Ken Livingstone quotes: wise famous quotes, sayings and quotations by Ken Livingstone

Ken Livingstone Famous Quotes & Sayings

Discover top inspirational quotes from Ken Livingstone on Wise Famous Quotes.

If women had never been given the right to vote, then Labour would have won every election after the war.

I don't work hard enough. If I had worked harder I might have been prime minister.

Polling in a general election is pretty accurate, because turnout is usually high.

The whole culture of my background was deeply Conservative.

When you see someone trying to manoeuvre it round the school gates you have to think, you are a complete idiot.

Most people are not shocked that I am occasionally rude to journalists. They are probably amazed I don't punch one in the face.

I feel like Galileo going before the Inquisition to explain that the Sun doesn't revolve around the Earth. I hope I have more success.

Everyone changes all the time.

World wide capitalism kills more people everyday then Hitler did. And he was crazy.

If you are running a city you must focus on day-to-day problems.

You cannot just have a socialist revolution in Norwood and nowhere else.

If transport, housing and Olympic projects do not work, I will crawl away under a stone.

I never came into life with any favours or privileges.

Boris [ Johnson]and Dave [Cameron] gnawed each other's testicles [during the Tory civil war which blighted the EU referendum].

My only regret is the media's obsession with the past.

I can easily lose myself emotionally in absolute Hollywood garbage.

I have no interest in managing my financial affairs.

Working with the Jewish community is essential to me and what I stand for.

My political beliefs are my moral, quasi-religious framework.

I was a weedy kid, not like one of those working-class men who can accommodate not being academically clever by physical strength and prowess.

There isn't much about my life that's been particularly conventional.

I fear that within 10 years gays, trade union activists and left wing politicians will be led off to the gas chambers.

Everyone is bisexual. Almost everyone has the sexual potential for anything.

Most politicians aren't allowed to express themselves any more.

Give me the whole world to run and then I'll be happy. If tomorrow I was told I had to sort out the whole world's problems I'd sleep like a baby.

Psephology isn't a hate crime.

Consultation is a good thing when people agree with you, and a waste of time when people don't agree with you

It is all very well for people with fine arts degrees, but for ordinary people like myself, we want a statue to look like the person.

I think democracy's undermined when those who own newspapers fill them with trivia rather than real issues.

I'm in exactly the same position as everybody else who has a small business.

I've always told the truth. I've often been wrong - but I've never knowingly lied. Not in public life. Because I don't see the need to.

The best way to demonstrate the values of a western democracy is you put Osama bin Laden on trial; you challenge what he says.

I'd love to write about my growing sexual awareness, but the press would turn it into something squalid.

I just long for the day when I wake up and find that the Saudi royal family are swinging from lamp-posts.

The truth is, no one pays more tax than they have to.

To tackle climate change you don't have to reduce your quality of life, but you do have to change the way you live

You lose power in Britain and you are just Joe Public again.

I became a councillor back in 1971, so if by this stage in politics I'm making lots of big mistakes, then I shouldn't be here.

I have only ever borrowed money for investment. I have been sound money all my life.

The press keep asking me, 'What was your biggest mistake?' But if I had made a big mistake, they'd all be writing about it, wouldn't they?

Global warming could be solved by shifting three to four per cent of global GDP to pay for it.

I do the gardening.

Only some ghastly dehumanised moron would want to get rid of the Routemaster.

I think it's much more important to keep people in work than have pay rises.

I can only admire people who I have never met and are dead - because you know so much about anyone who is alive.

This life is messy.

I grew up in a house with very few books.

I have opened newspapers and read incredible lies.

Politics is not a healthy lifestyle.

Short of being prime minister there isn't a better job in British politics than running London.

I've got people handling the media. I employ at the moment two people. No-one is paying income tax on the money they use to employ people.

I don't just denounce suicide bombers. I denounce those governments which use indiscriminate slaughter to advance their foreign policy.

I've always been a workaholic. I reckon, on average, I've had less than one day a year off in my working career.

The idea that the GLC should be abolished at a stroke is ill though out, undemocratic and will cost the people of London dear.

When I'm sifting the compost seed or pruning, I argue over issues in my head; I talk to myself.

I would like all newspapers to become workers' co-operatives.

Thatcher was prepared to destroy the world rather than give in on something she believed in.

My administration will tackle these issues in consultation with the black communities of London.

There needs to be radical development in equality law to create the environment to allow women to stay in work.

What do we do about climate change bearing down upon us?

I have met the people who run the world, and I am not in awe of them.

I grew up in Lambeth, I went to normal schools and I've grown up in a city where people say what they think.

We look to the left and to the right And we need help but nobody's in sight Where is the man that we all need Tell him he's to come and rescue me.

I've never declined to do an interview.

Well, I mean, I'm very much a pragmatic person.

I refuse not to have a sense of humour.

I am a socialist, a believer in rational thought and the rule of law.

Just because I am critical of the coalition doesn't mean I am anti-English. I am just anti-scumbags.

My main income is from speaking.

I do explicitly see Jewish people as a people - not either a religion or an ethnicity but a people.

[Pigeons are] rats with wings.

Press TV is one of the few TV channels anywhere in the West that fairly presents the Palestinian case.

If I blew my nose the Daily Express and the Daily Mail would say that I am trying to spread germ warfare.

Most kids don't get to go their parents' wedding.

Every year the international finance system kills more people than the Second World War. But at least Hitler was mad, you know.

I am not against Israel, I am against Zionists.

The civil service are risk averse.

The British judiciary is one of the most corrupt in the world because of politically active judges.

I've met serial killers and professional assassins and nobody scared me as much as MrsT.

Jewish voters are not one homogenous block.

I'm an emotional person; I do occasionally shed a tear.

Every budget I have ever prepared has been balanced.

I liked it when we had ugly politicians who droned on about issues.

I think I have gone through my entire public career never telling a lie. I have made mistakes but I never knowingly lied.

Anybody who enjoys being in the House of Commons probably needs psychiatric help.

I loathe and detest all this trivialisation of politics.

The world is run by monsters and you have to deal with them. Some of them run countries, some of them run banks, some of them run news corporations.

I spent the 1960s and 1970s seeking myself - the working-class tradition of self-education.

I'm never going to take the view that I should say whatever I need to say in order to achieve something. Because that implies a level of dishonesty.

Ed Miliband doesn't give a damn about what he looks like, how he dresses. He came into politics to change society.

I'm more interested in politicians who deal with human rights in their own country rather than lecture the rest of the world.

One thing that Chairman Mao did was to end the appalling foot binding of women. That alone justifies the Mao Tse-tung era.

Well, I get on with people who believe in something.

I swim three times a week.

The people I really most admire are Robert Kennedy and Franklin Roosevelt. If you know someone, it is very hard to revere them.

Politics is not a game. Thousands of people's jobs and services depended on what the GLC did, and they expected us to do the best we could.

Most people wouldn't want to marry a politician.

The problem is that many MPs never see the London that exists beyond the wine bars and brothels of Westminster.