Explore Quotes by John Major

[on Queen Mother] Our country is the richer for her life and the poorer at her death.

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.

When your back is against the wall, there is only one thing to do, and that is turn around and fight.

Tentacles of terrorism spread everywhere

In housing in the fifties in Britain and the sixties, we pulled down the terraces - destroyed whole communities and replaced them with tower blocks and we built walkways that became rat-runs for muggers. That was the fashionable opinion. But it was wrong.

Well what would happen is that if Greece defaulted and couldn't pay its debts, all the Greek bonds that are held in other banking systems across Western Europe would suddenly have no value. You could as a knock-on effect create a banking crisis in Western Europe.

"Government gets things right" does not encourage sales. "Government makes another blunder" does encourage sales, so there's a commercial imperative that pushes sensationalism.

You've had an extremely weak euro on the foreign exchange markets, you've had a very dubious policy being followed.

When the euro was born, it was born in the wrong economic circumstances.

If you look back historically, admittedly a long time ago, there were three Afghan wars in which Britain didn't even come a good second. In more recent years the Russians were there with 120,000 men for ten years.

If we want to deliver opportunity for all, we need an economy that delivers jobs for the future.

Only in Britain could it be thought a defect to be too clever by half. The probability is that too many people are too stupid by three-quarters.

Whatever efforts for peace President Gorbachev had in mind, they were pretty substantially undercut very swiftly by Saddam Hussein.

Well British troops are superb in the field in terms of conflict.

I think we can get respect for Parliament back providing governments and oppositions are frank.

I think the biggest mistake I made was this wretched ability to see both sides of an argument.

I'm not about to write my memoirs. Not for a long time.

I think the majority of the British people are still sanguine about the need for war.

I thought I could do something different from any Conservative prime minister before me. But I couldn't.

I want Britain to punch its weight in the European Community.

I think it's extremely unlikely that the European Union will fracture with nations dropping off the edge.