Quotes By John Major

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

Life is full of surprises.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

A consensus politician is someone who does something that he doesn't believe is right because it keeps people quiet when he does it.

My mother was the center of the family.

I'm not about to write my memoirs. Not for a long time.

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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.

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

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

Well British troops are superb in the field in terms of conflict.

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

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.

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

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

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.

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

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.

Disunity costs votes.

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