Best 133 quotes of Tony Benn on MyQuotes

Tony Benn

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    Tony Benn

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

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    Tony Benn

    After the war people said, 'If you can plan for war, why can't you plan for peace?' When I was 17, I had a letter from the government saying, 'Dear Mr. Benn, will you turn up when you're 17 1/2? We'll give you free food, free clothes, free training, free accommodation, and two shillings, ten pence a day to just kill Germans.' People said, well, if you can have full employment to kill people, why in God's name couldn't you have full employment and good schools, good hospitals, good houses?

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    Tony Benn

    All war represents a failure of diplomacy.

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    Tony Benn

    Although socialism is widely held by the establishment to be outdated, the things that are most popular in British society today are little pockets of socialism, where areas of life have been excluded from the crude operation of market forces and are protected for the benefit of the community

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    Tony Benn

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

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    Tony Benn

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

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    Tony Benn

    Anyone from abroad will tell you that it is the class system that really lies at the root of our problems, economic and industrial. The House of Lords symbolises that.

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    Tony Benn

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

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    Tony Benn

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

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    Tony Benn

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

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    Tony Benn

    Bush is actually encouraging the spread of nuclear weapons because the one thing I do know is if Iran did have nuclear weapons they wouldn't be threatening them.

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    Tony Benn

    Cabinet members are soon overwhelmed by the insistent demands of running their departments. On the whole, a period in high office consumers intellectual capital; it does not create it....The less ministers know at the outset, the more dependent they are on the only sources of available knowledge; the permanent officials.

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    Tony Benn

    Change always follows the same pattern. If you come up with something new they try and put you off.If that doesn't work they call you stark raving bonkers.If that doesn't work they lock you up like the suffragettes.Then, after a pause, the change happensand you can't find anyone that doesn't claim to have been fighting for it with you.

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    Tony Benn

    Change from below, the formulation of demands from the populace to end unacceptable injustice, supported by direct action, has played a far larger part in shaping British democracy than most constitutional lawyers, political commentators, historians or statesmen have ever cared to admit. Direct action in a democratic society is fundamentally an educational exercise.

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    Tony Benn

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

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    Tony Benn

    Christians believe that God created man, and humanists believe that man invented God. But whichever way you look at it, we're brothers and sisters. Either we're brothers and sisters because we're children of God, or because we've banded together to invent God. So the ethics of the humanist and the ethics of some Christians are very similar. And we don't want to create divisions between humanists and Liberation Theologians, any more than we want between the New Worker and the Trots. It's not helpful.

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    Tony Benn

    Democracy is not just voting every 5 years and watching 'Big Brother' in between and wondering why nothing happens. Democracy is what we do and say where we live and work

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    Tony Benn

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

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    Tony Benn

    Experience is the only real teacher and if you keep a diary you get three bites at educating yourself - when it happens, when you write it down, and when you reread it and realise you were wrong. Making mistakes is part of life. The only things I would feel ashamed of would be if I had said things I hadn't believed in order to get on. Some politicians do do that.

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    Tony Benn

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

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    Tony Benn

    Having served in eleven Parliaments, it would be difficult to describe this as a maiden speech. It would be like Elizabeth Taylor appearing at her next wedding in a white gown.

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    Tony Benn

    Hope is the fuel of progress and fear is the prison in which you put yourself.

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    Tony Benn

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

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    Tony Benn

    I am a public library

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    Tony Benn

    I am not a reluctant peer but a persistent commoner

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    Tony Benn

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

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    Tony Benn

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

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    Tony Benn

    I did publish a Bill once called "Common Sense" with a new constitution for Europe called the "Commonwealth of Europe," setting it all out - what it's rights were, how it would work. And I think that that will be where is has to go. But I'm not anti-European, I'm just a democrat, a very committed democrat. I don't see why the hell I should obey a law made by someone I didn't elect and can't remove.

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    Tony Benn

    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

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    Tony Benn

    I do not share the general view that market forces are the basis of personal liberty.

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    Tony Benn

    I don't believe in the hereditary principle in the House of Lords. Imagine going to the dentist, sitting in the chair and he says, 'I'm not a dentist myself, but my father was a dentist and his father before him. Now, open wide!

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    Tony Benn

    I don't want to commit myself in advocating a definite republican constitution which will get bogged down with the question of who would elect the President and when.

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    Tony Benn

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

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    Tony Benn

    If democracy is destroyed in Britain, it will be not the communists, Trotskyists or subversives but this House which threw it away. The rights that are entrusted to us are not for us to give away. Even if I agree with everything that is proposed, I cannot hand away powers lent to me for five years by the people of Chesterfield. I just could not do it. It would be theft of public rights.

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    Tony Benn

    If democracy is ever to be threatened, it will not be by revolutionary groups burning government offices and occupying the broadcasting and newspaper offices of the world. It will come from disenchantment, cynicism and despair caused by the realisation that the New World Order means we are all to be managed and not represented.

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    Tony Benn

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

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    Tony Benn

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

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    Tony Benn

    If I were the American President I would rather be popular than have the power the destroy the world because however many puppets they have all over the Middle East - Saudi Arabia, Egypt and so on - they haven't got support from the people.

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    Tony Benn

    If one meets a powerful person - Adolf Hitler, Joe Stalin or Bill Gates - ask them five questions: '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?' If you cannot get rid of the people who govern you, you do not live in a democratic system.

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    Tony Benn

    If one meets a powerful person--Adolf Hitler, Joe Stalin or Bill Gates--ask them five questions: "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?

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    Tony Benn

    If the Queen can reject the advice of a minister on a little thing like a postage stamp, what would happen if she rejected the advice of the Prime Minister on a major matter? If the Crown personally can reject advice, then, of course, the whole democratic facade turns out to be false

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    Tony Benn

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

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    Tony Benn

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

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    Tony Benn

    If you read Mein Kampf, Hitler's book, which I have outside, I bought it when I was eleven, Hitler said, "democracy inevitably leads to Marxism" - now you work that one out. It's so interesting that when the poor have the vote they will use it to remove the privileges of the rich.

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    Tony Benn

    If you're going to make sense of politics you have to have a historical perspective and also recognise that you have to work with people you don't agree with.

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    Tony Benn

    I have had the advantage of a radical Christian upbringing

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    Tony Benn

    I'm a democrat - I don't support Bush, I don't support Blair, I don't support Bin Laden.

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    Tony Benn

    I met somebody once who said, "I'm a lapsed-atheist" by what he meant was, "I don't believe in God but the older I get the more I realise there is a spirituality in everybody that has to be cherished and nourished." That made a lot of sense to me.

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    Tony Benn

    I'm interested in language. We used to call it the War Office. Then it became the Ministry of Defence. We used to talk about the hydrogen bomb, now we talk about a deterrent. And the language is very cleverly constructed to give the impression that it's not what it is.

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    Tony Benn

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