In long experience I find that a man who trusts nobody is apt to be the kind of man nobody trusts.
— Harold MacMillan
At home, you always have to be a politician; when you're abroad, you almost feel yourself a statesman.
Marxism is like a classical building that followed the Renaissance; beautiful in its way, but incapable of growth.
If you don't believe in God, all you have to believe in is decency. Decency is very good. Better decent than indecent. But I don't think it's enough.
I read a great number of press reports and find comfort in the fact that they are nearly always conflicting.
Tradition does not mean that the living are dead, it means that the dead are living.
I have never found, in a long experience of politics, that criticism is ever inhibited by ignorance.
It's no use crying over spilt summits.
There might be 1 finger on the trigger, but there will be 15 fingers on the safety catch.
(A Foreign Secretary) is forever poised between the cliche and the indiscretion.
Power? It's like a Dead Sea fruit. When you achieve it, there is nothing there.
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.
To be alive at all involves some risk.
When the curtain falls, the best thing an actor can do is to go away.
No man should ever lose sleep over public affairs.
He is forever poised between a cliche and an indiscretion.
Britain's most useful role is somewhere between bee and dinosaur.
I was determined that no British government should be brought down by the action of two tarts.
Memorial services are the cocktail parties of the geriatric set.
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.
We have not overthrown the divine right of kings to fall down for the divine right of experts.
It is the duty of Her Majesty's government neither to flap nor to falter.
A man who trusts nobody is apt to be the kind of man nobody trusts.
If people want a sense of purpose they should get it from their archbishop. They should certainly not get it from their politicians.
I was a sort of son to Ike, and it was the other way round with Kennedy.
Once the bear's hug has got you, it is apt to be for keeps.
