Politics & Power Quote by John Major

Patience is a slyly deflationary virtue to elevate in a field addicted to the optics of speed. John Major, a politician defined as much by steadiness as by spectacle, frames politics not as a contest of brilliance or brute effort but as an endurance sport for people who can tolerate boredom, delay, and incremental compromise. The line works because it punctures the romantic fantasy of politics as heroic disruption. It replaces the myth of the genius reformer with the reality of committee rooms, reshuffles, hostile headlines, and the slow grind of institutional inertia.

The tortoise-and-hare metaphor is doing double duty. On the surface it flatters moderation: pace yourself, stay the course, survive. Underneath it’s also a warning about the media era’s trapdoor: the “hare” is the politician chasing daily wins, viral moments, dramatic pivots - easily exhausted, easily punished by a single misstep. Major’s bet is that time itself is a political instrument; if you can outlast crises, opponents, and fashions, you can often inherit the advantage without ever landing a theatrical blow.

Context matters. Major led Britain after Thatcher, when the public wanted calm but the Conservative Party was rotting from internal warfare, especially over Europe. His premiership was an object lesson in how leaders can be undone not by lack of intelligence or effort but by relentless attrition. Read that way, the quote carries a faint autobiographical edge: patience isn’t just strategy, it’s self-defense - a justification for governing by persistence when the political weather never clears.