John Burns
John Burns
John Elliot Burnswas an English trade unionist and politician of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, particularly associated with London politics. He was a socialist and then a Liberal Member of Parliament and Minister. He was anti-alcohol and a keen sportsman. After retiring from politics, he developed an expertise in London history and coined the phrase "The Thames is liquid history". When the Liberal cabinet made a decision for war on 2 August 1914, he resigned and played no...
NationalityEnglish
ProfessionActivist
Date of Birth20 October 1858
The Gentlemen of England serve under the greatest cad in Europe.
All social-service organizations have to look at what their skill sets are, what do we do well, and put together a response that's outside the boundaries of a traditional program.
I am not ashamed to say that I am the son of a washerwoman.
The Thames is liquid history.
I don't want to be married. I don't know - it sounds crazy, but in my mind, it's all connected. You get married, you have kids, you grow old, then you die. Somehow, it seems to me, if you didn't get married, you wouldn't die.
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.
I neither drink nor smoke, because my schoolmaster impressed upon me three cardinal virtues; cleanliness in person, cleanliness in mind; temperance.
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.
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.
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.
I am depressed rather at the wave of brutality sweeping over the country.
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.
Judge men less by the labels they wear than by their persistent labour for sure if slow progress.
I believe, however, that impending events will call us and we must respond but where, with whom, and how?