Ramsay MacDonald Quotes

Political leaders, irrespective of party...were beginning to see that, unless in Europe they could create an enormous federation of free-trade nations, there was not a single nation in Europe which could flourish in the industrial standard it ought to occupy.

The only reason from beginning to end is that our foreign office is anti-German and that the Admiralty was anxious to seize any opportunity for using the Navy in battle practice... Never did we arm our people and ask them to give us their lives for less good cause than this.

State Charity is not socialism but may become the greatest menace the Socialist Movement [has been] threatened with.

Of the Budget as a whole, I say "Bravo". I am going to support it through thick and thin.

The desolation of loneliness is terrible. Was I wise? Perhaps not, but it seemed as though anything else was impossible.

If we yield now to the TUC we shall never be able to call our bodies or souls or intelligences our own.

The land will therefore belong to the State in one or other of its several forms, and rent will be State income. The great factory industries will be controlled by associations of consumers which again will be identical with the State in some one or other of its aspects... the socialist state will mainly concern itself with co-ordinating production and consumption so as to prevent gluts, useless labour, unearned incomes, industrial loss, surplus values,—the causes of poverty.

I cannot refrain from wishing you God-Speed in your election contest... [L]et the consequences be what they may, do not withdraw. The cause of Labour in Scotland and of Scottish Nationality will suffer much thereby. Your defeat will awaken Scotland and your victory will re-construct Scottish Liberalism. All success be yours, and the National cause you champion. There is no miner – and no other one for that matter – who is a Scotsman and not ashamed of it, who will vote against you in favour of an English barrister, absolutely ignorant of Scotland and of Scottish affairs.