

If Mr. Selwyn calls again, show him up: if I am alive I shall be delighted to see him; and if I am dead he would like to see me.

Henry Fox, 1st Baron Holland

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.

On the Council of Europe and close ties between European countries:

If you open that Pandora's Box, you never know what Trojan 'orses will jump out.

The Conservative Party has one overriding concern in foreign policy, and that is the growth of Communist power and influence in the world, and the dangers it can bring for all of us.

Reginald Maudling

We have seen the awakening of national consciousness in peoples who have for centuries lived in dependence upon some other power... The wind of change is blowing through the continent, and, whether we like it or not, this growth of national consciousness is a political fact.

Harold Macmillan

I am a man of peace. I am longing and working and praying for peace, but I will not surrender the safety and security of the British constitution. You placed me in power eighteen months ago by the largest majority accorded to any party for many, many years. Have I done anything to forfeit that confidence? Cannot you trust me to ensure a square deal to secure even justice between man and man?

Stanley Baldwin

People are disposed to mistake predicting troubles for causing troubles and even for desiring troubles.

At the opening of the session on 31 Oct. 1776, Shelburne denounced the king's speech as 'a piece of metaphysical refinement,' and the defence set up for it as:

Nothing more than a string of sophisms, no less wretched in their texture than insolent in their tenor.

There's a lot of people I've encouraged and helped to get into the House of Commons. Looking at them now, I'm not so sure it was a wise thing to do.

He gave himself diligently to mathematics, which he liked "vastly." "I believe they are useful," he writes, "and I am sure they are entertaining, which is alone enough to recommend them to me."

Sir George Trevelyan, 2nd Baronet

How can students and parents plan for the future when they can't rely on the country's examination system to deliver fair results? We reject Labour's "government knows best" approach, but we certainly don't subscribe to a philosophy that lets people sink or swim. We believe that an active government should focus on doing what it can to help people get on with their lives.This is the true measure of a compassionate government.

We are now more Socialist in many ways than any other developed country outside the Communist bloc—in the size of the public sector, the range of controls and the telescoping of net income. And what is the result? Compare our position today with that of our neighbours in north west Europe—Germany, Sweden, Holland, France. They are no more talented than we are. Yet, compared with them, we have the longest working hours, the lowest pay and the lowest production per head. We have the highest taxes and the lowest investment. We have the least prosperity, the most poor and the lowest pensions. We have the largest nationalized sector and the worst labour troubles.

No one for a moment can pretend that printing is so great a discovery as writing, or algebra as a language.

Benjamin Disraeli

His life was a book of his own writing, one orderly page after another.

A system which betrays the greatest distrust of the people must never look for popular support.

We can all agree–it has already been a measure of the debate–that Saddam Hussein is an evil tyrant with no regard for the sanctity of human life, for either his own citizens or the people of other countries. We all agree that he is in flagrant breach of a series of UN resolutions, and in particular those relating to his duty to allow the inspection, and indeed participate in the destruction, of his weapons of mass destruction. We can also agree that he most certainly has chemical and biological weapons and is working towards a nuclear capability. The dossier contains confirmation of information that we either knew or most certainly should have been willing to assume.

Menzies Campbell