Harold Wilson Quotes

30 Sourced Quotes

He who rejects change is the architect of decay. The only human institution which rejects progress is the cemetery.

Harold Wilson
Given a fair wind, we will negotiate our way into the Common Market, head held high, not crawling in. Negotiations? Yes. Unconditional acceptance of whatever terms are offered us? No.

Harold Wilson
One man's wage increase is another man's price increase.

Harold Wilson
It is difficult for us to appreciate the pressures which are put on men I know to be realistic and reasonable, not only in their executive capacity but in the highly organized strike committees in the individual ports by this tightly knit group of politically motivated men who, as the last general election showed, utterly failed to secure acceptance of their views by the British electorate, but who are now determined to exercise back-stage pressures, forcing great hardship on the members of the union and their families, and endangering the security of the industry and the economic welfare of the nation.

Harold Wilson
Selsdon Man is designing a system of society for the ruthlessness and the pushing, the uncaring. His message to the rest is: you're out on your own.

Harold Wilson
I myself have always deprecated…in crisis after crisis, appeals to the Dunkirk spirit as an answer to our problems.

Harold Wilson
What I think we are going to need is something like what President Kennedy had when he came in after years of stagnation in the United States. He had a programme of a hundred days—a hundred days of dynamic action.

Harold Wilson
If there was one word I could use to identify modern socialism it was science'

Harold Wilson
A Tory minister can sleep in ten different women's beds in a week. A Labour minister gets it in the neck if he looks at his neighbour's wife over the garden fence.

Harold Wilson
In the 1964 Government…I had to occupy almost every position on the field, goalkeeper, defence, attack—I had to take the corner-kicks and penalties, administer to the wounded and bring on the lemons at half-time.

Harold Wilson
The one thing we need to nationalize in this country is the Treasury, but no one has ever succeeded.

Harold Wilson
This party is a bit like an old stagecoach. If you drive along at a rapid rate, everyone aboard is either so exhilarated or so seasick that you don't have a lot of difficulty.
Of the Labour Party, 1974

Harold Wilson
I believe that the spirit of Dunkirk will carry us through…to success.

Harold Wilson
I've buried all the hatchets. But I know where I've buried them and I can dig them up if necessary.
Of the Cabinet in 1974

Harold Wilson
I know I speak for everyone in these islands, all parties, all our people, when I say to Mr. Smith tonight: "Prime Minister, think again".

Harold Wilson
The Britain that is going to be forged in the white heat of this revolution will be no place for restrictive practices or out of date methods, on either side of industry.

Harold Wilson
I get a little nauseated, perhaps, when I hear the phrase 'freedom of the press' used as freely as it is, knowing that a large part of our proprietorial press is not free at all.

Harold Wilson
The government have only a small majority in the House of Commons. I want to make it quite clear that this will not affect our ability to govern. Having been charged with the duties of Government we intend to carry out those duties.

Harold Wilson
May I say, for the benefit of those who have been carried away by the gossip of the last few days, that I know what's going on. [pause] I'm going on, and the Labour government's going on.

Harold Wilson
If I had the choice between smoked salmon and tinned salmon, I'd have it tinned. With vinegar.

Harold Wilson
On 5 September, when the TUC unanimously rejected wage restraint, it was the end of an era, and all the financiers, all the little gnomes in Zürich and other finance centres about whom we keep on hearing, had started to make their dispositions in regard to sterling.

Harold Wilson
This Party needs to protect itself against the activities of small groups of inflexible political persuasion, extreme so-called left and in a few cases extreme so-called moderates, having in common only their arrogant dogmatism. These groups, equally the multichromatic coalitionist fringe or groups specifically formed to fight other marauding groups, these groups are not what this Party is about. Infestation of this kind thrives only, and can thrive only, in minuscule local parties.

Harold Wilson
From now on, the pound abroad is worth 14 per cent or so less in terms of other currencies. That doesn't mean, of course, that the Pound here in Britain, in your pocket or purse or in your bank, has been devalued.

Harold Wilson
We are restating our socialism in terms of the scientific revolution…the Britain that is going to be forged in the white heat of this revolution will be no place for restrictive practices or outdated methods on either side of industry.

Harold Wilson
This Party is a moral crusade or it is nothing.

Harold Wilson
Smethwick Conservatives can have the satisfaction of having topped the poll, of having sent a Member who, until another election returns him to oblivion, will serve his time here as a Parliamentary leper.

Harold Wilson
The trouble is when the old problems reappear I reach for the old solutions.

Harold Wilson
All these financiers, all the little gnomes in Zurich and the other financial centres about whom we keep on hearing.

Harold Wilson
In all our plans for the future, we are re-defining and we are re-stating our Socialism in terms of the scientific revolution. But that revolution cannot become a reality unless we are prepared to make far-reaching changes in economic and social attitudes which permeate our whole system of society. The Britain that is going to be forged in the white heat of this revolution will be no place for restrictive practices or for outdated methods on either side of industry.

Harold Wilson
We have taken steps which have not been taken by any other democratic government in the world. We are taking steps with regard to prices and wages which no other government, even in wartime, has taken.

Harold Wilson