Douglas Hurd Quotes

Lord Rothschild roamed like a condottiere through Whitehall, laying an ambush here, there breaching some crumbling fortress which had outlived its usefulness... He respected persons occasionally but rarely policies.

There will be shifts of sovereignty but only in specific areas which I consider debatable. The [European] Community should lead as external trade negotiator... But there must be basic areas of national sovereignty. Peace and war; law and order; foreign policy; fiscal policy. You can cooperate, but these are not matters for Community competence. Our resistance was entirely justified in the case of the Social Charter... I do not believe in the European glacier, that there is something irresistible about European integration.

Thatcherism is not Tutankhamun's tomb, which you've got to seal up and guard. It has to fructify. It's an investment. Take what has been achieved and go on from there. Thatcherism breaks into different things: privatisation, the extension of individual responsibility, education. But the course is certainly set. I want to keep it, not change it.

I am slightly tired of the approach that it is all because of racism on the part of the police, just as I get slightly weary of police officers saying they are asked to police black communities more lightly.

[Politicians have a right to respond to the] presence or absence of the churches, and their sometimes bizarre choice of priorities for discussion.

The idea of Active Citizenship is a necessary complement to that of the enterprise culture. Public service may once have been the duty of an elite, but today it is the responsibility of all who have time or money to spare. Modern capitalism has democratised the ownership of property, and we are now witnessing the democratisation of responsible citizenship.

Prison is an expensive way of making bad people worse.

After fierce political discussion over more than twenty years, the British commitment to Europe is now firmly established. As I have said we ask for no exemptions or privileges. We recognise the concepts which inspired the original founders, and salute their wisdom in setting up the Community institutions. We believe that as a member of the class of 1973 we have an equal right, and perhaps an equal wisdom, to discuss the future of the Community as members of the class of 1958. We intend to exercise that right as Europeans, convinced of the essential validity of the case for Europe put forward by the Founding Fathers of the Community, anxious that we should find together the right ways of applying those principles to the new circumstances of 1982. I do not pretend that we face an easy task. But we shall apply ourselves to it with a commitment which no-one should doubt.

People are very interested in politics, they just don't like it labelled 'politics'.

We have to find, as the Victorians found, techniques and instruments which reach the parts of our society which will always be beyond the scope of statutory schemes. I believe that the inspiring and the enlisting of the active citizen in all walks of life is the key.

European security without the United States simply doesn't make sense. We Europeans need to say loud and clear that we welcome US forces in Europe.

Underpinning our social policy are those traditions—the diffusion of power, civil obligation, and voluntary service—which are central to Conservative philosophy... The diffusion of power...the key to active and responsible citizenship.

We have learnt that one cannot suppress nationalist feeling or force it into a framework against which it revolts.

NATO is one of the principal props which have allowed Britain to punch above its weight in the world.

There is a danger that we legislate to feel good, not to do good. Nowhere is this truer than in social legislation. The warm glow comes quickly after passing a piece of law which is designed to raise standards for those in jobs; the chill of lost jobs because of lost competitiveness is felt more slowly... We should make our labour markets more flexible and job-friendly, and secure greater skill levels and cost control. That means not introducing new limitations on the labour market.