Norman Tebbit Quotes

• Bad art was as good as good art. Grammar and spelling were no longer important. To be clean was no better than to be filthy. Good manners were no better than bad. Family life was derided as an outdated bourgeois concept. Criminals deserved as much sympathy as their victims. Many homes and classrooms became disorderly - if there was neither right nor wrong there could be no basis for punishment or reward. Violence and soft pornography became accepted in the media. Thus was sown the wind, and we are now reaping the whirlwind.

  Norman Tebbit

  Art, Home, Media

  54 Copy quote

• I grew up in the 30s with an unemployed father. He didn't riot; he got on his bike and looked for work and he kept looking 'til he found it.

  Norman Tebbit

  Father, Grew Up, Found

  Speech to the Conservative Party Conference, October 15, 1981.

  20 Copy quote

• If they (Muslim women) wish to cover their faces and isolate themselves from the rest of the community and so thoroughly reject our culture then I cannot imagine why they want to be here at all. Perhaps they should just push off back to their own countries.

  Norman Tebbit

  Country, Community, Wish

  Private Eye Magazine, #1170, October 27 - November 09, 2006.

  17 Copy quote

• The BBC is another part of the destruction of Great Britain. The truth is that the BBC doesn't know that it is biased. It thinks that Guardian reading champagne socialists are the norm.

  Norman Tebbit

  Destruction, Britain, Great Britain

  "BBC Faces Fresh Criticism Over Offensive Remarks About Baroness Thatcher " by Laura Roberts and Richard Edwards, www.telegraph.co.uk. February 09, 2009.

  10 Copy quote

• The word 'conservative' is used by the BBC as a portmanteau word of abuse for anyone whose views differ from the insufferable, smug, sanctimonious, naive, guilt-ridden, wet, pink orthodoxy of that sunset home of the third-rate minds of that third-rate decade, the nineteen-sixties.

  Norman Tebbit

  Home, Sunset, Views

  The Independent, February 24, 1990.

  9 Copy quote

• The Muslim religion is so unreformed since it was created that nowhere in the Muslim world has there been any real advance in science, or art or literature, or technology in the last 500 years.

  Norman Tebbit

  Art, Real, Technology

  "Biography/ Personal Quotes". www.imdb.com.

  11 Copy quote

• My dad didn't riot. He got on his bike and looked for work

  Norman Tebbit

  Dad, Unemployment, Conservative

  Speech at Conservative Party Conference, 15 October 1981, in 'Daily Telegraph' 16 October 1981

  7 Copy quote

• I haven't got a racist bone in my little finger.

  Norman Tebbit

  Racist, Littles, Bones

  Private Eye, No. 1169, October 2006.

  8 Copy quote

• Opinion polls are not worth the paper they are written on, in my view, through the conference season. They don't settle down again until November.

  Norman Tebbit

  Views, Paper, November

  14 Copy quote

• Parliament must not be told a direct untruth, but its quite possible to allow them to mislead themselves.

  Norman Tebbit

  Parliament, Direct, Untruth

  16 Copy quote

• It's good to remember the unburied dead and the uncollected rubbish. Most of it can now be seen on the Labour benches in the House of Commons.

  Norman Tebbit

  House, Benches, Rubbish

  4 Copy quote

• He (John Major) has the mulishness of a weak man with stupidity.

  Norman Tebbit

  Men, Weak Man, Stupidity

  "The Journals of Woodrow Wyatt Vol. 3: From Major to Blair". Book by Sarah Curtis, 2000.

  9 Copy quote

• I have no intention of slurring over the differences we have with socialism, nor concealing my belief that we are the National Party of Great Britain, representing not narrow class interest, nor the bigotry of the left wing intellectuals, but all those who support the British tradition of democracy, of personal freedom, of personal responsibility for one's own affairs and those of one's family, with the least possible interference from the State.

  Norman Tebbit

  Party, Responsibility, Class

  Speech to Epping Conservatives, November 17, 1969.

  7 Copy quote

• We need to create an enterprise culture, a society where successful entrepreneurs are respected and admired, not treated with suspicion and disdain. And in which we see less envy of other peoples' achievements and mistrust of commerce, and a greater readiness to get out there and join in the process.

  Norman Tebbit

  Successful, Envy, Entrepreneur

  Speech to the Institute of Directors' Annual Conference, February 26, 1985.

  7 Copy quote

• I think that could be perhaps a little misleading and even our statistics can mislead people at the times though they are not misleading in themselves. It is just that people get mislead

  Norman Tebbit

  Thinking, People, Littles

  7 Copy quote

• [The poll tax] was a classic case of a good idea being entrusted to Chris Patten and becoming a terrible failure.

  Norman Tebbit

  Ideas, Becoming, Classic

  BBC, November 16, 2000.

  7 Copy quote

• The mark of a single currency is not only that all other currencies must be extinguished but that the capacity of other institutions to issue currencies must also be extinguished...In the case of the United Kingdom, that would involve Parliament binding its successors in a way that it has hitherto regarded as unconstitutional.

  Norman Tebbit

  Issues, Kingdoms, Way

  House of Commons Debate, publications.parliament.uk. October 30, 1990.

  9 Copy quote

• I suspect that the only thing that will take Articles Two and Three out of the Irish Constitution is when the bombs begin to blow in Dublin in the way that they have been in Belfast and in London.

  Norman Tebbit

  Blow, Two, Three

  Sky television, July 19, 1993.

  52 Copy quote

• I've never bashed a union in my life.

  Norman Tebbit

  Unions

  6 Copy quote

• I think they (Thatcher protesters) ought to be grateful for the fact that the people who hold our (pro-Thatcher) views, and who are not mindless bigots, won't allow their behaviour to provoke us into words or behaviour which would could be seen as a breach of the peace. Hopefully, those of us who admire Margaret Thatcher are too well-mannered to fall for the bait.

  Norman Tebbit

  Grateful, Fall, Thinking

  7 Copy quote

• It is certainly safe, in view of the movement to the right of intellectuals and political thinkers, to pronounce the brain death of socialism.

  Norman Tebbit

  Eugenics, Views, Political

  "Biography / Personal Quotes". www.imdb.com.

  7 Copy quote

• The Conservatives played like England cricketers - too many rash strokes and run-outs, dropped catches and bowling anywhere but the stumps.

  Norman Tebbit

  Running, England, Bowling

  7 Copy quote

• Perhaps election fever is developing into something more like sleeping sickness, as the utter boredom of a contest in which almost all the attention seems to be on personalities and polls wears us all down. I just wish they would get on with it.

  Norman Tebbit

  Sleep, Boredom, Personality

  6 Copy quote

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