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
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: Politics, Politicians
No man succeeds without a good woman behind him. Wife or mother, if it is both, he is twice blessed indeed.
—Harold Macmillan
Topics: Wife, Success & Failure
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
Marxism is like a classical building that followed the Renaissance; beautiful in its way, but incapable of growth.
—Harold Macmillan
Topics: Communism
History is apt to judge harshly those who sacrifice tomorrow for today.
—Harold Macmillan
Topics: Weight, Diet
Jaw-jaw is better than war-war.
—Harold Macmillan
Topics: Negotiation, Business
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
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
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: Fools, Foolishness
At home you always have to be a politician. When you’re abroad you almost feel yourself a statesman.
—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
We have not overthrown the divine right of kings to fall down for the divine right of experts.
—Harold Macmillan
Topics: Professionalism, Experts
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
I have never found in a long experience of politics that criticism is ever inhibited by ignorance.
—Harold Macmillan
Power? It’s like a Dead Sea fruit. When you achieve it, there is nothing there.
—Harold Macmillan
Topics: Power
To be alive at all involves some risk.
—Harold Macmillan
Topics: Risk, Trying, Danger
Wondering Whom to Read Next?
- Winston Churchill British Head of State
- Margaret Thatcher British Head of State
- Ramsay MacDonald British Head of State
- Neville Chamberlain British Head of State
- William Ewart Gladstone English Liberal Statesman
- David Lloyd George British Liberal Statesman
- Benjamin Disraeli British Head of State
- E. F. L. Wood, 1st Earl of Halifax British Politician
- Enoch Powell British Politician
- Oliver Cromwell British Head of State
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