Top 100 Macmillan Quotes
#1. Macmillan's rejection had left him very downcast ... Patrick Swift was invited to peruse the contents and decided that the poems should be published.
Patrick Kavanagh
#2. Today, as a result of the policy of Macmillan's Government, Great Britain presents in the United Nations the face of Pecksniff and in Katanga the face of Gradgrind.
Conor Cruise O'Brien
#3. I'd like that translated if I may.
British Prime Minster Harold Macmillan
on Nikita Khruschev's shoe banging at the UN General Assembly on 29th September 1960
Harold Macmillan
#4. Sir Kenneth MacMillan's version of 'Romeo and Juliet' is my favorite full-length ballet, Sergei Prokofiev's breathtaking score a favorite composition of music. As a student of martial arts, I loved drawing my sword in defense of my Capulet kin.
Sascha Radetsky
#5. I've been associated with Macmillan for over 45 years. I'd like to thank them for their continued commitment to my backlist and I look forward to continuing to work with them as they publish my next novel, 'Vicious Circle' in 2013.
Wilbur Smith
#6. Every time one of my books sells a million copies in paperback, Pan Macmillan gives me a gold statuette of Pan. I have about 20 of them.
Wilbur Smith
#7. To be alive at all involves some risk. Harold Macmillan
Anonymous
#8. in business doing nothing is often the hardest thing. (And not just in business. Harold Macmillan, prime minister during the Cuban missile crisis, mused then 'on the frightful desire to do something, with the knowledge that not to do anything was prob. the right answer'.)
Simon Kuper
#9. As a student, I had stayed with Winston Churchill; later, I had lunched with Harold Macmillan - in fact, had met most of the post-war prime ministers of Great Britain from Douglas-Home to Tony Blair.
Nigel Hamilton
#10. I was chef to the French Presidents between '56 and '59, finished with de Gaulle, and during de Gaulle I remember serving Eisenhower, Nehru, Tito, Macmillan; those were the heads of state at the time. I never saw anyone. No one would ever, ever, ever come to the kitchen. You couldn't even see them.
Jacques Pepin
#11. I think that Harold MacMillan is a very intelligent man, who, as so often happens in politics, achieved supreme power too late.
Malcolm Muggeridge
#12. I'll have them niggers voting Democratic for the next two hundred years. [Said to two governors regarding the Civil Rights Act of 1964, according to then-Air Force One steward Robert MacMillan]
Lyndon B. Johnson
#13. I didn't bother with television myself because it consisted largely of windmills, puppets and pottery wheels, interspersed with elderly men smoking pipes while they discussed Harold Macmillan in Old Etonian accents.
Christopher Fowler
#14. Seize the day - be brave - be independent - be thoughtful - don't be scared to make mistakes - keep learning - all those things, all the time
Gilly Macmillan
#15. One word can change your life forever.
I love you
I hate you
Think about it
Alan Macmillan Orr
#17. We do not intend to part from the Americans and we do not intend to be satellites. I am sure they do not want us to be so. The stronger we are, the better partners we shall be; and I feel certain that as the months pass we shall draw continually closer together with mutual confidence and respect.
Harold Macmillan
#18. 90% of what we did the Press didn't know about, and 90% of what they did know about they got wrong.
Harold Macmillan
#19. It is the duty of Her Majesty's government neither to flap nor to falter.
Harold Macmillan
#20. You have to dream big and go for it. Surround yourself with people who believe in you and ignore those who try to bring you down. Never give up, no matter what - overcoming obstacles makes you stronger!
Shannon MacMillan
#21. Marxism is like a classical building that followed the Renaissance; beautiful in its way, but incapable of growth.
Harold Macmillan
#22. Trust is like that. Once you lose it, you begin to adjust your attitudes toward people, you put up guards, and filter the information you want them to know.
Gilly Macmillan
#23. What may seem like a reasonable way of protecting oneself can look very different from the other side of the border.
Margaret MacMillan
#26. History should not be written to make the present generation feel good but to remind us that human affairs are complicated.
Margaret MacMillan
#27. The wind of change is blowing through the continent. Whether we like it or not, this growth of national consciousness is a political fact.
Harold Macmillan
#28. When the curtain falls, the best thing an actor can do is to go away.
Harold Macmillan
#29. You will find the Americans much as the Greeks found the Romans: great, big, vulgar, bustling people more vigorous than we are and also more idle, with more unspoiled virtues but also more corrupt.
Harold Macmillan
#30. IF YOU BELIEVE THE DOCTORS," Salisbury once remarked, "nothing is wholesome; if you believe the theologians, nothing is innocent; if you believe the soldiers, nothing is safe.
Margaret MacMillan
#31. He (Aneurin Bevan) enjoys prophesying the imminent fall of the capitalist system, and is prepared to play a part, any part, in its burial, except that of mute.
Harold Macmillan
#32. As usual the Liberals offer a mixture of sound and original ideas. Unfortunately none of the sound ideas is original and none of the original ideas is sound.
Harold Macmillan
#33. We believe that unless we give opportunity to the strong and able, we shall never have the means to provide real protection for the weak and the old.
Harold Macmillan
#34. He is forever poised between a cliche and an indiscretion.
Harold Macmillan
#36. Britain's most useful role is somewhere between bee and dinosaur.
Harold Macmillan
#37. It is, of course, a trite observation to say that we live "in a period of transition." Many people have said this at many times. Adam may well have made the remark to Eve on leaving the Garden of Eden.
Harold Macmillan
#38. Stop-Go seemed more sensiblr than using the brake and accelerator at the same time - a practice that later became fashionable.
Harold Macmillan
#39. But the superiority of the British is that it is a matter of complete indifference to them if they appear to be stupid.
Margaret MacMillan
#40. I am not, nor will I ever be interested in the possibility of defeat.
Shannon MacMillan
#42. How many soaps does P&G make? In a sense, they're all the same. Can you tell me the difference between trading soybeans, cotton and rubber? They're all soaps to us.
Whitney MacMillan
#43. Mati took in my expression, and a moment later I was in his arms. His kisses washed over me like floodwater over parched earth. I clutched him helplessly, tears falling down my face and mingling with his as he whispered my name.
Kathy MacMillan
#44. Memorial services are the cocktail parties of the geriatric set.
Harold Macmillan
#45. In the eyes of others, we're often not who we imagine ourselves to be.
Gilly Macmillan
#46. The only quality needed for an MP is the ability to write a good letter.
Harold Macmillan
#47. Nationalist movements often overlapped with economic and class issues: Rumanian and Ruthenian peasants, for example, challenged their Hungarian and Polish landlords.
Margaret MacMillan
#48. I read a great number of press reports and find comfort in the fact that they are nearly always conflicting.
Harold Macmillan
#49. I was determined that no British government should be brought down by the action of two tarts.
Harold Macmillan
#51. all knew that other people were at work elsewhere, spreading the message far more effectively,
Gilly Macmillan
#52. Louvain was a dull place, said a guidebook in 1910, but when the time came it made a spectacular fire.
Margaret MacMillan
#53. I will not be able to carry the physical burden of leading the Party at the next general election. I hope it will soon be possible for the customary processes of consultation to be carried on within the Party about its future leadership.
Harold Macmillan
#54. British would use every means from persuasion to bribery in Morocco and when those failed the wives of British diplomats knew what they had to do to further Britain's interests.
Margaret MacMillan
#55. made some references to these sources within this book, What She Knew is entirely a work of fiction and all quotes and references are used fictitiously.
Gilly Macmillan
#56. The delegates to the peace conference after World War I tried to impose a rational order on an irrational world.
Margaret MacMillan
#57. We have not overthrown the divine right of kings to fall down for the divine right of experts.
Harold Macmillan
#58. They saw me as a freak show. I frightened people because I was someone to whom the worst was happening, and they turned on me like a pack of dogs. I've
Gilly Macmillan
#59. You can hardly say boo to a goose in the House of Commons now without cries of "Ungentlemanly," "Not fair" and all the rest.
Harold Macmillan
#60. It's a good thing to be laughed at. It's better than to be ignored.
Harold Macmillan
#61. After long experience of politics, I have never found that there is any inhibition caused by ignorance as regards criticism.
Harold Macmillan
#62. Revolt by all means, but only on one issue at a time. To do more would be to confuse the whips.
Harold Macmillan
#63. Too many people live too much in the past. The past must be a springboard, not a sofa.
Harold Macmillan
#64. What might happen if writing were a shared endeavor, meant t connect people instead of being hoarded as a tool of power and privilege.
Kathy MacMillan
#65. As the American historian John Lewis Gaddis put it, it is like looking in a rearview mirror: if you only look back, you will land in the ditch, but it helps to know where you have come from and who else is on the road.
Margaret MacMillan
#66. (A Foreign Secretary) is forever poised between the cliche and the indiscretion.
Harold Macmillan
#67. Churchill was fundamentally what the English call unstable - by which they mean anybody who has that touch of genius which is inconvenient in normal times.
Harold Macmillan
#68. If someone lies to you habitually, you can't ever trust them. It erodes relationships.
Gilly Macmillan
#69. If people want a sense of purpose they should get it from their archbishop. They should certainly not get it from their politicians.
Harold Macmillan
#70. A man who trusts nobody is apt to be the kind of man nobody trusts.
Harold Macmillan
#71. We don't look at what happens in our business in six-month periods.
Whitney MacMillan
#72. be whispered more now, only spoken of in hushed terms, because Lucas Grantham might
Gilly Macmillan
#73. There are three bodies no sensible man directly challenges: the Roman Catholic Church, the Brigade of Guards and the National Union of Mineworkers
Harold Macmillan
#74. remember this old Zen joke, "Don't just do something, sit there!" I can think of no better market advice when you are feeling emotional.
Palgrave Macmillan Trade
#75. Passionate and forcefully argued, Tar Sands is a wake-up call not just to Canadians but to the wider world to take a serious look at what is happening in northern Alberta. To call this book a polemic is a compliment.
Margaret MacMillan
#76. Once the bear's hug has got you, it is apt to be for keeps.
Harold Macmillan
#77. Grace has such simple needs. Wake, give love, receive love, refuel, expend energy, sleep. I love that about her.
Gilly Macmillan
#79. and dangerous depths of the labyrinth that was her depression. It had prevented her from slipping
Gilly Macmillan
#80. History is apt to judge harshly those who sacrifice tomorrow for today.
Harold Macmillan
#81. Theodore Rex. Roosevelt was driven by ambition, idealism and vanity. As his daughter famously remarked: My father always wanted to be the corpse at every funeral, the bride at every wedding, and the baby at every christening.
Margaret MacMillan
#82. Tradition does not mean that the living are dead, it means that the dead are living.
Harold Macmillan
#83. I have learned that in all negotiations nothing matters except the will to reach agreement.
Harold Macmillan
#84. It isn't those who always addressing each other as comrade who necessarily show the most brotherly feelings.
Harold Macmillan
#86. At home, you always have to be a politician; when you're abroad, you almost feel yourself a statesman.
Harold Macmillan
#87. This is what a total breakdown must be, I though. You find yourself standing somewhere you should't be, doing something so out of character that you wonder if you've become someone else entirely. You've lost the plot, taken a wrong turning, jumped into a train whose destination is total lunacy
Gilly Macmillan
#88. If you live a long life and get to the end of it without ever once having felt crushingly depressed, then you probably haven't been paying attention.
Duncan MacMillan
#90. Power? It's like a Dead Sea fruit. When you achieve it, there is nothing there.
Harold Macmillan
#91. If ever the call comes to them, the young will go straight from the ranks of the neutralists into the ranks of he Majesty's Forces, as they have so often done in the past.
Harold Macmillan
#92. It has been said that there is no fool like an old fool, except a young fool. But the young fool has first to grow up to be an old fool to realize what a damn fool he was when he was a young fool.
Harold Macmillan
#93. Food has become such an interesting issue in the nation and the world.
Whitney MacMillan
#94. Dream big and surround yourself with people that believe in you
Shannon MacMillan
#96. But here's the thing; none of us deserve anything. That's an illusion we all exist under
Gilly Macmillan
#97. There might be 1 finger on the trigger, but there will be 15 fingers on the safety catch.
Harold Macmillan
#98. Wilson agreed reluctantly to their attempts: I don't much like to make a compromise with people who aren't reasonable. They will always believe that, by persisting in their claims, they will be able to obtain more.
Margaret MacMillan
#99. I should have celebrated my life as it was, imperfections, sadness, and all, and not forensically examined its faults.
Gilly Macmillan
#100. In the fluid world of 1919, it was possible to dream of great change, or have nightmares about the collapse of order.
Margaret MacMillan
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