John Major Quotes

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

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

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.

Recovery begins from the darkest moment.

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

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

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

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

My mother was the center of the family.

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

You cannot think of Margaret without Denis. There comes a time when every Prime Minister needs someone to give him or her the unvarnished truth, and, in Denis, Margaret had just that.

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

'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 will turn directly to the Asylum Bill later.

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

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

Our country is the richer for her life and the poorer at her death.

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

You've had an extremely weak euro on the foreign exchange markets, you've had a very dubious policy being followed.

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.

Tentacles of terrorism spread everywhere

Some people eat eggs, I wear them.

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 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.

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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

I can't legislate to change human nature.

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.

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.

Whatever efforts for peace President Gorbachev had in mind, they were pretty substantially undercut very swiftly by Saddam Hussein.

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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

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 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.

If is a very big preposition.