Sign in with your pod

Famous quotes

Quotes by famous people, credited to who said them. Your own quotes must not match any of these. More are added all the time. 1,158,269 quotes Who coined it · How we decide

EnglishItalianoPolskiעבריתFrançaisPortuguêsفارسیEspañol中文РусскийDeutschالعربيةहिन्दी日本語ΕλληνικάLatina

Michael Foot

83 quotes

• “Socialism with its ideal of the national control of consumption and production, its substitution of national barter for the processes of foreign trade, is by no means an international force. ... It looks inwards rather than outwards and sets up a national economy, which every true protectionist should envy. Russia is a powerful national state and has indulged in nationalist policies. ... Even a Socialist state cannot provide against war unless a world authority has been formed.”

  Michael Foot (1913–2010) first seen 1934 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: Article in Young Oxford and War (1934), quoted in Mervyn Jones, Michael Foot (1994), p. 31

• “I am a Liberal, first of all, because of the unfaltering resistance which liberalism is pledged to offer to those twin dangers of fascism and war.”

  Michael Foot (1913–2010) first seen 1934 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: 'Why I am a Liberal', News Chronicle (4 April 1934), quoted in Kenneth O. Morgan, Michael Foot (2007), p. 30

• “The revolt against imperialism in the Colonies, therefore, even when it takes on a nationalistic form, is a revolt against British capitalism and colonial peoples in revolt must be looked upon by a Socialist movement in Great Britain as allies in the fight against the common enemy. This theory is fully developed in Stalin's Marxism and the National Question. The methods by which the Soviet Government has dealt with colonial peoples reveal a real basis for co-operation with so-called backward peoples as soon as the power of capitalism within the imperialist nation has been effectively broken.”

  Michael Foot (1913–2010) first seen 1936 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: Foot's contribution to Stafford Cripps, The Struggle for Peace (1936), p. 287

• “We've got to win it. We're in it. Politically it is impossible for anybody to withdraw. The British people would not stand it. We have got to beat Hitler... Chamberlain is not a war man. He's a man of peace. His heart is not in the war. The only hope is to put Churchill in charge and get rid of Chamberlain.”

  Michael Foot (1913–2010) first seen 1940 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: Remarks to Lord Beaverbrook during the Phoney War (1940), quoted in Anne Wolrige Gordon, Peter Howard: Life and Letters (1969), pp. 101-102

• “American capitalism is arrogant, self-confident, merciless and convinced of its capacity to dictate the destinies of the world.”

  Michael Foot (1913–2010) first seen 1945 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: Article in The Daily Herald (14 December 1945), quoted in Mervyn Jones, Michael Foot (1994), p. 141

• “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 (1913–2010) first seen 1954 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: Tribune, 1954

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

  Michael Foot (1913–2010) first seen 1956 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: The Daily Herald, 1956

• “A Britain which denounced the insanity of the nuclear strategy would be in a position to direct its influence at the United Nations and in the world at large, in a manner at present denied us”

  Michael Foot (1913–2010) first seen 1960 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: newspaper article, 1960

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

  Michael Foot (1913–2010) first seen 1962 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: (Aneurin Bevan, Vol 1, 1962)

• “Spain cut the knot of emotional and intellectual contradictions in which the Left had been tangled ever since Hitler came to power. Suddenly the claims of international law, class solidarity and the desire to win the Soviet Union as an ally fitted into the same strategy. These subconscious releases no doubt played their part in swelling the mood of sympathy for the Spanish Republic which swept so swiftly through the British working class. But no complicated explanations are required. The spectacle itself was stirring enough.”

  Michael Foot (1913–2010) first seen 1897 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: On the Spanish Civil War; Aneurin Bevan, Volume One: 1897–1945 [1962] (1975), p. 220

• “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 (1913–2010) first seen 1963 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: On the Profumo Scandal, 1963

• “When I was a small boy, following the affairs of the House of Commons as closely as I could, I asked my father what a Royal Commission was. He said, "It is a broody hen sitting on a china egg".”

  Michael Foot (1913–2010) first seen 1964 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: Speech in the House of Commons (3 December 1964)

• “It is a justifiable proposition that every wave of immigration we have had into this country has benefited this country.”

  Michael Foot (1913–2010) first seen 1965 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: Speech in the House of Commons (23 November 1965)

• “I am bitterly opposed to any form of legislation, particularly legislation introduced by a Labour Government, which involves an element of colour bar. It is an appalling thing to have happened. I want to see us returning as swiftly as possible to a situation where we wipe away this stain on the reputation of the Labour movement.”

  Michael Foot (1913–2010) first seen 1965 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: Speech in the House of Commons (23 November 1965)

• “Think of it! A second Chamber selected by the Whips. A seraglio of eunuchs.”

  Michael Foot (1913–2010) first seen 1969 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: Speech in the House of Commons against proposals for reforming the House of Lords (3 February 1969)

• “What we are doing is to ensure that for the next 20, 30 or 40 years the constitutional balance will be heavily weighted on the side of reaction, the elderly and the Establishment, those who in the main have exhausted the contribution which they can make to the political life of the country and who wish to sustain all the old institutions.”

  Michael Foot (1913–2010) first seen 1969 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: Speech in the House of Commons against proposals for reforming the House of Lords (12 February 1969)

• “The British Constitution is an interesting contraption. I hope that is not too Burkeian a sentiment for a Thomas Paine-ite like myself to utter. There are many parts of it which die of apathy or inanition, and at the proper moment such parts have to be lopped off. That is what I should like to do with the House of Lords.”

  Michael Foot (1913–2010) first seen 1969 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: Speech in the House of Commons (19 February 1969)

• “I oppose Britain's entry into the rich nations' club, sometimes called the Common Market... In the interests of British democracy, of the health of our economy; in the interests of Wales and our fight against a return of unemployment; in the interests of a wider peace in Europe and links with countries in the Commonwealth, I believe Britain should keep out of this narrowly conceived, Little-European Common Market.”

  Michael Foot (1913–2010) first seen 1970 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: Speech in Ebbw Vale during the general election campaign (c. June 1970), quoted in Mervyn Jones, Michael Foot (1994), pp. 329-330

• “I sometimes wonder whether hon. Members opposite really have any understanding of what hot industrial fires they are playing with and whether they understand what deep fissures they are driving into our society, at a time when we in this country, of all countries, should be showing how violent tensions can be relieved without violence... When I look across at the benches opposite, not only at the Front Bench but at those behind, it seems to me very often that what they speak for is...a narrow, blinkered, suburban England with no conception whatsoever of industrial Britain.”

  Michael Foot (1913–2010) first seen 1970 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: Speech in the House of Commons on the Coal Industry Bill (29 October 1970)

• “[W]e are in for fierce and angry times in this country.”

  Michael Foot (1913–2010) first seen 1970 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: Speech in the House of Commons on the Coal Industry Bill (3 December 1970)

• “The value-added tax is a derogation of the sovereignty of this Parliament. The House of Commons and the British people will have less power to protest against the value-added tax than John Hampden had to protest about ship money. If we go into the Community, that will be settled away from this House.”

  Michael Foot (1913–2010) first seen 1971 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: Speech in the House of Commons (25 October 1971)

• “The end of the era of cheap food is no small incident in British history, even if the Leader of the Liberal Party is not prepared to shed a single tear at the abandoned tomb of Richard Cobden. The instinct of the British people on these matters, particularly when it is sustained in the teeth of persistent opposition and propaganda from the main organisations and newspapers in the country, is not to be despised by those who aspire to govern them. I expect the right hon. Gentleman to take some account of these matters.”

  Michael Foot (1913–2010) first seen 1971 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: Speech in the House of Commons on Britain's application to join the European Economic Community (25 October 1971)

• “[N]o one can dispute the proposition that the Bill is the most deliberate proposal for curtailing the powers of this House that has ever been put before Members of Parliament.”

  Michael Foot (1913–2010) first seen 1972 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: Speech in the House of Commons on the European Communities Bill (17 February 1972)

• “If the Government say they are going to ram through this measure to reduce the power of the Commons it would be scandalous. It is one of the most shameful frauds ever perpetrated. It would break the control between government and the people and this would inflict serious injury on our democratic institutions. If they do that we will be nearer the day when people will say 'All right, let us settle things by violence'.”

  Michael Foot (1913–2010) first seen 1972 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: Speech in Connah's Quay, Flintshire, on the European Communities Bill (10 March 1972), quoted in The Times (11 March 1972), p. 2

• “If the Common Market Bill goes through, Parliament will have been deprived of some of the essential instruments for planning the nation's economy.”

  Michael Foot (1913–2010) first seen 1972 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: Speech in Newport (18 March 1972), quoted in The Times (20 March 1972), p. 2

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

  Michael Foot (1913–2010) first seen 1972 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: Attacking the National Industrial Relations Court and its President, Sir John Donaldson, in a speech at the Scottish Miners' Gala in Edinburgh (3 June 1972)

• “The issue of sovereignty...was always intertwined with the issue of democracy. Many of us held that it was not only unwise but wanton for British MPs to surrender a part of our democracy to institutions which were so grotesquely undemocratic.”

  Michael Foot (1913–2010) first seen 1973 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: Letter to The Times (4 January 1973), p. 13, regarding Britain's membership of the EEC

• “I certainly think that a Labour Government will have to have effective powers to control the outflow of capital.”

  Michael Foot (1913–2010) first seen 1974 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: On Election Call (21 February 1974)

• “Some fool or some trigger happy judicial finger.”

  Michael Foot (1913–2010) first seen 1974 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: On the NIRC Judge Sir John Donaldson (Hansard, 7 May 1974, Col. 239)

• “[There are] judges who stretch the law...to suit reactionary attitudes.”

  Michael Foot (1913–2010) first seen 1974 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: On ITV's People and Politics (9 May 1974)

• “The national strike of the miners in 1972 performed, I believe, a great service, not only to the miners, but the people in Britain today who wanted coal”

  Michael Foot (1913–2010) first seen 1974 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: House of Commons speech (1974)

• “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 (1913–2010) first seen 1975 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: (March 1975)

• “In the Labour movement they said they would have no truck with coalition, but if Britain stayed in the EEC then for decades to come they would be enmeshed in various forms of coalition government than ever before. That was the most important issue of all. If in Britain the people did not like a government they could vote it out of office, but they had no similar recourse in the case of the institutions of the EEC, which had supreme powers and which were undemocratic.”

  Michael Foot (1913–2010) first seen 1975 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: Speech to the Labour Party conference on Britain's membership of the EEC (26 April 1975), quoted in The Times (28 April 1975), p. 4

• “Parliament (by which I mean, of course, the elected House of Commons stripped of all irresponsible encumbrances) is the institution which has played the central, liberating role in our history ever since Cromwellian or even Elizabethan times; no comparable institution certainly has shaped so continuously the life and society of any Western European state. It is the authority of our distinctive Parliament which is one of the stakes in the choice now before the people.”

  Michael Foot (1913–2010) first seen 1975 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: 'Putting Parliament at stake', The Times (23 May 1975), p. 14

• “The truth is that the dismemberment of the British Parliament, the calculated acquiescence in the decline in its authority deriving from entry into the EEC, has started. It will continue apace, until the British people call a halt... I believe it will be done sometime in some way when they discover how far-reaching and all-embracing is the anti-democratic counter-revolution involved in EEC membership.”

  Michael Foot (1913–2010) first seen 1975 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: 'Putting Parliament at stake', The Times (23 May 1975), p. 14

• “I am asking this movement to exert itself as it has never done before, to show the qualities which we have, the socialist imagination that exists in our movement, the readiness to reforge the alliance, stronger than ever, between the government and the trade unions, and above all to show the supreme quality in politics, the red flame of socialist courage.”

  Michael Foot (1913–2010) first seen 1975 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: Speech to the Labour Party Conference in Blackpool (29 September 1975), quoted in Kenneth O. Morgan, Michael Foot (2007), p. 319

• “The crisis afflicting this country, along with other countries of the Western world, is a crisis of capitalism. It is a crisis of the dominant economic system that prevails in all those countries.”

  Michael Foot (1913–2010) first seen 1126 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: Speech to the House of Commons (Hansard, 20 January 1976, Col. 1126)

• “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 (1913–2010) first seen 1976 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: On BBC's Panorama (22 March 1976)

• “It's impossible to write the history of freedom in this country without telling how trade unions have contributed to it.”

  Michael Foot (1913–2010) first seen 1976 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: On the ITV's Weekend World (4 April 1976)

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

  Michael Foot (1913–2010) first seen 1976 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: The Morning Star (1976)

• “[The constituency will be certain to return a socialist candidate] and this will help gain a socialist majority in the Commons and help Britain on the way to becoming a socialist republic.”

  Michael Foot (1913–2010) first seen 1977 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: Speech during the Ashfield by-election campaign (April 1977), quoted in Simon Hoggart and David Leigh, Michael Foot: A Portrait (1981), p. 184

• “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 (1913–2010) first seen 1977 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: Speech to the Union of Post Office Workers at Bournemouth (15 May 1977)

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

  Michael Foot (1913–2010) first seen 1977 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: The Daily Telegraph, 1977

• “The history of British Socialism cannot be written without constant reference to the Celts, and perhaps I may say in passing that this was one reason why I was so eager to see a Devolution Act passed through the House of Commons, to help keep the Celts within the United Kingdom. The blood of our Labour Movement cannot tingle properly without them, devolution or no devolution.”

  Michael Foot (1913–2010) first seen 1977 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: 'The Chartist: William Lovett', lecture delivered in Penzance (8 August 1977), quoted in Michael Foot, Loyalists and Loners (1986), p. 247

• “Few words in our language have been more sadly debased than the name 'Radical'. Once it could strike terror into the ranks of wealth and privilege. Now it has been purloined even by the palest and pinkest critics of current orthodoxy. A Radical nowadays may merely be one who can be distinguished by his respectability from a Socialist.”

  Michael Foot (1913–2010) first seen 1977 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: 'The Chartist: William Lovett', lecture delivered in Penzance (8 August 1977), quoted in Michael Foot, Loyalists and Loners (1986), p. 248

• “You just want the Tories in, and then we will be in the Common Market for life. You, with your halo of martyrdom. I've been anti-Market longer than you.”

  Michael Foot (1913–2010) first seen 1977 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: Remarks to Tony Benn (22 November 1977), quoted in Tony Benn, Conflicts of Interest: Diaries 1977–80 (1990), p. 250

• “It is not necessary that every time he rises he should give his famous imitation of a semi-house-trained polecat.”

  Michael Foot (1913–2010) first seen 1978 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: Speech in the House of Commons (2 March 1978), referring to Norman Tebbit

• “The Leader of the Liberal Party—and I say this with the utmost affection—has passed from rising hope to elder statesman without any intervening period whatsoever.”

  Michael Foot (1913–2010) first seen 1979 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: On David Steel; speech in the House of Commons (28 March 1979)

• “What is needed is a strong shift leftwards. This party in Parliament ought to start the process, and if it won't, the party conference will do it for them”

  Michael Foot (1913–2010) first seen 1979 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: Tribune, 1979

• “If only my hon. Friend would conduct the novel experiment of listening with his ears instead of his voice, a whole new world would open to him.”

  Michael Foot (1913–2010) first seen 1979 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: Speech in the House of Commons (26 November 1979)

More