Ernest Bevin Quotes

19 Sourced Quotes

The most conservative man in this world is the British Trade Unionist when you want to change him.

Ernest Bevin
There never has been a war yet which, if the facts had been put calmly before the ordinary folk, could not have been prevented…The common man, I think, is the great protection against war.

Ernest Bevin
I am not one of those who decry Eton and Harrow. I was very glad of them in the Battle of Britain.

Ernest Bevin
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.

Ernest Bevin
My [foreign] policy is to be able to take a ticket at Victoria Station and go anywhere I damn well please.

Ernest Bevin
That won't do at all.. we've got to have this.. I don't mind for myself, but I don't want any other Foreign Secretary of this country to be talked to or at by a Secretary of State in the United States as I have just had in my discussions with Mr Byrnes. We've got to have this thing over here whatever it costs.. We've got to have the bloody Union Jack on top of it.

Ernest Bevin
So long as I have any power at all I will never be a party to treating the Army in the future as it has been treated in the past. They broke up in peace-time the very foundations of the Army structure, and expected to build it up during war-time with the enemy at the gates.

Ernest Bevin
If the workers see themselves faced with defeat through starvation, they will prefer to go down fighting rather than fainting — and whether or not we leaders agree.

Ernest Bevin
It is placing the Executive and the Movement in an absolutely wrong position to be taking your conscience round from body to body asking to be told what you ought to do with it.

Ernest Bevin
If anyone asks me who was responsible for the British policy leading up to the war, I should, as a Labour man myself, make a confession and say: "All of us". We refused absolutely to face the facts. When the issue came of arming or rearming millions of people in this country... we refused to face the real issue at a critical moment. But what is the good of blaming anybody? We cannot make our action retrospective whatever we do. We have to start from now and try to do the best we can.

Ernest Bevin
We need 720,000 men continuously employed in this industry. This is where you boys come in. Our fighting men will not be able to achieve their purpose unless we get an adequate supply of coal.

Ernest Bevin
The kind of middle-class mentality which actuates both those responsible for strategy and government has little knowledge of the new psychology and organizing ability of the totalitarian States. The forces we are fighting are governed neither by the old strategy nor follow the old tactics.

Ernest Bevin
The fact of it is that all of us agreed to save 6d. in the Income Tax by breaking up the Army in peace-time and not having it prepared when war broke out... I will never be a party to it again.

Ernest Bevin
If I may again refer to the different political concepts, there is, I think rather unfortunately, running through all the speeches and writings of our Soviet friends the theory that they alone represent the workers — that they alone are democratic.

Ernest Bevin
I think that in the little argument going on now in New York and the differences that have arisen there are emerging three very fundamental principles. One is that it is improper to negotiate or attempt to negotiate or attempt to gain concessions by a great Power out of a little Power by means of occupying that country with your forces. It is the tradition — and I am not saying of one or other country only they have done it — but it is nineteenth-century imperialism that really must be left behind, and I believe that a solution will be found and the principle accepted that those of us who represent the great Powers will not do that.

Ernest Bevin
There should be a study of a house directly elected by the people of the world to whom the nations are accountable.

Ernest Bevin
To his Civil Servants:
You've just given me twenty reasons why I can't do this; I'm sure that clever chaps like you can go away and produce twenty good reasons why I can.

Ernest Bevin
I hope you will carry no resolution of an emergency character telling a man with a conscience like Lansbury what he ought to do…It is placing the Executive in an absolutely wrong position to be taking your conscience round from body to body to be told what you ought to do with it.

Ernest Bevin
The real tragedy of the poor is the poverty of their aspirations.

Ernest Bevin