Ramsay MacDonald Quotes

15 Sourced Quotes

The desolation of loneliness is terrible. Was I wise? Perhaps not, but it seemed as though anything else was impossible.

Ramsay MacDonald
Yes, tomorrow every Duchess in London will be wanting to kiss me!

Ramsay MacDonald
In youth one believes in democracy, later on, one has to accept it.

Ramsay MacDonald
A body representing the citizenship of the whole nation is charged with so much that it can do nothing swiftly and well.

Ramsay MacDonald
A terror decreed by a Secret Committee is child's play compared with a terror instituted by 'lawful authority'.

Ramsay MacDonald
If we lose our chance now... that chance will not return either to us or to our children. The memories of the last War will grow dim. The world will get back into the old rut, familiar professions and piety about peace will again soothe us to sleep, and the various countries will once more base their security upon military preparation. So they will all, in the end, find themselves drifting hopelessly upon those currents that make for war... And remember what the next war will be like. The old lines which divide combatants from non-combatants, the weak and the diseased from the strong and the robust, men from women and children, will all be obliterated and civilization itself assailed, and from sea and sky will be brought to a heap of ruins.

Ramsay MacDonald
If we yield now to the TUC we shall never be able to call our bodies or souls or intelligences our own.

Ramsay MacDonald
Wars are popular. Contractors make profits; the aristocracy glean honour.

Ramsay MacDonald
We have all taken risks in the making of war. Isn't it time that we should take risks to secure peace?

Ramsay MacDonald
Lower forms merge into higher forms, one species with another, the vegetable into the animal kingdom; in human history one epoch slides into another... Socialism, the stage which follows Liberalism, retains everything of value in Liberalism by virtue of its being the hereditary heir of Liberalism.

Ramsay MacDonald
Mr. Rockefeller not only owns the Standard Oil supplies: he controls the railways, the banks, the shops... upon which his Trust depends. The Steel Corporation not only makes steel; it owns coal and iron fields, ore steamers, the Erie and Pittsburgh mineral railway, as well as the operatives in Homestead. We oppose the Trust, not as an organisation, but because it is controlled by individuals for their own ends... But the Trust points out the line of British advance. In this country, however, the introduction of the Trust should be marked by public ownership.

Ramsay MacDonald
Mr. Lloyd George will not resign on anything anti-German. He is anti-German, and the trust which the reasonable Peace people place in him is altogether misplaced.

Ramsay MacDonald
Of the Budget as a whole, I say "Bravo". I am going to support it through thick and thin.

Ramsay MacDonald
On becoming the leader of the National Government:
Tomorrow every Duchess in London will be wanting to kiss me!

Ramsay MacDonald
Factory Laws, Fair Wages resolutions, Trade Unionism itself, are... all Protection - not the Protection of Mr. Chaplin, the landlord, nor of Mr. Chamberlain, the demagogue, but the Protection of the Socialist.

Ramsay MacDonald