Quotes

You never reach the promised land. You can march towards it.

A lie can be half-way around the world before truth has got its boots on.

We used to think that you could spend your way out of a recession, and increase employment by cutting taxes and boosting Government spending. I tell you in all candour that that option no longer exists.

Audrey adds an essential element of middle-class stability to my working-class insecurity.

[on never going to university] A lot of people say I'm not clever at all, I'm quite prepared to accept that - except that I became Prime Minister and they didn't, all these clever people.

In politics you don't always see the end of what you're doing - you rarely see the end of what you start out to do.

I never feel that people can be intimidated with me. How can that happen? I'm such a jolly, cheerful sort of fellow.

The whole of politics is about taking decisions that are either bad or worse, you rarely take good ones.

[speaking about the European Economic Community] If we have to prove our Europeanism by accepting that French is the dominant language in the Community, then my answer is quite clear and I will say it in French in order to prevent any misunderstanding: non, merci beaucoup.

[1976] I was brought up in a family where, after my father died, we lived in two furnished rooms. That was a denial of freedom. I was unable to go to university because my parents could not pay for it. That was a denial of freedom. There was an occasion when I should have had hospital treatment and could not because we could not afford it. That was a denial of freedom. I was not alone in my generation. I am one of the older Members of the House: the new generation, thank God, has those freedoms. That is what public expenditure is about.

[to Winston Churchill] I hope that the hon. Gentleman will not pursue the vendetta of his family against the miners at Tonypandy for the third generation.