Denis Healey Quotes
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What almost halved the support for the Labour Party was the feeling that it has lost its traditional common sense and its humanity to a new breed of sectarian extremism.
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We will put Polaris into the arms talks with the Soviet Union and hope to phase it out in multilateral negotiations...if the Russians … fail to cut their nuclear forces accordingly it would be a new situation that we could consider at that time.
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If we can keep our heads—and our nerve—the long-awaited economic miracle is in our grasp. Britain can achieve in the Seventies what Germany and France achieved in the Fifties and Sixties.
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It has never been my nature, I regret to admit to the House, to turn the other cheek.
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I warn my hon. Friends...that once we cut defence expenditure to the extent where our security is imperilled, we have no houses, we have no hospitals, we have no schools. We have a heap of cinders.
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On unilateral nuclear disarmament. (The Guardian, 15 September 1981).
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The difference between tax avoidance and tax evasion is the thickness of a prison wall.
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First law on holes - when you're in one, stop digging!
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The US, whether we like it or not, has nuclear weapons. The US is a member of NATO. Possession by the US of nuclear weapons is obviously a deterrent.
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On the 1983 general election (The News of the World, 19 June 1983).
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It is a good thing to follow the First Law of Holes: if you are in one, stop digging.
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By the end of next year, we really shall be on our way to that so-called economic miracle we need.
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I think the Services can be rightly very upset at the continuous series of defence reviews which the Government has been forced by economic circumstances—and maybe economic mistakes too—to carry out...
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No country would suffer more than Britain from an international trade war, since we depend more on world trade than any of our competitors. That is why we cannot accept the proposal made in some quarters that we should seek to solve our problems through imposing import controls for a long period over a whole range of manufactured consumer goods.
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No. Absolutely not. I think that the Russians are praying for a Labour victory...praying is perhaps an unfortunate choice of words. I think that they would much prefer a Labour government and that the idea that they would prefer a Tory government, I think is utter bunkum, and they the Soviets authorized me to say so.
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The Guardian (14 August 1981).
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The reason we were defeated in so far as defence played a role is that people believe we were in favour of unilaterally disarming ourselves. It wasn't the confusion. It was the unilateralism that was the damaging thing.
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Speech in York (2 June 1973), quoted in The Times (4 June 1973), p. 2.
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The London Standard (30 September, 1986).
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When you're in a hole, stop digging.
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On BBC Television's Panorama programme (22 January, 1968).
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The Times (25 May 1983).
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I would fight to change the policy before the General Election. If I failed then I wouldn't accept office in a Labour Government.
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NATO's nuclear strategy is an essential part of that balance between East and West. To threaten to upset it by refusing to let America base any of her nuclear weapons in Britain would make war more likely, not less likely.