British Politician Quotes

It is no good putting up notices saying 'Beware of the bull' because very rude things are sometimes written on them. I have found that one of the most effective notices is 'Beware of the Agapanthus'.

Viscount Massereene

We are talking about the biggest foreign policy mistake since Suez.

On the Iraq war

From the days when the miners' leaders thought they owned the Government to the day when every miner owns part of his own mine – that's the British revolution.

Cecil Parkinson

Where the Left imagine social justice to be the realization of certain abstract ideas — equality and emancipation — the Right see it as a system of naturally occurring and beneficial relationships. Social justice is the fulfilment of the individual's need for positive liberty through social membership.

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

In the last Parliament, the House of Commons had more MPs called John than all the women MPs put together.

The worst enemy of science is also the bitterest enemy of democracy, cest le clericalisme. The interests of science and the interests of democracy are one.

I foresee a Liberal vote so massive and the number of Liberal MPs so great that we shall hold the initiative in the new Parliament.

It is a little thing to speak a phrase of common comfort, which by daily use has almost lost its sense; yet on the ear of him who thought to die unmourned it will fall like choicest music.

Thomas Noon Talfourd

Look, my job is to upset The Guardian and the BBC. I love it, I love it.

If a sportsman true you'd be
Listen carefully to me.
Never, never let your gun
Pointed be at any one;
That it may unloaded be
Matters not the least to me.

Mark Hanbury Beaufoy

I have got an infamous army, very weak and ill-equipped, and a very inexperienced staff.

Arthur Wellesley, 1st Duke of Wellington

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

I do not believe there is a long-term future for the privately rented sector in its present form.

Anthony Crosland

The Empire of China is an old, crazy, first-rate Man of War, which a fortunate succession of able and vigilant officers have contrived to keep afloat for these hundred and fifty years past, and to overawe their neighbours merely by her bulk and appearance. But whenever an insufficient man happens to have the command on deck, adieu to the discipline and safety of the ship. She may, perhaps, not sink outright; she may drift some time as a wreck, and will then be dashed to pieces on the shore; but she can never be rebuilt on the old bottom.

George Macartney

People in this country have had enough of experts.

When asked if he was in good heart about being Archbishop:

The phrase 'in good heart' gives me pause…We are here as a church to represent Christ crucified and the compassion of Christ crucified before the world. And, because that is so, it may be the will of God that our church should have its heart broken and perhaps the heart of its Archbishop broken with it.

Denis Healey: Can he assure us there is no question of American military intervention as this could only make the situation worse?
Sir Geoffrey Howe: There is no question of that.

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.

Politicians are like monkeys. The higher they climb, the more revolting are the parts they expose.

Gwilym Lloyd George, 1st Viscount Tenby

There is no security for any power unless it be a security in which its neighbours have an equal share.

Edward Grey, 1st Viscount Grey of Fallodon

I am not a saint. I never claimed to be a saint. My suits are not white, they're off-white.

Acting is not about dressing up. Acting is about stripping bare. The whole essence of learning lines is to forget them so you can make them sound like you thought of them that instant.

You can bend it and twist it... You can misuse and abuse it... But even God cannot change the Truth.

Michael Levy, Baron Levy

You are ordered abroad as a soldier of the King to help our French comrades against the invasion of a common enemy…In this new experience you may find temptations both in wine and women. You must entirely resist both temptations, and, while treating all women with perfect courtesy, you should avoid any intimacy. Do your duty bravely. Fear God. Honour the King.