Best 61 quotes of John Major on MyQuotes

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

Disunity costs votes.

Fifty years from now Britain will still be the country of long shadows on county 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 still read even in school.

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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.

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 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.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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.

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

Life is full of surprises.

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

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.

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.

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.

[on Queen Mother] Our country is the richer for her life and the poorer at her death.

Recovery begins from the darkest moment.

Some people eat eggs, I wear them.

Tentacles of terrorism spread everywhere

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

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.

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.