British Politician Quotes

Winston Churchill

Margaret Thatcher

Tony Blair

David Cameron

Anne of Great Britain

Benjamin Disraeli

Neville Chamberlain

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

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."

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.

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

Margaret Thatcher

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

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

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

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

The concerns which black people voice about service delivery, housing, unemployment and security are important to white people as well. I don't think that providing good education and decent housing are marginal issues. The black agenda is not a marginal agenda.

Ideas have a radiation and development, an ancestry and posterity of their own, in which men play the part of godfathers and godmothers more than that of legitimate parents.

John Dalberg-Acton, 1st Baron Acton

If we expect to inherit the blessings of our Fathers, we should return a little more to their primitive Simplicity of Manners.

The only way therefore to try a Piece of Wit, is to translate it into a different Language: If it bears the Test you may pronounceit true; but if it vanishes in the Experiment you may conclude it to have been a Punn.

As far as the physical miseries go, I am sure I will cope. I lived at Eton in the 1950s and I know all about life in uncomfortable quarters.

Jonathan Aitken

No other troops in the world but German paratroops could have stood up to such an ordeal and then gone on fighting with such ferocity.

Harold Alexander

When I recalled how knowledge of Latin had previously decayed throughout England, and yet many could still read things written in English, I then began, amidst the various and multifarious afflictions of this kingdom, to translate into English the book which in Latin is called Pastoralis, in English 'Shepherd-book', sometimes word for word, sometimes sense for sense.

Alfred the Great

Inconvenience arising from the operation of an Act of Parliament can be no ground of argument in a Court of law.

Richard Arden, 1st Baron Alvanley

The evil was not in either ideal; the evil was in the attempt to impose that ideal by force upon others.

Whoever of ye Whigs thinks I am to be Hecktor'd or frighted into a Complyance tho I am a woman, are mightely mistaken in me. I thank God I have a Soul above that, & am too much conserned for my reputation to do any thing to forfeit it.

Anne of Great Britain

History teaches us these lessons for the interveners: leave your prejudices at home, keep your ambitions low, have enough resources to do the job, do not lose the golden hour, make security your first priority, involve the neighbours.

I must remind the right honourable gentleman that a monologue is not a decision.

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

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.

Since the great days of Jimmy Greaves, it's the only time anyone's managed to score five times in a Chelsea shirt.