Anthony Eden Quotes

If one hasn't been through, as our people mercifully did not go through, the horrors of an occupation by a foreign power, you have no right to pronounce upon what a country does, which has been through all that.

It is a common happening that those in power, as their tenure of office continues, find themselves less and less able to contemplate relinquishing it.

We best avoid wars by taking even physical action to stop small ones.

There is now doubt in our minds that Nasser, whether he likes it or not, is now effectively in Russian hands, just as Mussolini was in Hitler's. It would be as ineffective to show weakness to Nasser now in order to placate him as it was to show weakness to Mussolini.

We cannot agree that an act of plunder which threatens the livelihood of many nations should be allowed to succeed.

Man should be master of his environment, not its slave. That is what freedom means.

Everyone is always in favour of general economy and particular expenditure.

Long experience has told me that to be criticized is not always to be wrong.

Although [in 1937] we might still hope to prevent the divisions of Europe into Fascist and anti-Fascist camps, our real affinities and interests, strategic as well as political, lay with France, a fact which some of my colleagues were most reluctant to realise.

All prejudices are equally fatal to good government.

Corruption never has been compulsory.

Drift is the demon of democracy.

If we had allowed things to drift, everything would have gone from bad to worse. Nasser would have become a kind of Moslem Mussolini, and our friends in Iraq, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, and even Iran would gradually have been brought down. His efforts would have spread westwards, and Libya and North Africa would have been brought under his control.

The more the planners, the worse the plans.

The worst of being sacked is you can never find your car.

Slowly and painfully man is learning that he must do unto others what he would have them do to him.

Nothing is more destructive of human dignity than a rule which imposes a mute and blind obedience.

No democratic world will work as it should work until we recognize that we can only enjoy any right so long as we are prepared to discharge its equivalent duty. This applies just as much to states in their dealing with one another as to individuals within the states.

That is a good question for you to ask, not a wise question for me to answer.