Roy Jenkins Quotes

#1. The late Roy Jenkins was both a mentor and a personal friend. He was a man of both phenomenal intellect and political achievement in equal measure.

Charles Kennedy

#2. I like good food and decent wine as much as Roy Jenkins does, but I keep quiet about it.

David Steel

#3. Many of the early nationalisation measures were right. They have remained part of the social fabric. I favour measures of that type.

Roy Jenkins

#4. There is a lot of talk about a centre party - and that I might lead it. I find this idea profoundly unattractive

Roy Jenkins

#5. Perhaps, Katrine, in a library just like this one, you will find that all the things you thought were impossible and all the things that everyone, throughout history, have thought were impossible are not really impossible at all ... they never were impossible.

Alexei Maxim Russell

#6. I therefore believe that the politics of the left and centre of this country are frozen in an out-of-date mould which is bad for the political and economic health of Britain and increasingly inhibiting for those who live within the mould. Can it be broken?

Roy Jenkins

#7. The most moving speech I have ever heard was Hugh Gaitskell saying he would 'fight, fight and fight again to save the party we love. That was the right message in 1960, and I believe it is still the right message today.

Roy Jenkins

#8. The permissive society has been allowed to become a dirty phrase. A better phrase is the civilised society.

Roy Jenkins

#9. Do what is right, and the reward will be immediate and multitudinous. Think what is right, and your authority will grow.

John Kremer

#10. It is a poor observance of our first century as a nation if we run up a flag of surrender with three dying maple leaves on it.

Charlotte Whitton

#11. Inheritance Tax; - it is, broadly speaking; a voluntary levy paid by those who distrust their heirs more than they dislike the Inland Revenue

Roy Jenkins

#12. I do not think you can push public expenditure significantly above 60 per cent and maintain the values of a plural society with adequate freedom of choice. We are here close to one of the frontiers of social democracy

Roy Jenkins

#13. We must not expect a full-scale peaceful revolution every time a Labour Government is elected.

Roy Jenkins

#14. Delight in your sensuality, in the dance of your desires. Don't be ashamed of it.

Marty Rubin

#15. Patience was part of his nature, and he accepted his lot as a short-lived mammal, scurrying in and out amid the roots of the giants.

Ruth Ozeki

#16. When I have been unhappy, I have heard an opera ... and it seemed the shrieking of winds; when I am happy, a sparrow's chirp is delicious to me. But it is not the chirp that makes me happy, but I that make it sweet.

John Ruskin

#17. There are always great dangers in letting the best be the enemy of the good.

Roy Jenkins

#18. A social democratic party without deep roots in the working class movement would quickly fade into an unrepresentative intellectual sect.

Roy Jenkins

#19. The Labour Party is and always has been an instinctive part of my life.

Roy Jenkins

#20. A substantial extension of public ownership is an essential pre-requisite of greater equality of earned income

Roy Jenkins

#21. The great disadvantage of our present electoral system is that it freezes the pattern of politics, and holds together the incompatible because everyone assumes that if a party splits it will be electorally slaughtered.

Roy Jenkins

#22. Each successive Labour Government has been the most rapacious, doctrinaire and unpatriotic conspiracy to be seen this side of the Iron Curtain.

Roy Jenkins

#23. I am sure Mr Heath thinks he is honest but I wish he didn't have to have his friends say it so often.

Roy Jenkins

#24. The fact is that Harold Wilson is a person no one can like, a person without friends.

Roy Jenkins