John Major Quotes & Sayings

#1. Society needs to condemn a little more and understand a little less.

#2. When the euro was born, it was born in the wrong economic circumstances.

#3. I want to see us build a country that is at ease with itself, a country that is confident and a country that is able and willing to build a better quality of life for all its citizens.

John Major

#4. 'Government gets things right' does not encourage sales. 'Government makes another blunder' does encourage sales, so there's a commercial imperative that pushes sensationalism.

John Major

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

John Major

#6. Well, I have concerns about the effectiveness of Europe to compete.

John Major

#7. I can't legislate to change human nature.

John Major

#8. Too many people looked to me in the eye and did not tell me the truth.

John Major

#9. 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.

John Major

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

John Major

#11. I inherited a sick economy and passed on a sound one. But one abiding regret for me is that, in between, I did not have the resources to put in place the educational and social changes about which I cared to much; I made only a beginning, and it was not enough.

John Major

#12. Some people eat eggs, I wear them.

John Major

#13. In housing in the fifties in Britain and the sixties, we pulled down the terraces - destroyed whole communities and replaced them with tower blocks and we built walkways that became rat-runs for muggers. That was the fashionable opinion. But it was wrong.

John Major

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

John Major

#15. I will turn directly to the Asylum Bill later.

John Major

#16. When I was in office the fundraising was done by the party treasurers.

John Major

#17. If you look back historically, admittedly a long time ago, there were three Afghan wars in which Britain didn't even come a good second. In more recent years the Russians were there with 120,000 men for ten years.

John Major

#18. 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

#19. 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

#20. When our backs are against the wall, we must turn around and march forward.

John Major

#21. 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

#22. I have been reading the press more regularly than others over 50 years and it seems to me that there are things that have changed in the press that have changed its character.

John Major

#23. Liberty is equally desirable to the good and to the bad, to the brave and to the dastardly.

John Major

#24. You don't forget crises and neither does the Queen.

John Major

#25. Tentacles of terrorism spread everywhere

John Major

#26. Well, I think there's a distinction between sexing-up the intelligence and sexing-up the presentation of the intelligence.

John Major

#27. The British don't runaway from terrorism. We have had 30-odd years of terrorism in our own country from the Irish Republican Army. We're used to it.

John Major

#28. My mother was the center of the family.

John Major

#29. You've had an extremely weak euro on the foreign exchange markets, you've had a very dubious policy being followed.

John Major

#30. When your back is against the wall, there is only one thing to do, and that is turn around and fight.

John Major

#31. Ronnie Barker will forever be remembered as one of the great comic actors.

John Major

#32. They seem to have moved from total opposition to total subservience.

John Major

#33. 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

#34. What happens when there is a conflict between the Scottish parliament, if it was established, and the Westminster parliament? Who is supreme?

John Major

#35. 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

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

John Major

#37. The argument that someone is a bad man is an inadequate argument for war and certainly an inadequate and unacceptable argument for regime change.

John Major

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

John Major

#39. It is time to return to core values, time to get back to basics, to self-discipline and respect for the law, to consideration for the others, to accepting responsibility for yourself and your family - and not shuffling it off on other people and the state.

John Major

#40. I want Britain to punch its weight in the European Community.

John Major

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

John Major

#42. Well what would happen is that if Greece defaulted and couldn't pay its debts, all the Greek bonds that are held in other banking systems across Western Europe would suddenly have no value. You could as a knock-on effect create a banking crisis in Western Europe.

John Major

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

John Major

#44. 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

#45. 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

#46. I like the best of the British press. The best of the British press is very good.

John Major

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

John Major

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

John Major

#49. I think the majority of the British people are still sanguine about the need for war.

John Major

#50. You cannot think of Margaret without Denis. There comes a time when every Prime Minister needs someone to give him or her the unvarnished truth, and, in Denis, Margaret had just that.

John Major

#51. Political suicide can end a career.

John Major

#52. 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

#53. Our country is the richer for her life and the poorer at her death.

John Major

#54. 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

#55. I would rather go while I am being urged to stay, than to stay beyond the time when I should go.

John Major

#56. I don't think nations can stand aside for ethnic cleansing and genocide.

John Major

#57. You're lucky to head a coalition government. I am a coalition government on my own.

John Major

#58. UN goodwill may be a bottomless pit but it's by no means limitless.

John Major

#59. A country of long shadows on county cricket grounds, warm beer, green suburbs, dog lovers, and old maids cycling to holy communion through the morning mist.

John Major

#60. I thought I could do something different from any Conservative prime minister before me. But I couldn't.

John Major

#61. I don't think it's the role of the prime minister to court the press.

John Major

#62. Neil Kinnock's speeches go on for so long because he has nothing to say and so he has no way of knowing when he's finished saying it.

John Major

#63. Whatever efforts for peace President Gorbachev had in mind, they were pretty substantially undercut very swiftly by Saddam Hussein.

John Major

#64. I am not running as Son of Margaret Thatcher. I have my own priorities and my own programmes.

John Major

#65. 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