Norman Tebbit Quotes

25 Sourced Quotes

Parliament must not be told a direct untruth, but it's quite possible to allow them to mislead themselves.

Norman Tebbit
It is certainly safe, in view of the movement to the right of intellectuals and political thinkers, to pronounce the brain death of socialism.

Norman Tebbit
I grew up in the 30s with an unemployed father. He didn't riot; he got on his bike and looked for work and he kept looking 'til he found it.

Norman Tebbit
I'm a hawk—but no kamikaze. And Jim's a dove—but he's not chicken.

Norman Tebbit
I grew up in the Thirties with our unemployed father. He did not riot, he got on his bike and looked for work.

Norman Tebbit
I haven't got a racist bone in my little finger.

Norman Tebbit
[The poll tax] was a classic case of a good idea being entrusted to Chris Patten and becoming a terrible failure.

Norman Tebbit
We need to create an enterprise culture, a society where successful entrepreneurs are respected and admired, not treated with suspicion and disdain. And in which we see less envy of other peoples' achievements and mistrust of commerce, and a greater readiness to get out there and join in the process.

Norman Tebbit
Some thought my willingness to stand toe to toe against the more thuggish elements of the Labour Party and slug it out blow for blow rather vulgar. Others, especially in the country at large, seemed delighted at the idea of a Tory MP unwilling to be strangled by the old school tie.

Norman Tebbit
The BBC is another part of the destruction of Great Britain.

Norman Tebbit
I have no intention of slurring over the differences we have with socialism, nor concealing my belief that we are the National Party of Great Britain, representing not narrow class interest, nor the bigotry of the left wing intellectuals, but all those who support the British tradition of democracy, of personal freedom, of personal responsibility for one's own affairs and those of one's family, with the least possible interference from the State.

Norman Tebbit
The mark of a single currency is not only that all other currencies must be extinguished but that the capacity of other institutions to issue currencies must also be extinguished... In the case of the United Kingdom, that would involve Parliament binding its successors in a way that it has hitherto regarded as unconstitutional.

Norman Tebbit
At first I thought it [blogging] was quite unlike anything else I'd done in my political life, but after a while I realised that it is really rather like an old-fashioned political public meeting of the kind that has melted away since television took politics away from the grass roots in the constituencies and concentrated it into the TV studios. It is a pity we can't have real-time heckling.

Norman Tebbit
[My father] did not riot. He got on his bike and looked for work. And he kept on looking till he found it.

Norman Tebbit
The word 'conservative' is used by the BBC as a portmanteau word of abuse for anyone whose views differ from the insufferable, smug, sanctimonious, naïve, guilt-ridden, wet, pink orthodoxy of that sunset home of the third-rate minds of that third-rate decade, the nineteen-sixties.

Norman Tebbit
I played my part in turning the sick country of Europe into one of the most successful and respected in the world. After ten years of Mrs. Thatcher's premiership the talk of the 'English disease' has been replaced by wonder at the 'Thatcher miracle'. Britain the laggard has become Britain the leader and our policies have become the standard against which others are measured.

Norman Tebbit
I'm not sure. He ought to. Things would work better.

Norman Tebbit
They want to know if Mr Cameron has bought into the Blairite, ever-expanding, ever more costly, interfering nanny state, or whether he has proposals to strengthen family life, restore discipline in schools, combat crime, deal with the now almost universally recognised dangers of multiculturalism and the unlimited immigration of unassimilable minorities, raise standards in schools and the NHS, and bring back home powers lost to Brussels.

Norman Tebbit
Most people know it [this election] is being fought because a tiny minority of communists and extreme leftists are trying to overthrow a legally elected Government and indeed Parliament itself by the use of the strike weapon...'Can the election solve the strike?' Yes. Agree or disagree with the result, the miners accept the verdict of their own national ballot. I believe they will accept the result of this national ballot too.

Norman Tebbit
I suspect that the only thing that will take Articles Two and Three out of the Irish Constitution is when the bombs begin to blow in Dublin in the way that they have been in Belfast and in London.

Norman Tebbit
I don't think he's a liar, just a fantasist. He says whatever he likes, and then he believes it.

Norman Tebbit
If we give in to the terrorists we will have more skyjacking, and not merely from the Arabs... Whatever happenes to these hostages—and I could easily have been one of them—if we give in even more people will be taken hostage and more lives will be laid at risk.

Norman Tebbit
A large proportion of Britain's Asian population fail to pass the cricket test. Which side do they cheer for? It is an interesting test. Are you still harking back to where you came from or where you are? I think we have got real problems in that regard.

Norman Tebbit
For me the British Broadcasting Corporation might have better called itself the Stateless Persons Broadcasting Corporation for it certainly did not reflect the mood of the British people who finance it.

Norman Tebbit
No one likes to see redundancies at home at the same time as he sees a surge of imports from abroad. The temptation to succumb to political pressure, to make a special case or to give respite is often overwhelming. But to do so, except in response to clearly unfair trading practices, is to court disaster. The temporary measure frequently becomes the permanent fixture and the special case, a precedent for more. And by shielding industry from fair competition in the short-term, long term decline is guaranteed.

Norman Tebbit