Michael Foot Quotes

Some fool or some trigger happy judicial finger.

We in this country, particularly when we are arguing with the people of the United States, have a right to recall the part played by Chatham, Edmund Burke and Charles James Fox, who opposed a war waged by a great nation which did suffer defeat but survived its defeat because it was prepared to admit that the opposition to the war had justice on its side. This is the lesson to be learned. This is the lesson to be learned from these events. Although opinion in the United States may have reached this conclusion for a variety of reasons, just as opinion throughout the world has reached this conclusion for a variety of reasons, the conclusion is all the stronger and more certain. The conclusion is that the military machine of the United States, all-powerful almost though it may be, cannot win a civil war in Indo-China. It can kill. It can destroy. It can defoliate. It can bomb. It can exterminate. It can spread horror and devastation. But it cannot win a victory.

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.

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.

I think the House of Lords ought to be abolished and I don't think the best way for me to abolish it is to go there myself

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.

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

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.

They had been told that those political disabilities, the delegations from our sovereignty and the dismemberment of Britain's parliamentary institutions, must be accepted because of economic circumstances; that there was no choice. But [I] did not believe that. I hope the message which will go out from this conference to our movement up and down the country is, 'Do not let this great Labour movement be afraid of those who tell us that we cannot run our own affairs, that we have not the ingenuity to mobilize our resources and overcome our economic problems'. Of course we have, and we can save our democratic freedom at the same time.

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.

He's passed from rising hope to elder statesman without any intervening period whatsoever.

I first joined the Labour party in Liverpool because of what I saw of the poverty, the unemployment, and the endless infamies committed on the inhabitants of the back-streets of that city. I am horrified that the threat of unemployment and economic misery is now being deployed against the same kind of people once again.

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

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.

President de Gaulle is a rebel against American leadership. Some of us who are also rebels have some sympathy with him on that account. ... [O]ne of his long-term aims is to secure a settlement between East and West in Europe. ... The whole situation is altering between East and West. The planet is trembling with alterations and differences in alliances and arrangements. I do not believe in the old configuration of the cold war. ... It is out of date. It is five years, even ten years, out of date. ... [W]e may, whatever may have been his motives and reasons, thank President de Gaulle for doing for us what the British Government had not the courage and energy to do for themselves.