Maurice Harold Macmillan, 1st Earl of Stockton (1894–1986,) was a British Conservative statesman who served in the British government 1924–63, as prime minister 1957–63.
Born in London, Macmillan was educated at Eton and Balliol College-Oxford. His studies were interrupted during World War I service. He was in Canada as aide-de-camp 1919–20 to the Governor-General, the Duke of Devonshire, whose daughter Lady Dorothy he wedded.
Returning to Britain, Macmillan worked for his family’s publishing business and became Conservative MP for Stockton-on-Tees in 1924; he was defeated in 1929 but re-elected in 1931. He was a backbencher, Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Supply, Colonial Under-Secretary, and Minister Resident at Allied Headquarters. He was defeated in the Labour landslide of 1945. Still, he was returned in a by-election the same year for Bromley, which he held until retirement in 1964.
Macmillan served as Minister of Housing (1951–54,) Minister of Defence (1954–55,) Foreign Minister (1955,) and Chancellor of the Exchequer (1955–57) before succeeding Anthony Eden as prime minister. His economic expansionism and sharp foreign affairs helped his popularity soar, and he began a new term as prime minister in 1959. After the electoral setbacks in 1962, he sacked seven Cabinet Ministers and signed the Test-Ban Treaty (1963) with the U.S. and the USSR. However, Macmillan resigned in 1963 on ill health soon after a scandal involving his Secretary of State for War, John Profumo.
Macmillan’s legacy is debated. Some scholars consider his administration a period of unprecedented prosperity, while others see a time when a blind eye was turned to underlying troubles in the British economy.
In retirement, Macmillan wrote his memoirs and other books, became involved again in his family publishing business, and served as Chancellor of Oxford University 1960–86. His works include Winds of Change (1966,) The Blast of War (1967,) Tides of Fortune (1969,) Riding the Storm (1971,) Pointing the Way (1972,) and At the End of the Day (1972.) Biographies include Nigel Fisher’s Harold Macmillan: A Biography (1982) and Richard Aldous and Lee Sabine’s Harold Macmillan and Britain’s World Role (1996.)
More: Wikipedia • READ: Works by Harold Macmillan
Jaw-jaw is better than war-war.
—Harold Macmillan
Topics: Negotiation, Business
At home you always have to be a politician. When you’re abroad you almost feel yourself a statesman.
—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
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
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
I have never found in a long experience of politics that criticism is ever inhibited by ignorance.
—Harold Macmillan
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
History is apt to judge harshly those who sacrifice tomorrow for today.
—Harold Macmillan
Topics: Diet, Weight
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
Tradition does not mean that the living are dead, it means that the dead are living.
—Harold Macmillan
Topics: Tradition
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
To be alive at all involves some risk.
—Harold Macmillan
Topics: Trying, Danger, Risk
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
Memorial services are the cocktail parties of the geriatric set.
—Harold Macmillan
Topics: Party
We have not overthrown the divine right of kings to fall down for the divine right of experts.
—Harold Macmillan
Topics: Experts, Professionalism
Power? It’s like a Dead Sea fruit. When you achieve it, there is nothing there.
—Harold Macmillan
Topics: Power
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
Marxism is like a classical building that followed the Renaissance; beautiful in its way, but incapable of growth.
—Harold Macmillan
Topics: Communism
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