Ernest Bevin Quotes

#1. The first thing to decide before you walk into any negotiation is what to do if the other fellow says 'no'.

Ernest Bevin

#2. Unintelligent people always look for a scapegoat.

Ernest Bevin

#3. Ernest Bevin had many of the strongest characteristics of the English race. His manliness, his common sense, his rough simplicity, sturdiness and kind heart, easy geniality and generosity, all are qualities which we who live in the southern part of this famous island regard with admiration.

Ernest Bevin

#4. The most conservative man in this world is the British trade unionist when you want to change him.

Ernest Bevin

#5. There never has been a war yet which, if the facts had been put calmly before the ordinary folk, could not have been prevented. The common man, I think, is the great protection against war.

Ernest Bevin

#6. My policy is to be able to take a ticket at Victoria station and go anywhere I damn well please!

Ernest Bevin

#7. There has been great excitement at the prospect that this atomic bomb or atomic energy is likely to produce great industrial energy very quickly, I do not believe it at all.

Ernest Bevin

#8. It is placing the Executive and the Movement in an absolutely wrong position to be hawking your conscience round from body to body asking to be told what you ought to do with it.

Ernest Bevin

#9. If the workers see themselves faced with defeat through starvation, they will prefer to go down fighting rather than fainting - and whether or not we leaders agree.

Ernest Bevin

#10. It was like a life-line to a sinking man. It seemed to bring hope where there was none. The generosity of it was beyond our belief.

Ernest Bevin

#11. Civilisation cannot survive if it rests on a propertyless proletariat.

Ernest Bevin

#12. If you let that sort of thing go on, your bread and butter will be cut right out from under your feet.

Ernest Bevin

#13. Foreign policy isn't something that is great and big, it's common sense and humanity as it applies to my affairs and yours.

Ernest Bevin

#14. A newspaper has three things to do. One is to amuse, another is to entertain and the rest is to mislead.

Ernest Bevin

#15. What astounds me about the history of the British Navy is how cheaply we have policed the world for 300 years.

Ernest Bevin

#16. There should be a study of a house directly elected by the people of the world to whom the nations are accountable.

Ernest Bevin

#17. If you open that Pandora's Box you never know what Trojan 'orses will jump out.

Ernest Bevin