Harold MacMillan Quotes

I don't trust liberals, I trust conservatives.

The two parties which divide the state, the party of Conservatism and that of Innovation, are very old, and have disputed the possession of the world ever since it was made.

In New York, the opposite of a Democrat is not a Republican; it’s a Fascist.

A radical is a man with both feet firmly planted — in the air. A conservative is a man with two perfectly good legs who, however, has never learned to walk forward. A reactionary is a somnambulist walking backwards. A liberal is a man who uses his legs and his hands at the behest — at the command — of his head.

Creativity allows people to be effective.

You have a political and media elite who have an idiom by which they describe politics. It's highly, highly polarised. It's right, left, red, blue, up, down, victorious, crushed.

There are many men of principle in both parties in America, but there is no party of principle.

I've always been controversial because I offer new ideas. For me to be controversial, I think this is positive.

When a conservative praises a liberal as 'morally serious,' he means that person is less liberal than most.

As in nature, politics abhors a vacuum. Without a strong voice for more moderate leadership, the Tea Party is filling that vacuum.

Conservatives and liberals alike have been waiting for this moment for a third of a century.

A Conservative Government is an organized hypocrisy.

I mean, look, we're living in a country where you can't have a non-denominational response. If you're slightly critical of either party, all of the partisans jump on you like you're a lunatic.

In no way am I supporting or suggesting that a Conservative government is a good thing, far from it.

By definition, politics is, or ought to be, division.

I do not believe that our place is at the comfortable mid-point between the extremes of left and right.

It's like being criticized by liberals. You wake up the next morning and you get over it.

A liberal is a conservative who's been indicted.

Maintaining a continuity of foreign policy in the United States is not easy because it means that liberals and conservatives both shoot at you.

What if you are a conservative in a liberal environment? Then what you are conserving is liberalism.

You do not compromise with the right wing of the Republican party.

There's no such thing as a moderate. A moderate is just a liberal disguise, and they are doing everything they can to derail the conservative agenda

We [Republicans] don’t need any new ideas.

Liberal leadership exhausts its power to persuade the discontented and the have-nots to accept ballot-box disappointments or compromises if their victories are to be nullified and if elections are effective in shaping policy only when conservatives win.

A conservative government survives essentially by dampening expectations and subduing hopes. Conservatism is basically pessimistic, reformism is basically optimistic.