Denis Healey Quotes

15 Sourced Quotes

I sometimes think that the critical difference between a democracy and a dictatorship is that in a dictatorship there are only two people out of every hundred who take a personal interest in politics; in a democracy there are three.

Denis Healey
I start with the measures which the Government announced last Thursday, and which are the immediate occasion of today's debate, and to which the right hon. Gentleman finally came round - a trifle nervously, I thought - after ploughing through that tedious and tendentious farrago of moth-eaten cuttings presented to him by the Conservative Research Department. I must say that part of his speech was rather like being savaged by a dead sheep.

Denis Healey
It's no good ceasing to become the world's policeman in order to become the world's parson instead.

Denis Healey
Margaret Thatcher has added the diplomacy of Alf Garnett to the economics of Arthur Daley.

Denis Healey
Squeeze property speculators until the pips squeak

Denis Healey
Healey's first law of politics:
when you're in a hole, stop digging.

Denis Healey
I tried to shave off my eyebrows once and my trousers fell down.

Denis Healey
Mrs Thatcher tells us she has given the French president a piece of her mind…not a gift I would receive with alacrity.

Denis Healey
The Fabians…found socialism wandering aimlessly in Cloud-cuckoo-land and set it working on the gas and water problems of the nearest town or village.
Of the parochialism of the Fabians

Denis Healey
No. Absolutely not. I think that the Russians are praying for a Labour victory... praying is perhaps an unfortunate choice of words. I think that they would much prefer a Labour government and that the idea that they would prefer a Tory government, I think is utter bunkum, and they [the Soviets] authorized me to say so.

Denis Healey
Mrs Thatcher has added the diplomacy of Alf Garnett to the economics of Arthur Daley.

Denis Healey
Of Margaret Thatcher:
And who is the Mephistopheles behind this shabby Faust [the Foreign Secretary, Geoffrey Howe]?…To quote her own backbenchers, the Great She-elephant, She-Who-Must-Be-Obeyed, the Catherine the Great of Finchley, the Prime Minister herself.

Denis Healey
I warn you there are going to be howls of anguish from the 80,000 people who are rich enough to pay over 75% [tax] on the last slice of their income.

Denis Healey
Like long-term weather forecasts they are better than nothing…But their origin lies in the extrapolation from a partially known past, through an unknown present, to an unknowable future.
On economic forecasts

Denis Healey
His speech was rather like being savaged by a dead sheep.

Denis Healey