JAMES CALLAGHAN

A leader must have the courage to act against an expert's advice.

I am not proposing to seek your votes because there is a blue sky ahead today.

You can never reach the promised land. You can march towards it.

Your strike will not win. You cannot be allowed to succeed.

Some people, however long their experience or strong their intellect, are temperamentally incapable of reaching firm decisions.

If the law is a bad law, there is always the contingent right to take action that you would not otherwise take.

The rule of law should be upheld by all political parties. They should neither advise others to break the law, nor encourage others to do so even when they strongly disagree with the legislation put forward by the government of the day.

I've never been one to say that Britain was joining a happy band of brothers.

I am rather in favour of dealing with teenage hooliganism.

There is not a single injustice in Northern Ireland that is worth the loss of a single British soldier or a single Irish citizen either.

I sum up the prospects for 1967 in three short sentences. We are back on course. The ship is picking up speed. The economy is moving. Every seaman knows the command at such a moment: 'steady as she goes'.

There are no instant solutions.

A lie can be half way round the world before the truth gets its boots on.

Now, now, little lady, you don’t want to believe all those things you read in the newspaper about crisis and upheavals, and the end of civilization as we know it. Dearie me, not at all.

Either back us or sack us.

A leader has to “appear” consistent. That doesn't mean he has to be consistent

The cozy world we were told would go on forever, where full employment would be guaranteed by a stroke of the Chancellor’s pen, cutting taxes, deficit spending—that cozy world is gone.

What is the cause of unemployment? Quite simply and unequivocally it is caused by paying ourselves more than the value of what we produce.

We used to think that we could spend our way out of a recession…. I tell you in all candor that that opinion no longer exists.

There are times, perhaps once every thirty years, when there is a sea-change in politics. It then does not matter what you say or what you do. There is a shift in what the public wants and what it approves of.

Those who advocate devaluation are calling for a reduction in the wage levels and the real wage standards of every member of the working class.

It is quite clear from what has been said and written that, time after time after time, there has been a conspiracy between the Conservative Front Bench in this House and the inbuilt Conservative majority in the House of Lords to defeat legislation that has passed through the House of Commons... I warn the House of Lords of the consequences... it is our strong view that the House of Lords should recall that its role is not that of a wrecking chamber, but of a revising chamber. In recent weeks, it has been wrecking legislation passed by this House.

The surtax payers, having been soaked, have found a way to get out of the rain.

When we reject unemployment as an economic instrument as we do and when we reject also superficial remedies, as socialists must, then we must ask ourselves unflinchingly what is the cause of high unemployment. Quite simply and unequivocally, it is caused by paying ourselves more than the value of what we produce. There are no scapegoats.

Society today is so organised that every individual group has the power to disrupt it. How is their power to be channelled into constructive channels?