Top 80 William Hague Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “There’s only one growth strategy: work hard.”

— William Hague

2. “We have to face the reality of climate change. It is arguably the biggest threat we are facing today.”

— William Hague

3. “On the question of taking credit for what goes right and blame for what goes wrong – having led the Conservative party for four years, I have never heard of this notion before.”

— William Hague

4. “Yes, I’ve never inherited a penny!”

— William Hague

5. “Iran’s continued, widespread persecution of ethnic minorities, human rights defenders and political prisoners is a disgrace and stands as a shameful indictment of Iran’s leaders.”

— William Hague

6. “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.”

— William Hague

7. “It’s not too late to stop the Lisbon Treaty.”

— William Hague

8. “I know people are fickle.”

— William Hague

9. “A generation of children has been betrayed.”

— William Hague

10. “Ambition is best tempered with self-knowledge!”

— William Hague

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

— William Hague

12. “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.”

— William Hague

13. “Spending only what the country can afford, rewarding savings, encouraging independence, supporting marriage: people know that these things are common sense.”

— William Hague

14. “As far as I’m aware, everybody in the shadow cabinet accepts that there’s a compelling case on climate change and a strong scientific case.”

— William Hague

Featured in: Strong Quotes

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

— William Hague

16. “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.”

— William Hague

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

— William Hague

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

— William Hague

19. “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.”

— William Hague

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

— William Hague

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

— William Hague

22. “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.”

— William Hague

23. “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.”

— William Hague

24. “The EU is not a country and it’s not going to become a country, in my view, now or ever in the future. It is a group of countries working together.”

— William Hague

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

— William Hague

26. “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.”

— William Hague

27. “It was inevitable the Titanic was going to set sail, but that doesn’t mean it was a good idea to be on it.”

— William Hague

28. “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.”

— William Hague

29. “Egypt is a sovereign nation.”

— William Hague

30. “The people of Britain want a Home Secretary who will give them back their streets. They want a Home Secretary who will speak up for the victim, not the criminal.”

— William Hague

31. “I don’t think a wise thing at this moment is for Israel to launch a military attack on Iran.”

— William Hague

32. “When the Lord Chancellor violates the trust of his great office of state to solicit party donations from people whose careers he can control, and then says I’m not sorry, and I’d do it again no wonder the public think that power has gone to their heads.”

— William Hague

33. “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.”

— William Hague

34. “Turning away Turkey from the EU would be a great, long-term – a century-long – error by Europe.”

— William Hague

35. “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.”

— William Hague

36. “The British retreat is over and now the advance will begin.”

— William Hague

37. “To the hard-working people who set a little bit aside each month, to provide for their children, or to fund their own retirement, I say: you should be rewarded not punished.”

— William Hague

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

— William Hague

39. “I still agree with the invasion of Iraq. I don’t agree with most of the decisions that accompanied it.”

— William Hague

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

— William Hague

41. “The total economy of Latin America is bigger than China.”

— William Hague

42. “People work hard and save hard to own a car. They do not want to be told that they cannot drive it by a Deputy Prime Minister whose idea of a park and ride scheme is to park one Jaguar and drive away in another.”

— William Hague

43. “I have found that I get a better reaction from people once I am less bothered about their reaction.”

— William Hague

44. “If there’s one thing above all that sets me apart from Tony Blair it is this – I am not embarrassed to articulate the instincts of the British people.”

— William Hague

45. “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.”

— William Hague

46. “People feel that the EU is a one-way process, a great machine that sucks up decision-making from national parliaments to the European level until everything is decided by the EU. That needs to change.”

— William Hague

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

— William Hague

48. “Today further EU targeted sanctions on Syria come into force. The message is clear and unambiguous: those responsible for the repression will be singled out and held accountable.”

— William Hague

49. “If some of the people who write about mojo came with me for a week, they would drop dead on their feet.”

— William Hague

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

— William Hague