John Burns Quotes

• You come before me this morning with clean hands and clean collars. I want you to have clean tongues, clean manners, clean morals and clean characters.

  John Burns

• Why four great powers should fight over Serbia no fellow can understand.

  John Burns

• The Thames is liquid history.

  John Burns

• The men who made the war were profuse in their praises of the man who kicked the P.M. out of his office and now degrades by his disloyal, dishonest and lying presence the greatest office in the State.

  John Burns

• The Gentlemen of England serve under the greatest cad in Europe.

  John Burns

• My duty is clear and at all costs will be done.

  John Burns

• Judge men less by the labels they wear than by their persistent labour for sure if slow progress.

  John Burns

• Individual effort is almost relatively impossible to cope with the big problem of poverty as we see it.

  John Burns

• In this work I have received the opposition of a number of men who only advocate the unobtainable because the immediately possible is beyond their moral courage, administrative ability, and their political prescience.

  John Burns

• I want the municipality to be a helping hand to the man with a desire of sympathy, to help the fallen when it is not in their power to help themselves.

  John Burns

• I recognise that Socialism has ended its purely theoretical course, and that the hour to construct has come.

  John Burns

• I neither drink nor smoke, because my schoolmaster impressed upon me three cardinal virtues; cleanliness in person, cleanliness in mind; temperance.

  John Burns

• I must firmly adhere to the views I have held and practice, that Socialism to succeed must be practical, tolerant, cohesive and consciously compromising with Progressive forces running, if not so far, in parallel lines towards its own goal.

  John Burns

• I don’t want boys to use their pencils for improper writing.

  John Burns

• I believe, however, that impending events will call us and we must respond but where, with whom, and how?

  John Burns

• I am only doing now what I have ever done; and ever will continue to do – that is adapting past experience to present reform in the light of high ideals and future objects.

  John Burns

• I am not ashamed to say that I am the son of a washerwoman.

  John Burns

• I am depressed rather at the wave of brutality sweeping over the country.

  John Burns

• For the moment and for some time great events have been denied me, forward action not come my way.

  John Burns

• Don’t hustle old people.

  John Burns

John Burns (21)

Birth:	20th October, 1858
Death:	24th January, 1943
Nationality:	British
Profession:	Politician, Unionist

About

John Elliot Burns was born in London, England. He was an English trade unionist and politician. He was anti-alcohol and a keen sportsman. He worked at his trade in various parts of England, having joined the Amalgamated Society of Engineers in 1879. In 1881, he formed a branch of the Social Democratic Federation in Battersea. In 1892, he was elected as Member of Parliament for Battersea as the candidate of the Battersea Liberal Association. He was connected with the Trades Union Congresses until 1895. In December 1905, Campbell-Bannerman included him in the cabinet as President of the Local Government Board. He was sworn into the Privy Council in 1905. In 1914, he was appointed President of the Board of Trade.

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Today's Anniversary - 22nd December

Births

• 1944 - Mary Archer
• 1972 - Vanessa Paradis
• 1957 - Susan Powter
• 1948 - Martin Yan
• 1948 - Steve Garvey

Deaths

• 1998 - Virginia Graham
• 1943 - Beatrix Potter
• 1987 - Sir Henry Thomas Cotton
• 1940 - Nathanael West
• 2001 - Lance Loud