Michael Foot Quotes

• We are not here in this world to find elegant solutions, pregnant with initiative, or to serve the ways and modes of profitable progress. No, we are here to provide for all those who are weaker and hungrier, more battered and crippled than ourselves. That is our only certain good and great purpose on earth, and if you ask me about those insoluble economic problems that may arise if the top is deprived of their initiative, I would answer 'To hell with them.' The top is greedy and mean and will always find a way to take care of themselves. They always do.

  Michael Foot

  Mean, Helping Others, Common Purpose

  Michael Foot (1984). “Another heart and other pulses: the alternative to the Thatcher society”, HarperCollins

  69 Copy quote

• Men of power have no time to read; yet the men who do not read are unfit for power.

  Michael Foot

  Reading, Men, He Man

  Michael Foot (1980). “Debts of Honour”, London : Davis Poynter

  55 Copy quote

• Is the Labour Party to remain a democratic party in which the right of free criticism and free debate is not merely tolerated but encouraged? Or are the rank and file of the party to be bludgeoned or cowed into an uncritical subservience towards the leadership?

  Michael Foot

  Party, Criticism, Debate

  Tribune, 1954.

  38 Copy quote

• Most liberties have been won by people who broke the law.

  Michael Foot

  Law, People, Liberty

  Interview, 1980.

  21 Copy quote

• Politicians live in little worlds of their own and imagine these are the universe.

  Michael Foot

  World, Littles, Imagine

  "Another heart and other pulses: the alternative to the Thatcher society".

  19 Copy quote

• He's passed from rising hope to elder statesman without any intervening period whatsoever.

  Michael Foot

  Political, Rising, Politics

  12 Copy quote

• In my opinion, Marxism is a great creed of human liberation. It is the creed which says that when all other empires fade and vanish, our business is to enlarge the empire of the human mind.

  Michael Foot

  Mind, Empires, Opinion

  Morning Star, 1980.

  18 Copy quote

• Socialism without public ownership is nothing but a fantastic apology.

  Michael Foot

  Apology, Socialism, Fantastic

  The Daily Herald, 1956.

  11 Copy quote

• People can say what they want in the Labour Party.

  Michael Foot

  Party, People, Want

  9 Copy quote

• The only man I knew who could make a curse sound like a caress.

  Michael Foot

  Men, Sound, Curse

  1962 Of Aneurin Bevan. Aneurin Bevan 1897-1945, vol.1.

  20 Copy quote

• People must learn more and more that the strength of this country is the democratic power of the trade union movement.

  Michael Foot

  Country, People, Movement

  Morning Star, 1976.

  13 Copy quote

• It does so happen to be the case that if the freedom of the people of this country - and especially the rights of trade unionists - if those precious things in the past had been left to the good sense and fairmindedness of judges, we would have precious few freedoms in this country.

  Michael Foot

  Country, Past, Rights

  Michael Foot's speech to the Union of Post Office Workers in Bournemouth, May 15, 1977.

  9 Copy quote

• I have never been in favour of expelling people from the Labour Party.

  Michael Foot

  Party, People, Favour

  8 Copy quote

• There is nothing wrong with being a Marxist. Their point of view is essential to a democratic debate.

  Michael Foot

  Views, Essentials, Debate

  The Daily Telegraph, 1977.

  6 Copy quote

• How long will it be before the cry goes up: "Let's kill all the judges"?

  Michael Foot

  Long, Judging, Cry

  Michael Foot's speech at the Scottish Miners' Gala in Edinburgh (attacking the National Industrial Relations Court and its President, Sir John Donaldson), June 3, 1972.

  9 Copy quote

• All is fair in love and war and Parliamentary procedure.

  Michael Foot

  Tattoo, War, Wonderful Love

  11 Copy quote

• I've been on the left of the Party since I joined it about 1934 and I haven't seen much reason for altering... I have always been a strong libertarian both inside the Labour Party and outside... what I want to seek to do over a period of course is to establish a Socialist society.

  Michael Foot

  Strong, Party, Want

  BBC's "Panorama", March 22, 1976.

  5 Copy quote

• Think of it! A second chamber selected by the Whips. A seraglio of eunuchs.

  Michael Foot

  Thinking, Selected, Chamber

  'Hansard' 3 February 1969, col. 88

  9 Copy quote

• The members of our secret service have apparently spent so much time under the bed looking for communists that they haven't had the time to look in the bed.

  Michael Foot

  Secret, Bed, Looks

  Michael Foot's remarks on the Profumo Scandal, 1963.

  5 Copy quote

• No rising hope on the political scene who offered his services to Labour when I happened to be its leader can be dismissed as an opportunist.

  Michael Foot

  Leader, Political, Rising

  Michael Foot's remarks on Tony Blair, 1995.

  9 Copy quote

• There are judges who stretch the law... to suit reactionary attitudes.

  Michael Foot

  Attitude, Law, Judging

  ITV's "People and Politics", May 9, 1974.

  7 Copy quote

• Disraeli was my favourite Tory. He was an adventurer pure and simple, or impure and complex. I'm glad to say Gladstone got the better of him.

  Michael Foot

  Simple, Favourite, Gladstone

  "Michael Foot: key quotes" by Richard Nelsson, www.theguardian.com. March 3, 2010.

  4 Copy quote

• Of course my father was a great influence on me. He taught me how to read.

  Michael Foot

  Fathers Day, Fatherhood, Taught

  9 Copy quote

• You can have a wages policy imposed by mass unemployment.

  Michael Foot

  Unemployment, Wages, Economics

  7 Copy quote

• Of all the sights and sounds which attracted me on my first arrival to live in London in the mid-thirties, one combined operation left a lingering, individual spell. I naturally went to Hyde Park to hear the orators, the best of the many free entertainments on offer in the capital. I heard the purest milk of the world flowing, then as now, from the platform of the Socialist Party of Great Britain.

  Michael Foot

  Party, Sight, World

  Michael Foot (1980). “Debts of Honour”, London : Davis Poynter

  5 Copy quote

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