Top 110 Quotes & Sayings by Ann Widdecombe
Explore popular quotes and sayings by a British politician Ann Widdecombe.
Last updated on September 18, 2024.
Mice are everywhere at Westminster but many MPs, including me, did not report them because we were afraid of their possible fate.
After 23 years closeted at Westminster, where often all you can see out of the windows are other parliamentary buildings, I appreciate space, and I retired to Dartmoor to find it.
History is not merely a procession of people in fancy dress fighting wars. It is crucially the story of man's evolution from grunting cave dweller to serious thinker, from cruelly retributive law to merciful law, from casual barbarism to care and compassion.
It's not a question of being out of touch or traditional. It's a question of wanting to preserve marriage as uniquely between a man and a woman. Gays get full civil rights with civil partnerships anyway.
The child in the womb has no voice but Parliament's. Many MPs who voted for the 1967 Act did not think they were abandoning the unborn because they were fooled by the supposed safeguards. Now we know just how ineffective those safeguards are.
I left the Church of England because there was a huge bundle of straw. The ordination of women was the last straw, but it was only one of many. For years I had been disillusioned by the Church of England's compromising on everything. The Catholic Church doesn't care if something is unpopular.
We need less political correctness and more political courage.
Usually my Easter reading consists of 'Who Moved the Stone?,' which gets dusted off annually and read, often in one sitting, to remind me of the miracle of redemption, resurrection and life after death.
The Home Office is a vast department where business as usual means that something is going wrong and, given the nature of the business, the disasters rarely lack a high profile.
Some books are like an hors d'oeuvre - light, tasty and leaving you longing for the main course which is never going to come - and some are like Christmas lunch immediately after a cooked breakfast.
In 1999 my father died and my mother was coming to live with me. So I left my Kennington flat and bought a house with a garden because my mother loved watching the birds.
I am not an enthusiast when it comes to cities, preferring rolling scenery, wildlife and stars to museums, monuments, architecture and traffic.
I'd rather form my own party than ever join Ukip. We could call it the Widdy Mob. I'm joking.
I do not mind if a PM or leader of the opposition is single but if he or she chooses to dispense with marriage despite living with someone and having children, then I think that shows a contempt for marriage which sends an unfortunate message.
My detractors, who delight in using my name as a byword for unattractiveness, will find it hard to believe, but looking in the mirror is a pleasant experience.
Gentle mockery or sharp satire aimed at Christians and their leaders have been replaced by abuse of Christianity itself.
I am a Conservative: I'm never going to be anything else.
If someone calls you fat and you are fat, then it will be hurtful only if you feel you should not be fat.
Happiness is best defined by its antonym, which is less 'unhappiness' than 'anxiety.' Anyone who is not oppressed by intolerable worry or grievous pain is almost certainly happy, whether rich or poor, well or ill, successful or frustrated.
Cats are ideal for politicians. I had two when I arrived at Westminster, Sooty and Sweep, who had come with a flat I had bought six years earlier in Fulham from someone who was about to go abroad. There was a better offer ahead of me but she took mine because I would take the cats.
The first visit I made to Australia was in 1996 when I was the prisons' minister and was looking at other countries' penal systems.
Satisfaction is a major player in the happiness stakes.
We did it! Britain is no longer a member of the European Union. By 'we' I mean the 17.4 million Britons who voted Leave, Nigel Farage who fought for the cause for 25 years, Brexit Party MEPs, Tory Party members who were brave enough to desert their party in droves at the Euro-elections and, of course, the Daily Express.
We have no blasphemy laws these days but with that freedom comes the responsibility which should always attend the exercise of free speech: truth, courtesy and an awareness of impact. It is the last of these which is so neglected by so much modern comedy.
Always carry a handkerchief. Especially in television studios.
The Arctic has huge glaciers, frozen waterfalls and floating ice. This is scenery on which man has left no mark, which has stayed unchanged for centuries, wild, bleak, hauntingly beautiful; it is a part of God's creation we have made no effort to tame.
I am not normally a fan of organised tours: few public figures are, feeling themselves objects of constant curiosity.
It is a fundamental principle of democracy that citizens obey the law or incur whatever penalty applies to its breaking.
I have always believed prison can be very, very good for you but not by the act of deprivation of liberty alone. There has to be more to life inside than that.
For most of my political life I was not ecstatic but I was happy because I had huge confidence in the causes I espoused and the work I was doing. Even under extreme pressure I was satisfied that I was fighting a good fight.
The postcode lottery means that the level of care you get differs hugely around the country, and the health service simply cannot meet every demand that is put upon it.
I shall not miss the hectoring and backbiting and the lack of generosity towards fallen foes, but I will miss the sheer clubability of parliament. If one fancies a coffee or a meal or a drink then it is always possible to find at least one person out of 646 whose company is congenial.
I always said it was my ambition to have a library - I have one - and my dream was to have a pool. Then 'Strictly' came along.
On the whole, my disposition is to say yes, unless I've got good reason to say no, and I think that's being in public life.
I suspect my own journey to Brexit has closely followed that of Britain's. I had doubts, then I decided we should stay in, then I had very serious doubts as our island began to sink under a tide of regulations and our government lost control of the immigration system.
I was still in parliament when the Labour government passed the Freedom of Information Act. As the then shadow home secretary I queried whether in some areas it did enough to open up the work of government to public scrutiny.
Cats, unlike dogs, are independent creatures. They do not need walking and are content to be alone all day, providing they are fed.
Some of the finest comedies have chosen the Church as its subject and would indeed make most Christians laugh, give or take the occasional wince as a barb goes home. I have very fond memories of 'Our Man at St Marks' and long for the day when it is released on DVD but I won't hold my breath.
Not even the severest critics of Jeffrey Archer can deny his style.
Stand-up comics tend to make two assumptions: that Christians have no sense of humour and that all their audiences are unbelievers.
Having served as a member of parliament for more than two decades, I'm well aware that there can be genuine constraints that affect the speed at which certain issues progress.
There is nothing like a long, breezy walk on Dartmoor to make me feel I have arrived in heaven. The beauty of creation is all around and I feel closer to the creator Himself.
Our knowledge of animals and their behaviour has come a long way. We can no longer justify imprisoning them, robbing them of everything that is natural and important to them and turning them into objects of ridicule for our amusement.
Commerce and politics do not go with royalty, full stop.
Cats are so wonderful because they're furry, purry and totally independent.
Example and general milieu, once considered so important in the nurture of children, are sacrificed on the altars of the false god we call free choice but which imprisons us all in a collective moral paralysis and delivers an anarchy that the State itself shrinks from challenging.
Hindsight is a wonderful thing.
Insult is in the ear of the listener. Statements of fact cannot be insulting unless you feel that the label applied indicates some failing, moral or otherwise, in yourself.
One of my best moments was getting a constituent out of jail in Morocco, by which of course I mean I got him released not that I sprung him.
In my schooldays, I was Titch, Skinny and Freckles. These days, I answer to Karloff, Fatty or even Twiggy from my more sarcastic friends. If they called me Ann I should wonder what I had done to offend them.
It is quite wrong that one group of people should regularly and deliberately flout the law, boast about it and get away with it.
People wanted to protest, and Ukip's a conduit for that.
The political classes are despised when they deal in sound bites, embrace tokenistic campaigns and feather their own nests while trying to please all of the people all of the time.
I don't analyse myself.
Unfortunately, if the man who leaves the prison gates is just as likely or - as is sometimes grievously the case - more likely to offend as he was when he entered them, then we fail not only the individual but public safety as well.
Great political leaders risk unpopularity, patiently explain their case and confront prejudice, bigotry and vested interests.
It is a huge asset to law and order that serious or persistent criminals should be taken out of the society on which they prey. It makes life safer for the law-abiding and on the whole prisons are pretty good at containing those who have been committed to them.
The regime in too many prisons is one of idleness, and locking up someone from such a background in idleness virtually guarantees re-offending. Instead there needs to be a full day's work every weekday in either the workshops or the education department or preferably a mixture of both.
I am toothy, dumpy, ugly, overweight, a spinster - what the hell?
I am so used to seeing a blond in the mirror that I forget that for most of my life I was very dark. Old photos are still a bit of a shock.
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