John Major Quotes

If is a very big preposition.

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.

Life is full of surprises.

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

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

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

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

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

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.

Recovery begins from the darkest moment.

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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

Some people eat eggs, I wear them.

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

I can't legislate to change human nature.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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 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.

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.

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

Disunity costs votes.

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.