John Major Quotes - Page 2

A consensus politician is someone who does something that he doesn't believe is right because it keeps people quiet when he does it.

When our backs are against the wall, we must turn around and march forward.

The first requirement of politics is not intellect or stamina but patience. Politics is a very long run game and the tortoise will usually beat the hare.

If is a very big preposition.

My mother was the center of the family.

I have been reading the press more regularly than others over 50 years and it seems to me that there are things that have changed in the press that have changed its character.

If you look at things that really affect people's lives - sport, the arts, charities - they were always at the back of the queue for government money - health, social security, defence, pensions were all way ahead. And each of those areas - sports, the arts, the lottery - got relatively petty cash from the government.

I mean if you have ever found a politician who says, 'No, no, I would do everything exactly as I did,' then you can tell when he is lying because his lips are moving.

I want Britain to punch its weight in the European Community.

Some people eat eggs, I wear them.

You're lucky to head a coalition government. I am a coalition government on my own.

Whatever efforts for peace President Gorbachev had in mind, they were pretty substantially undercut very swiftly by Saddam Hussein.

They seem to have moved from total opposition to total subservience.

I am walking over hot coals suspended over a deep pit at the bottom of which are a large number of vipers baring their fangs.

I think the biggest mistake I made was this wretched ability to see both sides of an argument.

You cannot think of Margaret without Denis. There comes a time when every Prime Minister needs someone to give him or her the unvarnished truth, and, in Denis, Margaret had just that.

Liberty is equally desirable to the good and to the bad, to the brave and to the dastardly.

Only in Britain could it be thought a defect to be too clever by half. The probability is that too many people are too stupid by three-quarters.

Well, I think there's a distinction between sexing-up the intelligence and sexing-up the presentation of the intelligence.

Too many people looked to me in the eye and did not tell me the truth.

I thought I could do something different from any Conservative prime minister before me. But I couldn't.

"Government gets things right" does not encourage sales. "Government makes another blunder" does encourage sales, so there's a commercial imperative that pushes sensationalism.

I would rather go while I am being urged to stay, than to stay beyond the time when I should go.

UN goodwill may be a bottomless pit but it's by no means limitless.

If we want to deliver opportunity for all, we need an economy that delivers jobs for the future.