John Major quotes

John Major is a British politician who served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1990 to 1997. His leadership followed Margaret Thatcher’s tenure and covered a period of major political and economic change. He is recognized for his efforts to promote peace in Northern Ireland and for navigating the country through a challenging era. Here are 78 of his quotes:

Whether you agree with me, disagree with me, like me or loathe me, don't bind my hands when I am negotiating on behalf of the British people.

John Major

If the answer is more politicians, you are asking the wrong question.

John Major

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

Fifty years on from now, Britain will still be the country of long shadows on county grounds, warm beer, invincible green suburbs, dog lovers and pools fillers and, as George Orwell said, 'Old maids bicycling to holy communion through the morning mist' and, if we get our way, Shakespeare will still be read even in school.

John Major

I am walking over hot coals suspended over a deep pit at the bottom of which are a large number of vipers baring their fangs.

John Major

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

Robert Hughes (Labour MP for Aberdeen North): With regard to the Prime Minister's desire for a classless society and social mobility, will he explain why there are no women in his Cabinet, or is the only woman in his Cabinet the back-seat driver? John Major: In recent years, in all aspects of life in this country, women have been taking a higher profile: in the law, in commerce, in the civil service, in industry and in politics - and that will continue. As those women would wish it to be, they will reach the top on merit - oh yes, and if the hon. Gentleman is patient, he will find women aplenty in top positions in my Government. Indeed, if he had waited awhile, perhaps even to the end of today, he would not have asked that question.

John Major

He was a fairly competent chairman of Housing [on Lambeth Council]. Every time he gets up now I keep thinking, "What on earth is Councillor Major doing?" I can't believe he's here and sometimes I think he can't either.

John Major

Summers simply won't be the same without him.

John Major

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

The right hon. and learned Member is the man who likes to say yes in Europe - Monsieur Oui, the poodle of Brussels.

John Major

It is the one event in my life of which I am most ashamed and I have long feared would be made public.

John Major

Their approach is profoundly un-Conservative and, whatever its short-term effect, will do permanent damage to the reputation of the Conservative Party.

John Major

We Conservatives have always passed our values from generation to generation. I believe that personal prosperity should follow the same course. I want to see wealth cascading down the generations. We do not see each generation starting out anew, with the past cut off and the future ignored.

John Major

I have been a Member of Parliament for 18 years. I have been a member of the Government for 14 years, of the Cabinet for ten years and Prime Minister since 1990. When the curtain falls it is time to get off the stage and that is what I propose to do. I shall, therefore, advise my parliamentary colleagues that it would be appropriate for them to consider the selection of a new leader of the Conservative Party to lead the party through Opposition through the years that lie immediately ahead.

John Major

George Foulkes: Will the Prime Minister tell us what word he would legitimately use to describe those Cabinet Ministers who, while professing loyalty to him, are setting up telephone lines in campaign offices for the second round of the election? John Major: I have no knowledge of that. I can say that the speed at which these matters can be done is a tribute to privatisation.

John Major

...so unpopular, if he became a funeral director people would stop dying.

John Major

Something I was not aware had happened suddenly turned out not to have happened.

John Major

A soundbite never buttered any parsnips.

John Major

If the implication of his remarks is that we should sit down and talk with Mr. Adams and the Provisional IRA, I can say only that that would turn my stomach and those of most hon. Members; we will not do it. If and when there is a total ending of violence, and if and when that ending of violence is established for a significant time, we shall talk to all the constitutional parties that have people elected in their names. I will not talk to people who murder indiscriminately.

John Major

The Conservative Party must make its choice. Every leader is leader only with the support of his party. That is true of me too. That is why I am no longer prepared to tolerate the present situation. In short, it is time to put up or shut up.

John Major

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