Best 83 quotes of Ken Livingstone on MyQuotes

All the politics of the post-war period was about the clash between the Soviet Union and America, and virtually all issues ended up being subordinated to that. Now, the question is, what is the most a socialist can achieve in a global economy?

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

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

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

Every budget I have ever prepared has been balanced.

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

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.

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

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

I am not against Israel, I am against Zionists.

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

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

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

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

I employed my wife for three years to sit in the attic and type up my autobiography, 700 pages, organise everywhere I go. I'm paying the normal rate of tax on the money I take out for myself.

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

I feel a degree of regret that Marshall did not push on and say 'abolish the GLC' because I think it would have been a major saving and would have released massive resources for productive use.

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.

If I was courting the Muslim vote, I wouldn't have put establishing the partnership ceremony at the forefront of my first term, would I? I go all around London advocating lesbian and gay rights.

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

If Voting Changed Anything They'd Abolish It

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

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

I go all around London advocating lesbian and gay rights.

I grew up in a house with very few books.

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

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

I have no interest in managing my financial affairs.

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

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

I Kenneth Robert Livingstone, having been elected to the office of mayor of London, declare that I take that office upon myself, and will duly and faithfully fulfil the duties of it to the best of my judgement and ability.

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

I mean I get loads of money, all from different sources. You give it to your accountant. They manage it. But you pay corporation tax. If you're then taking it out and spending it on yourself, you have to pay more.

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

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.

I never came into life with any favours or privileges.

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

I swim three times a week.

I take a much more pragmatic view than many people on the Left about working with Neil Kinnock. Kinnock represents the best vehicle possible for achieving socialism now.

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

I think George Bush is the most corrupt American president since Harding in the Twenties. He is not the legitimate president. This really is a completely unsupportable government and I look forward to it being overthrown as much as I looked forward to Saddam Hussein being overthrown.

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

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

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.

It would actually be quite nice if the American ambassador in Britain could pay the [congestion] charge that everybody else is paying and not actually try and skive out of it like some chiselling little crook.

I undertake that, in the exercise of my functions of that office I will have regard to any guidance with respect to ethical standards issued by the secretary of state under Section 66 of the Greater London Authority Act 1999.

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

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