Ministers Quotes - Page 28

• In Japan, usually, once you become prime minister, you do not have a second chance. Probably the reason why that was not the case this time is because Japan is facing an increasingly challenging situation.

  Shinzo Abe

  Second Chance, Japan, Challenges

  "Interview with Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe". www.washingtonpost.com. February 20, 2013.

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• I can stand here today, leader of the Labour Party, Prime Minister, and say to the British people: you have never had it so ... prudent.

  Tony Blair

  Party, People, Leader

  Tony Blair's Speech to the Labour Party Conference, news.bbc.co.uk. September 28, 1999.

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• I do here in the most solemn and bitter manner curse the Prime Minister of England [sic] for having cumulated all his other betrayals of the national interest and honour, by his last terrible exhibition of dishonour, weakness and gullibility. The depths of infamy which our accurst "love of peace" can lower us are unfathomable.

  Enoch Powell

  Betrayal, Weakness, Depth

  "Like the Roman. The Life of Enoch Powell" by Simon Heffer, (p. 47), 1999.

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• I refer to the misunderstanding of Soviet Russia as an aggressive power, militaristically and ideologically bent upon world domination 'seeing', to quote a recent speech of the British Prime Minister, 'the rest of the world as its rightful fiefdom.' How any rational person, viewing objectively the history of the last thirty-five years, could entertain this 'international misunderstanding' challenges, if it does not defeat, comprehension. The notion has no basis in fact... If Russia is bent on world conquest, she has been remarkably slothful and remarkably unsuccessful.

  Enoch Powell

  Years, Russia, Challenges

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• The suggestion that the prime minister had been flirting with one of the senior women cabinet ministers made me laugh every time I saw it, and I thought, "if you only knew!" Perhaps they should have pushed it a bit harder.

  Edwina Currie

  Senior, Flirting, Should Have

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

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• We have fish and chips, which W. and I fetch from the shop in Settle market-place. Some local boys come in and there is a bit of chat between them and the fish-fryer about whether the kestrel under the counter is for sale. Only when I mention it to W. does he explain Kestrel is now a lager. I imagine the future is going to contain an increasing number of incidents like this, culminating with a man in a white coat saying to one kindly, "And now can you tell me the name of the Prime Minister?"

  Alan Bennett

  Boys, Men, Names

  "Writing Home". Book by Alan Bennett, 1994.

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• It is one thing being able to contest an election and to give the people hope that I can be the next prime minister. It is a totally different situation where the people of Pakistan are told that the results are already taken and the leader of your choice is banned.

  Benazir Bhutto

  Taken, Giving, People

  "'I never asked for power'". Interview with Rory McCarthy, www.theguardian.com. August 15, 2002.

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• A Minister can always give a reason; and, if he be clever, he can generally when doing so punish the man who asks for it. The punishing of an influential enemy is an indiscretion; but an obscure questioner may often be crushed with good effect.

  Anthony Trollope

  Clever, Men, Often Is

  Anthony Trollope (2015). “The Palliser Novels: Complete Parliamentary Chronicles (All Six Novels in One Volume): Can You Forgive Her? + Phineas Finn + The Eustace Diamonds + Phineas Redux + The Prime Minister + The Duke’s Children”, p.1776, e-artnow

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• The minister to whom confession is made is the delegate of Christ, Who is the Judge of the living and the dead.

  Thomas Aquinas

  Judging, Saint, Christ

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• To Him let us but cleave in all ouv strife; and the Tempte1 will flee; the wilderness will be desolate no more; angels will come and minister unto us; and when we pass from them to the ministry of life, be it to the glory of a transfiguration, the sorrows of a Gethsemane, or the sacrifice of the cross, the tran- quilizing peace of God will never be far from us.

  James Martineau

  Angel, Sacrifice, Sorrow

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• The Canadian kid who wants to grow up to be Prime Minister isn't thinking big, he is setting a limit to his ambitions rather early.

  Mordecai Richler

  Growing Up, Ambition, Kids

  Quoted in Time (Canadian ed.), 31 May 1971

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• This was a secret meeting on a secret tour which nobody is supposed to know about. It means that there are men, and perhaps women, in this country walking around with eggs in their pockets, just on the off-chance of seeing the Prime Minister.

  Edward Heath

  Country, Mean, Men

  Edward Heath's remarks to the press after Harold Wilson was hit by eggs thrown by demonstrators on two successive days (June 1, 1970), as quoted in Edward Heath "The Course of My Life" (p. 305), 1998.

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• If the world is ever conquered for our Lord, it is not by ministers, nor by office-bearers, nor by the great, and noble and mighty, but by every member of Christ's body being a working member; doing his work; filling his own sphere; holding his own post; and saying to Jesus, "Lord, what wilt Thou have me to do?"

  Thomas Guthrie

  Jesus, Office, Noble

  "Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers". Book by Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, p. 128, 1895.

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• John Howard turned the prime ministership into something like a state police minister. He's at the scene of every crime, twice a day on radio, the guy did no thinking.

  Paul Keating

  Thinking, Guy, Police

  "Keating in the Hot Seat". Interview with Kerry O'Brien, www.abc.net.au. August 06, 2008.

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• I used to go to church. I even went through a rather intense religious period when I was sixteen. But the idea of an everlasting life -- a never-ending banquet, as a stupid visiting minister to our church once appallingly described it -- filled me with a greater terror than the concept of extinction.

  Louis Auchincloss

  Religious, Stupid, Ideas

  Louis Auchincloss (2004). “East Side Story: A Novel”, p.93, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• I used to think I should like to be a bookbinder or bookseller it seemed to me a most delightful trade and I wished or thought of nothing better. More lately I thought I should be a minister, it seemed so serious and useful a profession, and I entered but little into the merits of religion and the duties of a minister. Every one dissuaded me from the notion, and before I arrived at any age to require a real decision, science had claimed me.

  William Stanley Jevons

  Real, Thinking, Decision

  William Stanley Jevons's reflections on his earlier life, written when he was 27 (December 1862); later published in "Letters and Journal of W. Stanley Jevons" edited by Harriet A. Jevons, his wife (p. 12), 1886.

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• The trouble is that privacy is at once essential to, and in tension with, both freedom and security. A cabinet minister who keeps his mistress in satin sheets at the French taxpayer's expense cannot justly object when the press exposes his misuse of public funds. Our freedom to scrutinise the conduct of public figures trumps that minister's claim to privacy. The question is: where and how do we draw the line between a genuine public interest and that which is merely what interests the public?

  Timothy Garton Ash

  Mistress, Lines, Cabinets

  "Whether it's hacking or the NSA, some of us don't accept that privacy is dead". www.theguardian.com. October 31, 2013.

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• America is replicated at every level of British life, from the taxi driver to the prime minister.

  Timothy Garton Ash

  America, Levels, Prime

  Timothy Garton Ash (2005). “Free World: America, Europe, and the Surprising Future of the West”, p.28, Vintage

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• The House has noticed the Prime Minister's remarkable transformation in the past few weeks, from Stalin to Mr. Bean.

  Vince Cable

  Past, House, Transformation

  Vincent Cable during House of Commons Debates, www.publications.parliament.uk. November 28, 2007.

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• Resignations are for Prime Ministers and those caught with their trousers down, not for me.

  Brian Clough

  Prime, Caught, Resignation

  Quoted in Phil Shaw The Book of Football Quotations (2003).

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• I didn't feel the need to have a lot of yes-men standing around me. As Mitchell Sharp once put it, the bigger the staff, the smaller the minister.

  Jean Chretien

  Men, Needs, Staff

  Jean Chretien (2010). “My Years as Prime Minister”, p.38, Vintage Canada

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• Everybody has the right to speak up in a democracy. We would be in trouble as a society if there wasn't a constant pressure to make reforms and to be just. Sometimes as prime minister, when i was caught up in a really loud demonstration, I used to say to myself that I deserved it because of all the demonstrations I myself had organized as a student against Duplessis.

  Jean Chretien

  Democracy, Reform, Would Be

  "My Years As Prime Minister". Book by Jean Chrétien, 2007.

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• My challenge as university minister is about getting right balance of teaching and research.

  David Willetts

  Teaching, Challenges, Balance

  Source: www.theguardian.com

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• In fact, a very similar phrase was invented to account for the sudden transition of wood, metal, plastic and concrete into an explosive condition, which was "nonlinear, catastrophic structural exasperation," or to put it another way--as a junior cabinet minister did on television the following night in a phrase which was to haunt the rest of his career--the check-in desk had just got "fundamentally fed up with being where it was.

  Douglas Adams

  Night, Careers, Transition

  "The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul". Book by Douglas Adams, 1988.

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• I think that, that it would be hard for New Hampshire to vote for somebody who was a fundamentalist minister, affable as he is. He does seem to actually want to write, for example, a prohibition against abortion into the Constitution , which Ronald Reagan, for all his talking about it, never tried to do one time.

  Mike Huckabee

  Writing, Thinking, Talking

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