Tony Benn quotes: wise famous quotes, sayings and quotations by Tony Benn

Tony Benn Famous Quotes & Sayings

Discover top inspirational quotes from Tony Benn on Wise Famous Quotes.

The way a government treats refugees is very instructive ...

I believe the more difficult the circumstances, the more people will be inclined to trust those in charge at the moment.

Choice depends on the freedom to choose and if you are shackled with debt you don't have the freedom to choose.

An educated, healthy and confident nation is harder to govern.

When you get to No 10, you've climbed there on a little ladder called 'the status quo'. And when you are there, the status quo looks very good

I think there are two ways in which people are controlled. First of all frighten people and secondly, demoralise them.

The one thing that is absolutely essential is that there shouldn't be any governmental control [of the media] directly or indirectly.

When we have a majority we will do it. I think the days of the Lords are quite genuinely numbered.

A faith is something you die for, a doctrine is something you kill for. There is all the difference in the world.

[I am against] the Treaty of Rome which entrenches laissez faire as its philosophy and chooses bureaucracy as its administrative method.

I've had a very full life, and I've enjoyed it very much. I've learned a great deal and feel indebted to all the people who have worked so hard.

I think democracy is the most revolutionary thing in the world ... .because if you have power you use it to meet the needs of you and your community.

The Tory party is the enemy of democracy.

The people who have sacrificed their view in order to get to the top have very often left no footprints in the sands of time.

Clement Attlee, who looked like a sadistic sanitary inspector...

Encouragement is the most important thing in the world for young people, rather than league tables, which demoralise everyone.

Marxism is now a world faith and must be allowed to enter into a continuous dialogue with other world faiths, including religious faiths

An MP is the only job where you have 70,000 employers, and only one employee.

Broadcasting is really too important to be left to the broadcasters.

The House of Lords is the British Outer Mongolia for retired politicians.

The 1973 Labour Conference will have before it the most radical programme the Party has prepared since 1945.

Food movement organic food stores supplies health food products and facilitate with instrumental support in organic agriculture.

Thanks to the tabloid campaigns I have many death threats and I was very pleased to get another one the other day.

When you think of the number of men in the world who hate each other, why, when two men love each other, does the church split?

There is no moral difference between a Stealth bomber and a suicide bomber. They both kill innocent people for political reasons.

It is obvious I shall have to abandon my hopes of getting the Queen's head off the stamps.

The flag of radicalism which has been hoisted in Wolverhampton is beginning to look like the one that fluttered 25 years ago over Dachau and Belsen

If you file your waste-paper basket for fifty years, you have a public library.

After fifteen years I have decided to resign my membership of the Dennis The Menace Fanclub. It
brought me no benefits worth mentioning.

She believes in something. It is an old-fashioned idea

I now want more time to devote to politics and more freedom to do so.

The crisis that we inherit when we come to power will be the occasion for fundamental change and not the excuse for postponing it

My day rotates around my family. I am very lucky.

If ever I left the House of Commons it would be because I wanted to spend more time on politics.

Through me the energy policy of the whole Common Market is being held up. Without opening old wounds, it pleases me no end.

I was stunned with outrage.

If I rescued a child from drowning, the press would no doubt headline the story: 'Benn grabs child

It is tempting to deny, but if you deny you confirm what you won't deny.

Britain today is suffering from galloping obsolescence.

I'd rather die on my feet making a speech than die of Alzheimer's - and that's what I'm planning to do.

It is wholly wrong to blame Marx for what was done in his name, as it is to blame Jesus for what was done in his

Making mistakes is how you learn.

Britain is the only colony in the British Empire and it is up to us now to liberate ourselves.

Middle class Labour leaders are recaptured by the establishment when they die.

I am on the right wing of the middle of the road and with a strong radical bias.

What power have you got? Where did you get it from? In whose interests do you exercise it? To whom are you accountable? And how can we get rid of you

I don't make mistakes. I make predictions which immediately turn out to be wrong.

Workers are not going to be fobbed off with a few shares ... or by a carbon copy of the German system of co-determination.

I can't go to bed if I haven't done my diary. I always record them just as I've always recorded all my interviews and speeches.

When I think of Cool Britannia I think of old people dying of hypothermia.

I am a public library

The uncut diaries are 16 million words. It's very tiring to do your diary every night before you go to bed.

If we can find the money to kill people, we can find the money to help people.

Most things in life are moments of pleasure and a lifetime of embarrassment; photography is a moment of embarrassment and a lifetime of pleasure.

Some of the jam we thought was for tomorrow, we've already eaten

I think very often the boat-rockers turn out to be the people who are building the craft

I've made every mistake - but mistakes are how you learn.

Britain's continuing membership of the Community would mean the end of Britain as a completely self-governing nation

On the National Executive sat Charles Clarke, looking like a rather manky chimpanzee with his unkempt beard, jug ears and his air of surly aggression.

The Marxist analysis has got nothing to do with what happened in Stalin's Russia: it's like blaming Jesus Christ for the Inquisition in Spain.

The thought that my mother would suddenly be a foreigner would upset me very much.

Howay yabastaaz I'll t-t-take the f-f-fuckin lorrayaz! Am fuckin al reet me man. Why aye!

At the end of my life, I was told to vote for it for pensioners; I' m not in favour of means tests for pensioners or anybody.

The Internet is only the street corner meeting on a big scale

I did not enter the Labour Party 47 years ago to have our manifesto written by Dr Mori, Dr Gallup and Mr Harris

Undoubtedly the war with Iraq was a tragedy. I think it was also a crime.

I have had the advantage of a radical Christian upbringing

We are not just here to manage capitalism but to change society and to define its finer values.

The Labour party has never been a socialist party, although there have always been socialists in it - a bit like Christians in the Church of England.

I pledge no fudge of compromise', said Arthur Scargill, 'and no carrots of redundancy'. That would make a nice epitaph for him. 'He pledged no fudge'.

The exhaustion of old age is something people who are younger don't fully appreciate.

All war represents a failure of diplomacy.

I think if you're going to be committed to doing anything, you really have to care about it, and I suppose that is a romantic idea.

I am not a reluctant peer but a persistent commoner

The Prime Minister keeps me on around here because I make him look good.

My filing system is messy but orderly.

In developing our industrial strategy for the period ahead, we have the benefit of much experience. Almost everything has been tried at least once

In the end, the tragedy of Harold Wilson was that you couldn't believe a word he said