Douglas Hurd Quotes

#1. There is no consensus even today on the merits of Napoleon - and certainly no agreement on the rights and wrongs of the origins of the First World War.

Douglas Hurd

#2. The tragedy of 9/11 galvanised the American superpower into action, leaving us in Europe divided in its wake.

Douglas Hurd

#3. Silence is regarded as a sort of sin now, and it has to be filled with a lot of gossip and soundbites.

Douglas Hurd

#4. Men like Hitler and Stalin and their immediate lieutenants cannot plead in defence of their actions that these were justified by the accepted values of that time.

Douglas Hurd

#5. There is nothing false or arrogant about German pride in German technical and business skills.

Douglas Hurd

#6. People are very interested in politics, they just don't like it labelled politics.

Douglas Hurd

#7. It depends on how it is done but what we are drifting into, which is that people grow up without any sense of a spiritual dimension to life, is just impoverishing.

Douglas Hurd

#8. The first two Prime Ministers whom I served, Ted Heath and Margaret Thatcher drew strikingly different lessons from the Second World War.

Douglas Hurd

#9. But Germany will always suffer, I fear, from the intensely dramatic character of the crimes of the Third Reich.

Douglas Hurd

#10. We should be wary of politicians who profess to follow history while only noticing those signposts of history that point in the direction which they themselves already favour.

Douglas Hurd

#11. Margaret Thatcher, growing up in a bombed and battered Britain, derived a distrust which has grown with the years not just of Germany but of all continental Europe.

Douglas Hurd

#12. Ten Downing Street is a house, not an office. That is its most important characteristic.

Douglas Hurd

#13. Margaret Thatcher was fearful of German unification because she believed that this would bring an immediate and formidable increase of economic strength to a Germany which was already the strongest economic partner in Europe.

Douglas Hurd

#14. It was essentially for self defence that we went to war in Afghanistan and would go to war in Iraq.

Douglas Hurd

#15. A genuinely democratic Iraq might well act as a fresh spur.

Douglas Hurd

#16. No military timetable should compel war when a successful outcome, namely a disarmed Iraq may be feasible without war, for example by allowing more time to the UN inspectors.

Douglas Hurd

#17. It is normal for politicians in all countries to profess themselves the pupils of history, anxious to draw the right lessons from her teaching.

Douglas Hurd

#18. People know they are lacking something, they are constantly wanting some kind of spiritual guidance.

Douglas Hurd

#19. We must admit that history is enjoyable to a large extent because it enables us to pass judgement on the past.

Douglas Hurd

#20. War on Iraq runs the risk of turning the Middle East into an inexhaustible recruiting ground for anti- western terrorism.

Douglas Hurd

#21. There are thus great swathes of the past where understanding is more important and reputable than judgement, because the principal actors performed in line with the ideas and values of that time, not of ours.

Douglas Hurd

#22. But it cannot follow that because weapons and troops are now being deployed we are bound to go to war.

Douglas Hurd

#23. Despite this lamentable lack of balance in our education I do not believe that either children or adults in my country are permeated by a widespread hostility to Germany.

Douglas Hurd

#24. If Margaret Thatcher had been Prime Minister at the time, there would have been no Treaty of Maastricht.

Douglas Hurd

#25. We, Britain and Germany, can neither of us be happy about our handling of the Iraq war.

Douglas Hurd

#26. Diplomacy is unfashionable in the world of knee-jerk reaction and the dogmatic sound bite on television.

Douglas Hurd

#27. Some people find it difficult to argue with a woman Prime Minister and shrivel up.

Douglas Hurd

#28. Prison is an expensive way of making bad people worse.

Douglas Hurd

#29. Wisely used history can give pleasure and provide us with a useful tool; but we should not become its slaves.

Douglas Hurd

#30. I may be wrong in that, but not I think in putting the questions. In our modern democracy the government needs not a unanimous but a general support for war before it orders our forces to fight.

Douglas Hurd