Ministers Quotes - Page 30

• 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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• People work hard and save hard to own a car. They do not want to be told that they cannot drive it by a Deputy Prime Minister whose idea of a park and ride scheme is to park one Jaguar and drive away in another.

  William Hague

  Hard Work, Ideas, People

  1999 Of John Prescott. In the House of Commons, 17 Nov.

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• I thank the Prime Minister for his remarks about me. Debating with him at the Dispatch Box has been exciting, fascinating, fun, an enormous challenge and, from my point of view, wholly unproductive in every sense. I am told that in my time at the Dispatch Box I have asked the Prime Minister 1,118 direct questions, but no one has counted the direct answers-it may not take long.

  William Hague

  Fun, Views, Long

  House of Commons, Prime Minister's Questions, July 18, 2001.

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• But, clearly, the prime minister has laid down some ground rules which any functioning democratic state would insist upon, having to do with, you know, arms belonging to the state, not to -- not in private hands. The current circumstances come out of what I think is a very important and indeed appropriate action that the Iraqi government has taken.

  Condoleezza Rice

  Taken, Thinking, Government

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• We have had some bad incidents and there continue to be allegations of others which will be investigated; but overwhelmingly American forces there, putting their lives on the line every day, protecting Iraqis, helping to liberate them, that is appreciated by the Iraqi people and by the Prime Minister.

  Condoleezza Rice

  People, Lines, Helping

  "Transcript: Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice on 'FNS'". "Fox News Sunday", www.foxnews.com. June 05, 2006.

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• When Tony Benn became a minister in the 1960s -- and I think this must be apocryphal -- he had a huge map of Britain hung upside down in his office, so the channel was at the top and Scotland was at the bottom and, apparently, he said, "This is how we need to look at this country, with the money and the power draining by force of gravity out of the south east." That was a great idea. I rather liked him for that. I don't know if it's actually true or not.

  Neal Ascherson

  Country, Thinking, Scotland

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• The public are entitled to have an absolute guarantee of the financial probity and integrity of their elected representatives, their officials and above all of Ministers. They need to know that they are under financial obligations to nobody, other than public lending institutions, except to the extent that they are publicly declared.

  Bertie Ahern

  Integrity, Needs, Guarantees

  "Turning the Tables on McDowell". www.irishtimes.com. September 28, 2006.

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• It is quite unacceptable that a member of Dáil Éireann and in particular a Cabinet Minister and Taoiseach, should be supported in his personal lifestyle by gifts made to him personally.

  Bertie Ahern

  Cabinets, Lifestyle, Made

  "I've broken absolutely no codes, ethical, tax, legal or otherwise". Brian Dobson's RTÉ interview, www.irishtimes.com. September 27, 2006.

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• But, is it possible for princes and ministers to be enlightened, when private individuals are not so?

  Jean-Baptiste Say

  Enlightened, Individual

  Jean Baptiste Say (1827). “A treatise on political economy: or, The production, distribution and consumption of wealth”, p.51

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• Every individual, from the common mechanic, that works in wood or clay, to the prime minister that regulates with the dash of his pen the agriculture, the breeding of cattle, the mining, or the commerce of a nation, will perform his business the better, the better he understands the nature of things,and the more his understanding is enlightened.

  Jean-Baptiste Say

  Agriculture, Understanding, Woods

  Adam Smith, Jean-Baptiste Say, J.R. McCulloch (2013). “History of Economic Theory: The Selected Writings of Adam Smith, Jean-Baptiste Say, and J.R. McCulloch”, p.133, Coventry House Publishing

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• The minister's task is not to coddle the saints but to collar the sinners.

  Hugh Price Hughes

  Saint, Tasks, Collars

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• By that time it was already clear that the next prime minster was going to be Golda Meir, a woman whom I frankly detested - a mutual sentiment, I might add. I knew her as an opinionated, obstinate person, primitive in her outlook, rigid in her attitudes, with a genius for reaching and exploiting the deepest fears and prejudices of the Jewish masses. I was certain that with her as prime minister, all peace efforts would come to a total standstill.

  Uri Avnery

  Attitude, Effort, Add

  "My Friend, the Enemy". Book by Uri Avnery, 1986.

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• [Congress] is not the British Parliament, and I hope it never will become the British Parliament... Are we going to bring the president in here and have a question period like the prime minister has in Great Britain?

  Trent Lott

  President, Prime, British Parliament

  "A Jolly Good Show, but the Wrong Side of the Pond" by Dana Milbank, www.washingtonpost.com. June 12, 2007.

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• The first life insurance societies where formed in England in the years between 1692 and 1720. In America, life insurance became available to the clergy through the Presbyterian Ministers Fund, founded in 1759 (still in existence), and the Episcopal Corporation, founded ten years later (subsequently merged).

  Andrew Tobias

  Years, America, Corporations

  "The Invisible Bankers, Everything The Insurance Industry Never Wanted You To Know". Book by Andrew Tobias, 1982.

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• The marriage relationship is one of God's creations for building up people. It gives husbands and wives the chance to minister to an immortal human being in a uniquely intimate fashion. To enjoy the meaningfulness of marriage, then, requires a once-made but ongoing commitment of mutual ministry to our mates and the more we seize them, the more meaning our marriage will have.

  Larry Crabb

  Fashion, Husband, Commitment

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• Good news from France, where the man picked by Nicolas Sarkozy as his foreign minister is not the execrable Hubert Védrine, but Bernard Kouchner - a socialist who supports Israel and the invasion of Iraq.

  Charles Foster Johnson

  Men, Israel, Iraq

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