John Major Quotations

When the euro was born, it was born in the wrong economic circumstances.

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.

I think the majority of the British people are still sanguine about the need for war.

It is time to return to core values, time to get back to basics, to self-discipline and respect for the law, to consideration for the others, to accepting responsibility for yourself and your family - and not shuffling it off on other people and the state.

I have a huge admiration for the House of Lords, I have a huge admiration for the people who work in the House of Lords, they're great public servants and they do an absolutely tremendous job.

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

The argument that someone is a bad man is an inadequate argument for war and certainly an inadequate and unacceptable argument for regime change.

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

Whether you agree with me or disagree with me; like me or loathe me, don't bind my hands when I am negotiating on behalf of the British nation.

I inherited a sick economy and passed on a sound one. But one abiding regret for me is that, in between, I did not have the resources to put in place the educational and social changes about which I cared to much; I made only a beginning, and it was not enough.

The politician who never made a mistake never made a decision.

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

The sight of allegedly sophisticated politicians parroting complete tripe trivialises and demeans government and it has to be stopped. It's played a significant part in public disillusionment with politics and has led to the absurd situation where more people vote for 'Strictly Come Dancing' than voted in the general election.

Of course there are regrets. I shall regret always that I found my own authentic voice in politics. I was too conservative, too conventional. Too safe, too often. Too defensive. Too reactive. Later, too often on the back foot.

Well, I have concerns about the effectiveness of Europe to compete.

I don't think nations can stand aside for ethnic cleansing and genocide.

Society needs to condemn a little more and understand a little less.

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

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.

There are more myths about Black Wednesday than the Greeks ever created.

Certainly we've seen the enormous changes across the whole of the Middle East. The democratic genie is out of the bottle.

The British don't runaway from terrorism. We have had 30-odd years of terrorism in our own country from the Irish Republican Army. We're used to it.

Well British troops are superb in the field in terms of conflict.

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.

September the 11th was a huge shock in the United States. It was the first time you had been hit at home in your own territory by terrorist on this scale.

I didn't come from two rooms in Brixton to 10 Downing Street not to go out and fight with every fiber of my being for the things I believe in and the country I love,

I can't remember an occasion when there was so much excitement and anticipation about a game of cricket. It has been a truly phenomenal series.

There is no indication that magma has reached the surface.

We want a truly open society, in which every man and woman will be able to go as far as their talent, ambition and effort take them

The United Kingdom is South Africa's largest foreign investor and I have every reason to image that that is going to remain the case,

The British government fully supports the unequivocal message to Saddam Hussein that repression of innocent civilians and reckless acts of brutality are unacceptable,

This is exactly the kind of event that we've sort of been talking about and anticipating over the past several days. This is a fairly small eruption.

a man of strong convictions even though they were sometimes unpopular.

This looks very much at the moment as if this is the work of the IRA, showing their usual contempt for people's lives and property,

It's a puzzle, and it's keeping us on our toes. It's showing signs of an eruption, but not to the size and magnitude of 1980.

It remains impossible to reconcile Sinn Fein's rhetoric for peace with the IRA's preparations for murder,

It's now up to all of us to turn cease-fire into peace, to turn peace into a lasting settlement and the countries of former Yugoslavia into a stable and prosperous part of the European family,

It just can't be won by military might alone, ... If you're going to destroy these terrorist groups, you need to destroy their finances, you need to destroy their safe havens, you need to destroy their causes, and you can't just do that with military means.

It is the one event in my life of which I am most ashamed and I have long feared it would be made public.

This is David expressing a personal view that many people will agree with but it isn't party policy

Being in the Northeast, you can't discount the power of Mother Nature and the effect that winters have on deer.

The events of 25 years ago constituted a terrible tragedy, ... And I believe everyone is determined that the lessons of that day are never forgotten.

A moratorium around election time to end some of these shenanigans would be appropriate.

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

When I was in office the fundraising was done by the party treasurers.

My father was 64 when I was conceived, my mother 38, which was late for babies in the 1940s.

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

Give the Germans five deutschmarks and they will save it. But give the British £5 and they will borrow £25 and spend it.

In the next ten years we will have to continue to make changes which will make the whole of this country a genuinely classless society.

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

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

I will turn directly to the Asylum Bill later.

The world has gone through tremendous change recently; both nationally andinternationally.

Ronnie Barker will forever be remembered as one of the great comic actors.

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.

Some people eat eggs, I wear them.

I can't legislate to change human nature.

I'm very proud of what my parents achieved and what they stood for. They didn't have much, but in many ways they were richer than most.

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

You've had an extremely weak euro on the foreign exchange markets, you've had a very dubious policy being followed.

I'm not about to write my memoirs. Not for a long time.

Life is full of surprises.

What happens when there is a conflict between the Scottish parliament, if it was established, and the Westminster parliament? Who is supreme?

I don't have a shred of regret about entering the exchange-rate mechanism.

I like the best of the British press. The best of the British press is very good.

I think it's extremely unlikely that the European Union will fracture with nations dropping off the edge.

I don't think it's the role of the prime minister to court the press.

I think we can get respect for Parliament back providing governments and oppositions are frank.

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

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

It is time to return to core values, time to get back to basics , to self-discipline and respect for the law, to consideration for the others, to accepting responsibility for yourself and your family - and not shuffling it off on other people and the state.

Well what would happen is that if Greece defaulted and couldn't pay its debts, all the Greek bonds that are held in other banking systems across Western Europe would suddenly have no value. You could as a knock-on effect create a banking crisis in Western Europe.

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

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.

Political suicide can end a career.

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

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

Tentacles of terrorism spread everywhere

Our country is the richer for her life and the poorer at her death.

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

Disunity costs votes.

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

If is a very big preposition.

If you look back historically, admittedly a long time ago, there were three Afghan wars in which Britain didn't even come a good second. In more recent years the Russians were there with 120,000 men for ten years.

My mother was the center of the family.

You don't forget crises and neither does the Queen.

I want to see us build a country that is at ease with itself, a country that is confident and a country that is able and willing to build a better quality of life for all its citizens.

Fifty years on from now, Britain will still be the country of long shadows on cricket grounds, warm beer, invincible green suburbs, dog lovers and pools fillers and, as George Orwell said, 'Old maids bicycling to holy communion through the morning mist' and, if we get our way, Shakespeare will still be read even in school.

I am not running as Son of Margaret Thatcher. I have my own priorities and my own programmes.

If the answer is more politicians, you are asking the wrong question.

In housing in the fifties in Britain and the sixties, we pulled down the terraces - destroyed whole communities and replaced them with tower blocks and we built walkways that became rat-runs for muggers. That was the fashionable opinion. But it was wrong.

Neil Kinnock's speeches go on for so long because he has nothing to say and so he has no way of knowing when he's finished saying it.

A country of long shadows on county cricket grounds, warm beer, green suburbs, dog lovers, and old maids cycling to holy communion through the morning mist.

Let's turn British inventions into British industries, British factories and British jobs. Let them make pounds for us, not dollars marks or yen for others.

Recovery begins from the darkest moment.

When your back is against the wall, there is only one thing to do, and that is turn around and fight.