Douglas Hurd Quotes

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

Now we've signed it – we had better read it!

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.

There is no dread conspiracy against us. There is simply an argument, and no reason why we should be scared or defeatist in that argument. We must continue to fight our corner for British interests. But we can do that without frightening ourselves with ogres.

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.

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.

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.

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