Top 45 William Hague Quotes

Governments that use violence to stop democratic development will not earn themselves respite forever. They will pay an increasingly high price for actions which they can no longer hide from the world with ease, and will find themselves on the wrong side of history.

Elected presidents are for countries.

I’m not, nor is anybody I know in government part of a nasty right wing clique.

We hope that the long darkness through which the Burmese people have lived may now be coming to an end.

To the teacher weighed down with paperwork, I say: you’ve been messed around too often. You came into teaching to spend your time teaching children not filling in forms.

I’ve always been opposed myself to prisoners having the vote.

Whatever happens in Mogadishu, in Somalia, will happen in Great Britain. We have interlocking interests.

I believe we should reframe our response to climate change as an imperative for growth rather than merely being a way of being green or meeting environmental commitments.

One day I will go back to my books and piano, but not yet.

Governments that block the aspirations of their people, that steal or are corrupt, that oppress and torture or that deny freedom of expression and human rights should bear in mind that they will find it increasingly hard to escape the judgement of their own people, or where warranted, the reach of international law.

It must be quite rare for an interviewer to be interviewed.

I think Britain would be alright, if only we had a different Government.

People feel that in too many ways the EU is something that is done to them, not something over which they have a say.

Time is not on Gaddafi’s side. People ask about the exit strategy. It’s Colonel Gaddafi who needs an exit strategy because this pressure will only mount and it will be intensified over the coming days and weeks.

I don’t think my principles change. I think the way in which you apply those principles to modern society changes.

Someone once claimed I was not really a Yorkshireman!

The low carbon economy is at the leading edge of a structural shift now taking place globally.

For the security of the UK, it matters a lot for Somalia to become a more stable place.

You can see over time whether people are prepared to differ or not.

When we have a Deputy Prime Minister who tells people not to drive cars but has two Jags himself, and where the Minister who tells people not to have two homes turns out to have nine himself no wonder the public believe politicians are hypocrites.

I have always thought that foreign-policy idealism has to be tempered with realism.

It is the mission of the next Conservative Government to build the Responsible Society.

Wouldn’t it be better to have a watertight law designed to catch the guilty, rather than a press release law designed to catch the headlines?

We are not directly involved in Syria. But we will be working with our partners in the European Union and at the United Nations to see if we can persuade the Syrian authorities to go, as I say, more in that direction of respect for democracy and human rights.

I gave up lots of things I love doing: writing, and business, and playing the piano and so on.

In my view what you can’t argue for is a system that is neither decisive nor proportional and can be indecisive and disproportionate at the same time.

I trust the people.

The message I take all round the world is Britain is open for business.

It’s really necessary for the United States to continue to give strong leadership to the Middle East peace process, supported by European countries at the same time.

Where defining foreign policy as ‘ethical’ went wrong was that it implied that all decisions would be exclusive in every respect of any dealings with unethical regimes.

Syria should not belong to one family, to one coterie, or to one party. It belongs to all the people of Syria equally, in all their religious and ethnic diversity.

We’re not getting involved in terms of sending ground forces into Libya. Let’s be clear about that. And indeed the UN Resolution forbids that. It says no foreign occupation of any part of Libya.

You do have to do business with and to try to influence people you don’t agree with, or find disagreeable, so it’s important to stress that balance.

Unless there is meaningful change in Syria and an end to the crackdown, President Assad and those around him will find themselves isolated internationally and discredited within Syria.

It’s necessary for Israelis and Palestinians to make the compromises that are required to get the direct talks back on track.

Labour have been listening for too long to the so-called experts who think that competition is a dirty word and that communicating facts to our children is elitist.

Obviously a Conservative government will always leave taxes lower than they have been under Labour. Those things go with the territory of the Conservative Party.

Yes, I’ve never inherited a penny!

I’m going to reduce the size of the Cabinet, cut the number of ministers, reduce the size of the House of Commons, campaign for a European Parliament with 100 fewer members, halve the number of political advisers, and abolish a huge swathe of Labour’s regional bureaucracies and agencies and their offices in Brussels.

People know that you can’t spend more than you have.

Well, if you’re looking for me to lead a normal representative life, well good luck finding a foreign secretary who’d be like that – totally dependant on the political system and has never earned any money. Then you’ll get the politicians you deserve.

I described the euro as a burning building with no exits and so it has proved for some of the countries in it.

Inspiring scenes of people taking the future of their countries into their own hands will ignite greater demands for good governance and political reform elsewhere in the world, including in Asia and in Africa.

Very few conflicts in the history of the world have been satisfactorily concluded according to a published timetable, because you lose all flexibility in dealing with your opponents.

Let’s not be afraid to speak the common sense truth: you can’t have high standards without good discipline.