George Osborne Quotes

There are those who are trying to create an anti-business culture in Britain - and we have to stop them. At stake are not pay packages for a few but jobs and prosperity for the many.

I think essentially if you look at British public debate around the issues of our interconnectedness with the global economy you do not find a ready audience, of any large scale, for pulling up the shutters.

Tax cuts should be for life, not just for Christmas.

I was shocked to see that some of the very wealthiest people in the country have organised their tax affairs, and to be fair it's within the tax laws, so that they were regularly paying virtually no income tax. And I don't think that's right.

Each time I come it's amazing to watch the development of this incredible country [China].

I think it is absolutely central to our economic plan as a country not only that we put our own house in order but that we better connect ourselves with other parts of the world, particularly the faster growing parts of the world.

There is a big problem. The problem is the country borrowed too much. We went on a borrowing binge, there was a housing boom. You want to help people de-leverage and deal with those debts over time.

I think Britain needs to get out there on the world stage and make itself heard. And for much of my political career, there has been a sense of retreat from the world stage because of what happened in the Iraq War.

[Banks] have a clear obligation to help get this country off its addiction to debt because they sure as hell helped to get this country addicted to debt.

Of all the public services, education is the one I'm most interested in. You get a more dynamic economy, you deal with most social problems, and it's morally right.

The Conservative Party mustn't sound like the old man on the park bench who says things were better in 1985, or 1955, or 1855.

Autism is a very serious condition.

It is not fair that people who are born in the UK to parents who are domiciled here, can later in life claim to be non-doms and live here, it is not fair that non-doms with residential property here in the UK can put it in an offshore company and avoid inheritance tax.

People know that billions of pounds are wasted. Billions of pounds never get near the families that need it. It is an absolute outrage that hard-working people go out to work every day, get up early, come back late, don't see enough of their families in order to pay taxes to fund vast bureaucracies that are inefficient in order to fund a welfare system which allows too many people to sit for the whole of their lives on out-of-work benefits without going out to look for work.

What makes people angry and we are on the side of hard-working people who want to get on in life and they see how government is wasting their money.

Britain is not part of the single currency. That is a decision we have taken, a voluntary decision of this country, but as a result are part of a European Union 19 of whose members are rapidly integrating, creating political, fiscal, monetary, economic union to make their currency work. And that is increasingly rubbing up against the operation.

I believe in public services.

What's interesting is whilst Shanghai has gone stellar - literally, in these massive buildings which have appeared since I first visited - Beijing has become a much more vibrant and interesting place. A lot more business is done here.

Printing money is the last resort of desperate governments when all other policies have failed.

We should be looking at putting a limit on the interest that can be charged on things like store cards.You don't want to end up with totally draconian credit controls but you want some common sense. We want cooling-off periods for store cards so people can't take them out and go straight to the counter and buy things.

I would also like to see children aged between 11 and 18 taught financial education in a structured way in schools. I would also say that that is not enough. You have also got to improve numeracy skills, mathematical skills in schools.

I understand the damage the expenses crisis has done to Parliament, and the paramount importance of restoring trust in our politics.

Just as it wouldn't be right to only to have an economic dialogue with China, equally you shouldn't restrict your dialogue solely to issues around, say, human rights. You can raise all those issues, and that is what reflects a mature discussion. So I don't think essentially we have to choose between being partners in China's economic development and being proud defenders of British values.

Every day as Chancellor I see alerts telling me of risks around the world.

I want Britain to be the home of successful competitive and stable financial services.

British taxpayers should not bear the costs of problems in the Eurozone.

Cutting budget deficits can never be just an exercise in economics.

We are pretty tough in saying for example if you've got unsecured debts and less than £25,000 that should not be an excuse for repossessing someone's home.That should not be allowed.You have got to help manage people through this process. I don't want to pretend that it is going to be easy getting out of Gordon Brown's hole.

Why don't we save and invest in our future and start making the things that millions of Chinese consumers are going to want in the future.

There are plenty of people who don't want change - the Labour Party, some of their militant trade union friends like Unite busy causing strikes at the very beginning of a fragile recovery.

Establishing proper economic governance that allows the Eurozone to undertake the integration it needs whilst protecting the interests of the single market for all 28, the rights of member states who are not in the Euro - including of course the UK - is really important for the future of the European Union.

I didn't come from a traditional Tory background; it was urban and metropolitan.

I did meet Mickey Mouse in California, and he seems to be writing the Labour party's economic policy at the moment.

If you want to change the way your banking system is regulated, if you want to learn the mistakes of what's gone wrong, then you have to change your government.

The positive news is that the British economy is continuing to grow and is creating jobs. And it is positive news too that at a time of real international instability we are a safe haven in the storm.

At the moment we are hard-wired into the European markets - 50% of our exports go to Europe - and that has not been good for the UK. So I'm not saying "make Britain entirely dependent on China". I'm saying "let's diversify a bit". When I became chancellor, China was our ninth largest trading partner. This is the world's second biggest economy. China was doing more business with Belgium than it was with Britain.

I want to see genuine talent rewarded.

We will also target tax evasion and off-shore tax havens... Everyone must pay their share.

I believe that I'm entitled to regard my pre-political life as off-limits in terms of what can be looked at and judged.

No other chancellor in the long history of the office has felt the need to pass a law in order to convince people he has the political will to implement his own Budget.

I have done everything I can to move Britain out of the financial danger zone.

Well look, no one takes pleasure from people making money out of the misery of others, but that is a function of capitalist markets.

You cannot tackle Britain's debts without tackling the unreformed welfare system.

I'm fed up with Britain being condemned to this future where we borrow the Chinese in order to buy from the Chinese the things that they make for us.

I reject absolutely the idea that people should know their place, and know their class.

I think you can look at the British economy with confidence.

The foundations of a strong economy don't rest alone on the decisions of Chancellors or the spending programmes of government.

We need to think deeply about whether we can sustain banks that are not only too big to fail, but potentially too big to bail.