Roy Jenkins famous quotes

07-12-2025

Inheritance Tax; - it is, broadly speaking; a voluntary levy paid by those who distrust their heirs more than they dislike the Inland Revenue
-- Roy Jenkins

#Inheritance #Heirs #Distrust
The permissive society has been allowed to become a dirty phrase. A better phrase is the civilised society
-- Roy Jenkins

#Dirty #Phrases #Nasty
There are always great dangers in letting the best be the enemy of the good.
-- Roy Jenkins

#Letting Go #Government #Enemy
A social democratic party without deep roots in the working class movement would quickly fade into an unrepresentative intellectual sect
-- Roy Jenkins

#Party #Class #Roots
The fact is that Harold Wilson is a person no one can like, a person without friends.
-- Roy Jenkins

#Facts #Wilson #Persons
The great disadvantage of our present electoral system is that it freezes the pattern of politics, and holds together the incompatible because everyone assumes that if a party splits it will be electorally slaughtered
-- Roy Jenkins

#Party #Together #Splits
I therefore believe that the politics of the left and centre of this country are frozen in an out-of-date mould which is bad for the political and economic health of Britain and increasingly inhibiting for those who live within the mould. Can it be broken?
-- Roy Jenkins

#Country #Believe #Broken
The Labour Party is and always has been an instinctive part of my life
-- Roy Jenkins

#Party #Labour Party #Has Beens
The most moving speech I have ever heard was Hugh Gaitskell saying he would 'fight, fight and fight again to save the party we love. That was the right message in 1960, and I believe it is still the right message today.
-- Roy Jenkins

#Party #Believe #Moving
I do not think you can push public expenditure significantly above 60 per cent and maintain the values of a plural society with adequate freedom of choice. We are here close to one of the frontiers of social democracy.
-- Roy Jenkins

#Thinking #Choices #Democracy
There is a lot of talk about a centre party - and that I might lead it. I find this idea profoundly unattractive
-- Roy Jenkins

#Party #Ideas #Unattractive
Many of the early nationalisation measures were right. They have remained part of the social fabric. I favour measures of that type.
-- Roy Jenkins

#Fabric #Favour #Social
Each successive Labour Government has been the most rapacious, doctrinaire and unpatriotic conspiracy to be seen this side of the Iron Curtain.
-- Roy Jenkins

#Government #Iron #Sides
We must not expect a full-scale peaceful revolution every time a Labour Government is elected
-- Roy Jenkins

#Peace #Government #Revolution
A substantial extension of public ownership is an essential pre-requisite of greater equality of earned income
-- Roy Jenkins

#Essentials #Income #Ownership

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