Clement Attlee Quotes

I can remember no case where differences arose between Conservatives, Labour and Liberals along party lines. Certainly not in the War Cabinet. Certainly not in the big things... When one came to work out solutions they were often socialist ones, because one had to have organisation, and planning, and disregard private interests. But there was no opposition from Conservative Ministers. They accepted the practical solution whatever it was.

...the vital thing for the world to-day was to move away from the conception of the individual national State to something like a confederation of States in which some sovereign power was ceded to a wider Power. I do not think it need be much. At present what we have to give up is the right to make war.

There is no such thing as the Shadow Cabinet. It is purely a Press term. The Prime Minister is by no means bound to include the members of the Shadow Cabinet in his Cabinet, or even in the Government. I myself left several out.

King George VI was always remarkably well informed, and I made a point of reading the latest telegrams before my weekly audience with him. A conscientious, constitutional monarch is a strong element of stability and continuity in our Constitution.

We never took a vote in the Cabinet that I can remember and the most important of all the Prime Minister's functions is to give a firm lead in Cabinet so that decisions can be taken quickly. The Prime Minister musn't always listen to those who talk most.

In Cabinet the important thing is to stop people from talking. Some people are loquacious, some are eloquent. I always used to point out that rhetoric is wasted on a Cabinet of hard-boiled politicians.

In choosing people for specific jobs previous experience should not be a guide. I never put a man in the job which he thought he knew. Often the 'experts' make the worst possible Ministers in their own fields. In this country we prefer rule by amateurs.

You will not find much about what the Prime Minister does in the text-books. What he does is partly made up of convention and custom, but the nature of the office depends a great deal on the person who holds it... Make it [the Cabinet] as small as possible. Democracy means government by discussion, but it is only effective if you can stop people talking. Some of my early Cabinets were very small, but I arrived at the conclusion that 16 is the right number.

I joined the socialist movement because I did not like the kind of society we had and wanted something better.

[T]he Conservative Party had been getting rid of the property owned by democracy and handing it over to groups of private profiteers.

Malaya had a special contribution to make to world peace. One of the difficult problems of the world was to secure peace, freedom, and democratic government in countries inhabited by more than one community. It could not be done by one community seeking to dominate the others, but only by fair dealing and mutual tolerance. He sometimes thought that those who adopted extreme nationalist ideas did so because they had no constructive ideas and because an appeal to race prejudice saved them from an intolerable burden of thought. In his view the variations in the make-up of a community increased its value, and he wished good luck to all the peoples of Malaya in building up a great multi-racial community.

[A] movement like Mau Mau, out to murder Africans, Indians, and British, has got to be put down whether there is Conservative, Labour, or any other Government in charge.

I think that public opinion today likes a certain amount of pageantry. It is a great mistake to make government too dull. That, I think, was the fault of the German Republic after the First World War. They were very drab and dull; the trouble was that they let the devil get all the best tunes. Therefore, we on this side of the Committee believe that it is right to have a certain amount of pageantry, because it pleases people, and it also counteracts a tendency to other forms of excitement.

Socialism was the only means of freeing the world from war and poverty. Socialism stood as a third alternative to a barbaric Communism and capitalism in a state of decay. Communism was a falsification of the principles of Socialism.

You see our new towns, our smiling countryside. I am proud of our achievements. There is an enormous amount more to do. Remember that we are a great crusading body, armed with a fervent spirit for the reign of righteousness on earth. Let us go forward into this fight in the spirit of William Blake: "I will not cease from mental strife/Nor shall my sword sleep in my hand/Till we have built Jerusalem/In England's green and pleasant land".