ellen wilkinson | Great Education Secretaries

Today is Quintin Hogg’s Birthday so I am reblogging his best quotes. Enjoy!

1. “Incidentally, the difference between those who are admittedly first class in their own field, and those who are not, lies very often precisely in this, that the first are able to give coherent accounts, in lucid terms, of what they are trying to do, and what they believe, whilst the others are not.”

2. ” ‘Doing what comes naturally’ can cover almost any kind of moral obliquity and permissiveness. Indeed, since we are all inhabitants of the natural world, there is practically no sort of action, good or bad, which cannot, in some sense be described as natural.”

3. “Civil society is not a voluntary organization in its nature, and all talk of a social contract or compact which can bind its members is specious and pretentious nonsense”

4. “All religion has its myths. Anti-religion has its myths and its mythmakers no less. Two of the great myths of our time owe their origin to Sigmund Freud & Karl Marx… they have, I believe, done more to undermine Christian philosophy than any two men since the Crucifixion.”

5. “I think that the modern world needs loyalty and respect for authority more than anything else”

6. “Law is, of course, in a sense, no more than a gigantic confidence trick. If enough people did not obey the law it would be totally unenforceable.”

7. “The Labour Party never presented to me a package which I would have been happy accepting for myself”

8. “After four months of office this was promotion with a vengeneace. But strangely enough I was not at all pleased. I had given my heart to the Navy, and I believed I was popular”

9. “At the time, like most educational enthusiasts, I was a dogmatic supporter of the raising of the compulsory school leaving age to 16. I am now, at best, an agnostic, at worst an unbeliver”

10. “I do not wish in any way to reduce the credit of Harold Macmillan in achieving this. But I do not think he could have done it without me.”

11. “Some of the makers of opinion are beyond reach, because they are on the other side. But before an election even these can be pressed into service. They can be made to take notice, to twitter with rage and scream in derision and, if they can be made to twitter and scream at the wrong things, or, rather, from their point of view, at the wrong things, powerful allies can be wheeled into support from sources normally neutral, or, occassionally, even unfriendly.”

FROM ELLEN:

On losing her Parliamentary seat: “It does an MP good to see that what he regarded as the centre of Britain’s whole life is to most folk a curious assembly with incomprehensible ways”

On transparency – “We do not doubt that justice, as a general rule, done. But it should always be remembered that justice is not enough. What people want is security for justice and the only security for justice is law publicly administered”

On the 1925 Zinoviev’s letter scandal – “A really good scare proves better than any argument”

On witticisms: “No authority can discipline anyone with a sense of humour”

On the BBC: “The BBC General is the judge of what we ought to want”

On house building: “I am sick of hearing about the sacred rights of private property. I want to hear about the sacred rights of human life”

On the grammar-school system: “If we are committed to three types of school one grand thing about the scheme is that it won’t work – at least not peacefully. It would hit the middle classes who would scream. Pupils of grammar or technical ability (with high IQ) should be separated on a functional basis, not by going to physically different/separate schools…let the lower IQs find their level in separate classes; arouse [their] interest by a practical side to their tuition; but don’t let the stigma of lower IQs attach itself to the whole school”

FROM OTHERS:

Paddy Scullion’s memory of Ellen: “Full of fire in a short fur coat”

Amy Mitchell on why Ellen remained unmarried – “Ellen was always so anxious to put the world to rights that love affairs had to wait”

Jack Lawson, Methodist Minister, on her death: “Quite simply (her passion) arose from the urge of compassion for mankind and a vision of the world that might be”