Best 81 quotes of William Hague on MyQuotes

The Bill of Rights was intended to secure freedom of speech - the freedom of speech of members of parliament to speak freely rather than be at threat of... the threat of an over powerful monarch at the time.

The British retreat is over and now the advance will begin.

The EU is not a country and it's not going to become a country, in my view, now or ever in the future. It is a group of countries working together.

The EU should be concentrated on adapting to globalisation and global competitiveness, not building more powerful centralised institutions in Brussels.

The people of Britain want a Home Secretary who will give them back their streets. They want a Home Secretary who will speak up for the victim, not the criminal.

There is no budget for travel for a Shadow Foreign Secretary.

There's only one growth strategy: work hard.

The world is not going into concentric blocs of power. It is actually going into a diffusion of power with more centres of decision-making than ever in human civilisation. That requires you to place yourself in far more hubs of power than ever before.

Those who back the Syrian regime from now on will find themselves in an even more isolated and indefensible minority.

Time is not on Gaddafi's side. People ask about the exit strategy. It's Colonel Gaddafi who needs an exit strategy because this pressure will only mount and it will be intensified over the coming days and weeks.

Today further EU targeted sanctions on Syria come into force. The message is clear and unambiguous: those responsible for the repression will be singled out and held accountable.

To the hard-working people who set a little bit aside each month, to provide for their children, or to fund their own retirement, I say: you should be rewarded not punished.

To the teacher weighed down with paperwork, I say: you've been messed around too often. You came into teaching to spend your time teaching children not filling in forms.

Turning away Turkey from the EU would be a great, long-term - a century-long - error by Europe.

Unless there is meaningful change in Syria and an end to the crackdown, President Assad and those around him will find themselves isolated internationally and discredited within Syria.

We are making progress militarily, there is no doubt about that. You've seen the reports from Misrata, although reports of the Gaddafi forces completely pulling out of Misrata seem to be exaggerated.

We are not directly involved in Syria. But we will be working with our partners in the European Union and at the United Nations to see if we can persuade the Syrian authorities to go, as I say, more in that direction of respect for democracy and human rights.

We have to face the reality of climate change. It is arguably the biggest threat we are facing today.

We hope that the long darkness through which the Burmese people have lived may now be coming to an end.

Well, if you're looking for me to lead a normal representative life, well good luck finding a foreign secretary who'd be like that - totally dependant on the political system and has never earned any money. Then you'll get the politicians you deserve.

We're not getting involved in terms of sending ground forces into Libya. Let's be clear about that. And indeed the UN Resolution forbids that. It says no foreign occupation of any part of Libya.

Whatever happens in Mogadishu, in Somalia, will happen in Great Britain. We have interlocking interests.

When a Cabinet Minister who is sacked for telling lies is re-appointed, in the face of every constitutional convention, only for the same man to be sacked again from the same Cabinet for the same offence by the same Prime Minister – no wonder the public are cynical about politics.

When the Lord Chancellor violates the trust of his great office of state to solicit party donations from people whose careers he can control, and then says I'm not sorry, and I'd do it again no wonder the public think that power has gone to their heads.

When we have a Deputy Prime Minister who tells people not to drive cars but has two Jags himself, and where the Minister who tells people not to have two homes turns out to have nine himself - no wonder the public believe politicians are hypocrites.

When we said that no more areas of power should go to the EU we were right. And now thanks to the European Union Act 2011, by law that cannot happen without a referendum. And we are just as right that the EU has more power in our national life than it should, and I believe as strongly as I ever have that when the right moment comes this party should set out to reduce it.

When you reduce taxes on higher earners it's vital to be reducing them on lower earning people as well so the nation shares in the approach.

Where defining foreign policy as 'ethical' went wrong was that it implied that all decisions would be exclusive in every respect of any dealings with unethical regimes.

Wouldn't it be better to have a watertight law designed to catch the guilty, rather than a press release law designed to catch the headlines?

You do have to do business with and to try to influence people you don't agree with, or find disagreeable, so it's important to stress that balance.

You have to have as many defences in place as you possibly can. But even then of course - and it's important to stress this - you cannot guarantee being able to prevent every attack or every kind of attack.