Harold Wilson quotes

Harold Wilson was a British Labour politician who served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom during the 1960s and 1970s. His leadership witnessed significant social reforms and modernization of the British economy. He is remembered for his pragmatic approach to governance and efforts to balance tradition with change. Here are 56 of his quotes:

He who rejects change is the architect of decay. The only human institution which rejects progress is the cemetery. (Harold Wilson)
A week is a long time in politics. View quote
Harold Wilson
May I say, for the benefit of those who have been carried away by the gossip of the last few days, that I know what's going on. I'm going on, and the Labour government's going on. View quote
Harold Wilson
From now on, the pound abroad is worth 14 per cent or so less in terms of other currencies. That doesn't mean, of course, that the Pound here in Britain, in your pocket or purse or in your bank, has been devalued. View quote
Harold Wilson
The Labour Party is a moral crusade or it is nothing. View quote
Harold Wilson
I get a little nauseated, perhaps, when I hear the phrase 'freedom of the press' used as freely as it is, knowing that a large part of our proprietorial press is not free at all. View quote
Harold Wilson
The government have only a small majority in the House of Commons. I want to make it quite clear that this will not affect our ability to govern. Having been charged with the duties of Government we intend to carry out those duties. View quote
Harold Wilson
[Labour will deal with racketeering in the price of land. ] I call that a socialist theme. Yes, and I should have thought a Liberal theme. That great modernizing party on this theme at least at Scarborough last week carried through an exercise in recidivism which places its present leadership some years behind the Liberals some 60 years ago. In 1909 and 1910 they filled the land with song-'God gave the land to the people'. Now in 1965 we have the first fruits of Liberal revisionism. While they would not intend to throw doubt on the Almighty's intention in this respect, their researches suggest he did not intend this declaration to be taken too literally. View quote
Harold Wilson
Let us not be afraid to express the passionate concern everyone of us feels about present housing conditions. ... This is a problem which brooks no escape, no evasion. It is no use talking about a free market: the provision of decent housing for all is a clear and inescapable obligation of government. View quote
Harold Wilson
I'm like Baldwin. I'm here to give people a quiet life. View quote
Harold Wilson
We are more interested in the monthly trade returns than in Debrett, more preoccupied with what is said by the industrial correspondents and economic editors than what is said by William Hickey; more concerned with modernizing the machinery of government and the action that will need to follow the report of the Estimates Committee on the Civil Service than in altering the layout of Burke's Landed Gentry. (Harold Wilson)
In my talks with the African Nationalist leaders...I regarded it as my duty to remove from their minds any idea or any hope they might have had that Rhodesia's constitutional problems were going to be solved by an assertion of military power on our part, whether for the purposes of suspending or amending the 1961 Constitution, of imposing majority rule tomorrow or any other time-or for that matter of dealing with the situation that would follow an illegal assertion of independence. To quote the words I used to them: If there are those who are thinking in terms of a thunderbolt hurtling from the sky and destroying their enemies, a thunderbolt in the shape of the Royal Air Force, let me say that thunderbolt will not be coming, and to continue in this delusion wastes valuable time, and misdirects valuable energies. View quote
Harold Wilson
I believe the greatest asset a head of state can have is the ability to get a good night's sleep. View quote
Harold Wilson
If I had the choice between smoked salmon and tinned salmon, I'd have it tinned. With vinegar. View quote
Harold Wilson
One man's wage rise is another man's price increase. View quote
Harold Wilson
I know I speak for everyone in these islands, all parties, all our people, when I say to Mr. Smith tonight: "Prime Minister, think again." View quote
Harold Wilson
We have taken steps which have not been taken by any other democratic government in the world. We are taking steps with regard to prices and wages which no other government, even in wartime, has taken. View quote
Harold Wilson
Traders and financiers all over the world had been listening to the Chancellor. For months he had said that if he could not stop the wage claims, the country was "facing disaster". Those were his own words. Rightly or wrongly these people believed him. For them, 5th September-the day that the Trades Union Congress unanimously rejected the policy of wage restraint-marked the end of an era. And all these financiers, all the little gnomes in Zurich and the other financial centres about whom we keep on hearing, started to make their dispositions in regard to sterling. View quote
Harold Wilson
The lead Britain can give and is already giving rests on the fact that we are a world-minded people. Britain will give a lead in political attitudes and political developments in Europe. We cannot do that by taking our bat home and sinking into an off-shore island mentality. View quote
Harold Wilson
I intend to play it low-key throughout. The decision is purely a marginal one. I have always said so. I have never been a fanatic for Europe. I believe the judgment is a finely balanced one. View quote
Harold Wilson
I have never been emotionally a Europe man. I have been and remain fundamentally a Commonwealth man. I therefore cannot ignore the fact that the vast majority of Commonwealth countries now want Britain to stay in. (Harold Wilson)
The people must have confidence in their publicly-owned industries. Private industry must have the necessary confidence to maintain and increase investment to do their duty by the people. And confidence demands that a clear frontier must be defined between what is public and what is private industry. View quote
Harold Wilson
We are the party of human rights-the only party of human rights that will be speaking from this platform this month. (Loud applause.) The struggle against racialism is a worldwide fight. It is the dignity of man for which we are fighting. If what we assert is true for Birmingham, it is true for Bulawayo. If ever there were a condemnation of the values of the party which forms the Opposition it is the fact that the virus of Powellism has taken so firm a hold at every level. View quote
Harold Wilson
I am not prepared to stand aside and see this country engulfed by the racial conflict which calculating orators or ignorant prejudice can create. Nor in the great world confrontation on race and colour, where this country must declare where it stands, am I prepared to be a neutral, whether that confrontation is in Birmingham or Bulawayo. In these issues there can be no neutrals and no escape from decision. For in the world of today, while political isolationism invites danger and economic isolationism invites bankruptcy, moral isolationism invites contempt. View quote
Harold Wilson
This country cannot afford now-if it ever could afford-unofficial strikes, wasteful stoppages, long, weary arguments about industrial demarcation, any more than we can afford out-of-date industrial methods, industrial promotion based on influence and connexion rather than technical ability, or management attitudes which give a higher priority to tax avoidance or the earning of quick, uncovenanted capital profits than to modernization and innovation in industrial production methods, or aggressiveness in exports. View quote
Harold Wilson