Norman Tebbit Quotations

Parliament must not be told a direct untruth, but it's quite possible to allow them to mislead themselves.

He didn't riot. He got on his bike and looked for work.

It is certainly safe, in view of the movement to the right of intellectuals and political thinkers, to pronounce the brain death of socialism.

The Muslim religion is so unreformed since it was created that nowhere in the Muslim world has there been any real advance in science, or art or literature, or technology in the last 500 years.

Opinion polls are not worth the paper they are written on, in my view, through the conference season. They don't settle down again until November.

The Conservatives played like England cricketers - too many rash strokes and run-outs, dropped catches and bowling anywhere but the stumps.

The word conservative is used by the BBC as a portmanteau word of abuse for anyone whose views differ from the insufferable, smug, sanctimonious, naive, guilt-ridden, wet, pink orthodoxy of that sunset home of the third-rate minds of that third-rate decade, the nineteen-sixties.

My dad didn't riot. He got on his bike and looked for work

I think they (Thatcher protesters) ought to be grateful for the fact that the people who hold our (pro-Thatcher) views, and who are not mindless bigots, won't allow their behaviour to provoke us into words or behaviour which would could be seen as a breach of the peace. Hopefully, those of us who admire Margaret Thatcher are too well-mannered to fall for the bait.

Parliament must not be told a direct untruth, but its quite possible to allow them to mislead themselves.

I grew up in the 30s with an unemployed father. He didn't riot; he got on his bike and looked for work and he kept looking 'til he found it.

I suspect that the only thing that will take Articles Two and Three out of the Irish Constitution is when the bombs begin to blow in Dublin in the way that they have been in Belfast and in London.

I have no intention of slurring over the differences we have with socialism, nor concealing my belief that we are the National Party of Great Britain, representing not narrow class interest, nor the bigotry of the left wing intellectuals, but all those who support the British tradition of democracy, of personal freedom, of personal responsibility for one's own affairs and those of one's family, with the least possible interference from the State.

We need to create an enterprise culture, a society where successful entrepreneurs are respected and admired, not treated with suspicion and disdain. And in which we see less envy of other peoples' achievements and mistrust of commerce, and a greater readiness to get out there and join in the process.

The mark of a single currency is not only that all other currencies must be extinguished but that the capacity of other institutions to issue currencies must also be extinguished...In the case of the United Kingdom, that would involve Parliament binding its successors in a way that it has hitherto regarded as unconstitutional.

[The poll tax] was a classic case of a good idea being entrusted to Chris Patten and becoming a terrible failure.

He (John Major) has the mulishness of a weak man with stupidity.

The BBC is another part of the destruction of Great Britain.

If they (Muslim women) wish to cover their faces and isolate themselves from the rest of the community and so thoroughly reject our culture then I cannot imagine why they want to be here at all. Perhaps they should just push off back to their own countries.

Perhaps election fever is developing into something more like sleeping sickness, as the utter boredom of a contest in which almost all the attention seems to be on personalities and polls wears us all down. I just wish they would get on with it.

It's good to remember the unburied dead and the uncollected rubbish. Most of it can now be seen on the Labour benches in the House of Commons.

I think that could be perhaps a little misleading and even our statistics can mislead people at the times though they are not misleading in themselves. It is just that people get mislead

I've never bashed a union in my life.

I haven't got a racist bone in my little finger.

Bad art was as good as good art. Grammar and spelling were no longer important. To be clean was no better than to be filthy. Good manners were no better than bad. Family life was derided as an outdated bourgeois concept. Criminals deserved as much sympathy as their victims. Many homes and classrooms became disorderly - if there was neither right nor wrong there could be no basis for punishment or reward. Violence and soft pornography became accepted in the media. Thus was sown the wind, and we are now reaping the whirlwind.

The Conservatives played like England cricketers - too many rash strokes and run-outs, dropped catches and bowling anywhere but the stumps.