Although [in 1937] we might still hope to prevent the divisions of Europe into Fascist and anti-Fascist camps, our real affinities and interests, strategic as well as political, lay with France, a fact which some of my colleagues were most reluctant to realise.

We cannot agree that an act of plunder which threatens the livelihood of many nations should be allowed to succeed.

All prejudices are equally fatal to good government.

If we had allowed things to drift, everything would have gone from bad to worse. Nasser would have become a kind of Moslem Mussolini, and our friends in Iraq, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, and even Iran would gradually have been brought down. His efforts would have spread westwards, and Libya and North Africa would have been brought under his control.

Eden ha[s] put his country in a position where she sustained the greatest diplomatic reverse since Bismarck in similar circumstances had called Palmerston's bluff in the matter of Schleswig-Holstein...Further damage was done when Russia proved by her action in Spain, that she was not a good European as Mr. Eden had assured the world was the case.

Drift is the demon of democracy.

Responding to the question If Mr. Stalin dies, what will be the effect on international affairs? That is a good question for you to ask, not a wise question for me to answer.

There is now doubt in our minds that Nasser, whether he likes it or not, is now effectively in Russian hands, just as Mussolini was in Hitler's. It would be as ineffective to show weakness to Nasser now in order to placate him as it was to show weakness to Mussolini.

If you've broken the eggs, you should make the omelette.

The free world has need that its foreign policies should fairly measure the realities of the world in which we live. There are certain principles to which we hold: the sanctity of treaties, good faith between nations, the interdependence of peoples from which no country, however powerful, can altogether escape.

I am one of a rare breed of true politicians who definitely say what they may or may not mean with absolute certainty.

No democratic world will work as it should work until we recognize that we can only enjoy any right so long as we are prepared to discharge its equivalent duty. This applies just as much to states in their dealing with one another as to individuals within the states.

You may gain temporary appeasement by a policy of concession to violence, but you do not gain lasting peace that way.

Anthony's father was a mad baronet and his mother a very beautiful woman. That's Anthony-half mad baronet, half beautiful woman.

Our quarrel is not with Egypt, still less with the Arab world. It is with Colonel Nasser. He has shown that he is not a man who can be trusted to keep an agreement. Now he has torn up all his country's promises to the Suez Canal Company and has even gone back on his own statements.

We best avoid wars by taking even physical action to stop small ones.