In the past three years we have burned our identity cards, torn up our ration books, halved the number of of snoopers, decimated the number of forms and said good riddance to nearly two-thirds of the remaining wartime regulations. This is the march to freedom on which we are bound. And the pace must quicken as we go forward... Within the limits of law and social justice, our aim is freedom for every man and woman to live their own lives in their own way and not have their lives lived for them by an overweening State.

Speech in Gloucester (10 July 1954), quoted in R. A. Butler, The Art of the Possible (London: Hamish Hamilton, 1971), p. 173.