If we can find the money to kill people, we can find the money to help people.
The way a government treats refugees is very instructive...
There is no final victory, as there is no final defeat. There is just the same battle. To be fought, over and over again. So toughen up, bloody toughen up.
Five questions for politicians: 1. What power have you got? 2. Where did you get it from? 3. In whose interest do you exercise it? 4. To whom are you accountable? 5. How can we get rid of you?
People in debt become hopeless and hopeless people don’t vote. They always say that that everyone should vote but I think that if the poor in Britain or the United States turned out and voted for people that represented their interests there would be a real democratic revolution.
There may be a legal obligation to obey, but there will be no moral obligation to obey. When it comes to history, it will be the people who broke the law for freedom who will be remembered and honoured.
I do not share the general view that market forces are the basis for political liberty. Every time I see a homeless person living in a cardboard box in London, I see that person as a victim of market forces. Everytime I see a pensioner who cannot manage, I know that he is a victim of market forces.
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.
A faith is something you die for; a doctrine is something you kill for; there is all the difference in the world.
No medieval monarch in the whole of British history ever had such power as every modern British Prime Minister has in his or her hands. Nor does any American President have power approaching this.
I’d rather die on my feet making a speech than die of Alzheimer’s – and that’s what I’m planning to do.
Through me the energy policy of the whole Common Market is being held up. Without opening old wounds, it pleases me no end.
I think the truth is that the Labour Party isn’t believed any more because people suspect it will say anything to get votes. The rebuilding of some radical alternatives to Thatcherism – and by that I mean all-party Thatcherism – will require us to do some very difficult things.
We are paying a heavy political price for 20 years in which, as a party, we have played down our criticism of capitalism and soft-peddled our advocacy of socialism.
Hope is the fuel of progress and fear is the prison in which you put yourself.
The Tory party is the enemy of democracy.
The House of Lords is the British Outer Mongolia for retired politicians.
Making mistakes is how you learn.
Through talk, we tamed kings, restrained tyrants, averted revolution.
I think very often the boat-rockers turn out to be the people who are building the craft.