Why do we need wealth? Security and peace. This is our goal and we passionately seek it because it is the way of life which we are charged by our rel… - Alec Douglas-Home

Britain is not earning her living. We are not keeping pace with the economic performance of our European and North American neighbours, and we are certainly not achieving the potential that is in us. ... At the end of a war of prolonged sacrifice we were left with much obsolete industrial plant, and a short-fall in the capital necessary to scrap and renew it. For a century we had lived on cheap food and raw materials imported from overseas. They are not and will not in future be available to us. ... We cannot continue to live beyond or ability or our willingness to earn. That is the one basic fact with which Britain has yet to come to terms.

Russia's intention has been to build up her military forces everywhere to a point where she puts the maximum economic strain on democracies, and through that economic strain she weakens the political will of the democracies to defend themselves. ... The lesson seems to me to be clear. NATO must be underpinned by the maximum financial subvention, and that is best raised by the countries who are partners in the Economic Community. And not only that; in Europe we must have the will to defend our own way of life which we have chosen for ourselves which is only born out of and nourished in political unity. Therefore, I myself look upon the political side of the European Community as perhaps the most important of all.

In 1940, he was diagnosed with spinal tuberculosis and was immobilised for two years. Afterwards, he said that it was the first time in medical history that they had succeeded in inserting a backbone into a politician.