Clement Attlee

A Tory minister can sleep in ten different women's beds in a week. A Labour minister gets it in the neck if he looks at his neighbour's wife over the garden fence.

Harold Wilson, Memoirs 1916-1964: The Making of a Prime Minister (Weidenfeld & Nicolson and Michael Joseph, London, 1986), p. 121. , 1916

Not up to the job.

Explaining to John Parker why he was being sacked from the government in 1946. , 1946

I move previous face!

Harold Wilson, Memoirs 1916-1964: The Making of a Prime Minister (Weidenfeld & Nicolson and Michael Joseph, London, 1986), p. 128. , 1916

I agree with the prime minister that the condition of the world is serious, and that everyone who speaks on these subjects must speak with a full sense of responsibility, but that does not mean, in my view, that there should be a lack of plain speaking, but that we ought to see the facts for what they really are. I must say that I was profoundly disappointed with the speech of the prime minister, because it seemed to me that he had misconceived the whole issue that lives before us. He suggested that there was being fought in Spain, in the opinion of some people, a struggle between two sides, two rival systems. I do not think that is the issue that is facing us to-day. The world to-day is faced with a contest between two sides, and those two sides are whether the rule of law in international affairs shall prevail, or the rule of lawless force. That is the issue that faces us, and we must look at this Spanish struggle in its true perspective.

25 June 1937, during the British Parliamentary debates on the Spanish Civil War. As quoted by John Cowans (Editor) in Modern Spain: A Documentary History (2003). Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, paperback, p. 194 , 2003

You will be judged by what you succeed at gentlemen, not by what you attempt.

On formation of Government after landslide victory in 1945. , 1945