Maurice Harold Macmillan, 1st Earl of Stockton, OM, PC, FRS (1894–1986) was Conservative Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 10 January 1957 to 18 October 1963. Nicknamed “Supermac” and known for his pragmatism, wit and unflappability, Macmillan achieved note before the Second World War as a Tory radical and critic of appeasement. As a child, young teenager and later young man, he was an admirer of the policies and leadership of a succession of Liberal Prime Ministers, starting with Henry Campbell-Bannerman, who came to power near the end of 1905 when Macmillan was only 11 years old, and then H. H. Asquith, whom he later described as having “intellectual sincerity and moral nobility”, and particularly of Asquith’s successor, David Lloyd George, whom he regarded as a “man of action”, likely to accomplish his goals.
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I have never found in a long experience of politics that criticism is ever inhibited by ignorance.
—Harold Macmillan
To be alive at all involves some risk.
—Harold Macmillan
Topics: Danger, Risk, Trying
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.
—Harold Macmillan
Topics: Atheism
Memorial services are the cocktail parties of the geriatric set.
—Harold Macmillan
Topics: Party
Tradition does not mean that the living are dead, it means that the dead are living.
—Harold Macmillan
Topics: Tradition
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.
—Harold Macmillan
Topics: Foolishness, Fools
At home you always have to be a politician. When you’re abroad you almost feel yourself a statesman.
—Harold Macmillan
Topics: Politics, Politicians
Power? It’s like a Dead Sea fruit. When you achieve it, there is nothing there.
—Harold Macmillan
Topics: Power
Jaw-jaw is better than war-war.
—Harold Macmillan
Topics: Negotiation, Business
We have not overthrown the divine right of kings to fall down for the divine right of experts.
—Harold Macmillan
Topics: Professionalism, Experts
History is apt to judge harshly those who sacrifice tomorrow for today.
—Harold Macmillan
Topics: Weight, Diet
We do not intend to part from the Americans and we do not intend to be satellites. I am sure they do not want us to be so. The stronger we are, the better partners we shall be; and I feel certain that as the months pass we shall draw continually closer together with mutual confidence and respect.
—Harold Macmillan
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.
—Harold Macmillan
Topics: Politicians, Politics
The wind of change is blowing through the continent. Whether we like it or not, this growth of national consciousness is a political fact.
—Harold Macmillan
Topics: Change
Marxism is like a classical building that followed the Renaissance; beautiful in its way, but incapable of growth.
—Harold Macmillan
Topics: Communism
No man succeeds without a good woman behind him. Wife or mother, if it is both, he is twice blessed indeed.
—Harold Macmillan
Topics: Success & Failure, Wife
In long experience I find that a man who trusts nobody is apt to be the kind of man nobody trusts.
—Harold Macmillan
Topics: Experience
A Foreign Secretary and this applies also to a prospective Foreign Secretary is always faced with this cruel dilemma. Nothing he can say can do very much good, and almost anything he may say may do a great deal of harm. Anything he says that is not obvious is dangerous; whatever is not trite is risky. He is forever poised between the cliche and the indiscretion.
—Harold Macmillan
Topics: Diplomacy
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