John Major Quotes
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The first requirement of politics is not intellect or stamina but patience. Politics is a very long run game and the tortoise will usually beat the hare.
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I think the biggest mistake I made was this wretched ability to see both sides of an argument.
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Well, I think there's a distinction between sexing-up the intelligence and sexing-up the presentation of the intelligence.
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When I was in office the fundraising was done by the party treasurers.
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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.
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Something I was not aware had happened suddenly turned out not to have happened.
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I think we can get respect for Parliament back providing governments and oppositions are frank.
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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.
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I'm not about to write my memoirs. Not for a long time.
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I don't have a shred of regret about entering the exchange-rate mechanism.
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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.
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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.
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If we want to deliver opportunity for all, we need an economy that delivers jobs for the future.
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My father was 64 when I was conceived, my mother 38, which was late for babies in the 1940s.
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I think it's extremely unlikely that the European Union will fracture with nations dropping off the edge.
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There are more myths about Black Wednesday than the Greeks ever created.
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My mother was the center of the family.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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Certainly we've seen the enormous changes across the whole of the Middle East. The democratic genie is out of the bottle.
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It is the one event in my life of which I am most ashamed and I have long feared would be made public.
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We will do precisely what the British nation has done all through its history when it had its back to the wall — turn round and fight for the things it believes in, and that is what I shall do.
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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.