John Major Quotes

I'm not about to write my memoirs. Not for a long time.

John Major

• Time
• Long

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.

John Major

• People
• Stupid
• Clever

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.

John Major

• People
• Work
• Great

My father was 64 when I was conceived, my mother 38, which was late for babies in the 1940s.

John Major

• Mother
• Father

Something I was not aware had happened suddenly turned out not to have happened.

John Major

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

John Major

• Respect

September the 11th was a huge shock in the United States. It was the first time you had been hit at home in your own territory by terrorist on this scale.

John Major

• Time
• Home
• September

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.

John Major

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.

John Major

• Country
• Society

I don't have a shred of regret about entering the exchange-rate mechanism.

John Major

• Regret

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.

John Major

• Moving

Fifty years on from now, Britain will still be the country of long shadows on county 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.

John Major

• Long
• Country
• School

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

John Major

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.

John Major

• Regret

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

John Major

• Future
• Opportunity

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

John Major

• Black
• Wednesday

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

John Major

• Decision
• Mistake

We Conservatives have always passed our values from generation to generation. I believe that personal prosperity should follow the same course. I want to see wealth cascading down the generations. We do not see each generation starting out anew, with the past cut off and the future ignored.

John Major

• Believe
• Future
• Past

My mother was the center of the family.

John Major

• Family
• Mother

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

John Major

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.

John Major

• Parents
• Proud

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

John Major

• People
• Believe

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

John Major

• Mistake

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

John Major