David Miliband Quotes

#1. I abhor anything that constitutes torture. Water-boarding, it's perfectly clear to me it is torture. I never supported extraordinary rendition to torture, always said that Guantanamo should be closed. There is no clash of ideals and pragmatism there.

David Miliband

#2. And the truth is, those who are terrorists only have to succeed once, and those of us who are trying to build an inclusive society have to succeed every time.

David Miliband

#3. Consuming three planets' worth of resources when in fact we have one is the environmental equivalent of childhood obesity - eating until you make yourself sick

David Miliband

#4. Turning every business into an environmental industry will involve applying new principles ... first, we need to make more with less ... second, we need to design out waste ... third, we must begin to decarbonise our energy supply

David Miliband

#5. Economic dynamism can be combined with environmental and social responsibility. High financial returns can go hand in hand with respect for human rights, and the preservation of the planet's natural resources

David Miliband

#6. Essentially, by 2050 we need all activities outside agriculture to be near zero carbon emitting if we are to stop carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere growing

David Miliband

#7. I think the wonderment of seeing my two sons developing makes me incredibly optimistic about human potential. It makes you think: 'My goodness. It's a miracle that's going on here. What could the human race do together?'

David Miliband

#8. My advice is very simple: if you can win a small battle, it gives you confidence in the political process to take on bigger battles, and so it is very much a bottom-up grass-roots way of doing politics.

David Miliband

#9. John Major put the 'er' back into Conservative, David Cameron's put the 'Con' into Conservative - and Norman Lamont put the 'vat' into Conservative!

David Miliband

#10. I do not speak Hebrew, but I understand that it has no word for 'history.' The closest word for it is memory.

David Miliband

#11. The American idea that everyone graduates high school at 18 is a good one.

David Miliband

#12. In the end, human history is made up of all our decisions.

David Miliband

#13. My memories are of my dad taking me to football on Saturday mornings, and my mum taking me swimming. Those are the things I remember from my childhood, not sitting around the table debating capitalism and the profit squeeze.

David Miliband

#14. I don't think I've ever been accused of being faddish. I'm more Marks & Spencer than Ted Baker.

David Miliband

#15. I've learnt that, sometimes, how others see you is not the same as how you see yourself. I've learnt about how you can be multitasking - and sometimes other people see that you're multitasking. And that's not very nice for them.

David Miliband

#16. What is the big political issue for Britain at the moment? Without wishing to sound portentous, it is about whether we can build a social democratic settlement, whether we can lay the political and cultural foundations for the next several years.

David Miliband

#17. You have to believe that it's through politics that societies can lead social and economic and political change.

David Miliband

#18. If you decide to run for the leadership, you have to go through it with the people you love. But you also have to protect them and I am determined to protect my mum.

David Miliband

#19. The big risk to British lives in 2013 is in Afghanistan. Our troops, diplomats and aid workers have made a big contribution there. But while there is an end date for Western engagement, 2014, there isn't a proper end game.

David Miliband

#20. Today, the UK must be the pioneer of a new model of economic change, that integrates social and environmental consideration. This is not just a question of values and moral duty. It is about our economy's capacity to sustain itself

David Miliband

#21. We know there can be no justice in the Middle East without a Palestinian state. But there can be no security in the Middle East without a Palestinian state.

David Miliband

#22. In the future, every industry should be an environmental industry. In a world where energy and carbon emissions are constrained, every business must take resource productivity seriously

David Miliband

#23. Dangerous climate change ... It's important not to be alarmist but it is very important to be alarmed

David Miliband

#24. The 1970s - I was ten in 1975 - were a bad decade in all sorts of ways but the middle class had comfortable assumptions about the prospects for its children. The middle class was smaller then; it was a much less competitive Britain, less meritocratic.

David Miliband

#25. Good politics starts with empathy, proceeds to analysis, then sets out values and establishes the vision, before getting to the nitty-gritty of policy solutions.

David Miliband

#26. The real danger to Britain is a foreign policy that is isolationist in Europe and therefore weak in the rest of the world.

David Miliband

#27. Successful economies in the modern world are not sheepish about the power and responsibility of the state.

David Miliband

#28. The problems that the world faces - from nuclear proliferation to climate change - can't be tackled by the West alone. They need a coalition of not just West and East, but they need a coalition of Christian and Jew and Muslim.

David Miliband

#29. Today, Labour has a disruptive economic narrative - that Britain needs fundamental change in its market structure and culture to compete in the modern world.

David Miliband

#30. Foreign policy is inseparable from domestic policy now. Is terrorism foreign policy or domestic policy? It's both. It's the same with crime, with the economy, climate change.

David Miliband

#31. People feel politics isn't about their lives.

David Miliband

#32. The test of leadership for David Cameron was actually to bring the British Conservative Party back in to the mainstream.

David Miliband

#33. In Britain, the centrally prescribed welfare to work system short-changes the young unemployed. Transport, housing and education are over centralised.

David Miliband

#34. But for me, my personal relations, my personal family relations, are very important, and we've always tried to make sure that the public and the private are kept separate.

David Miliband

#35. The wedding ring on my left hand was bought by my grandfather, Samuel Miliband, in Brussels in 1920. I never knew him, as he died when I was one. But his ring was kept by my aunt until it was placed on my finger by my wife Louise 32 years later.

David Miliband

#36. One of the things about the modern world is that the public and the private - which is not the same as the public and the personal - but the public and the private ... it's very, very much harder than it used to be to have things that are private and things that are public.

David Miliband

#37. I mean, Britain is a country of successful Muslim businesspeople, teachers and educators, journalists. So, we have to say very strongly that the two million plus Muslims in Britain, the vast bulk of them make a huge contribution to our society, and they actually make it the vibrant society it is.

David Miliband

#38. History is information. Memory is part of your identity.

David Miliband

#39. I am the 'change Britain' candidate. We can only change Britain through a united Labour Party and I am the unity candidate. I have got support from the Left and the Right of the party.

David Miliband

#40. I was always brought up that if you can make a difference, you should, and if you don't it's a waste. So we'll see if I can make a difference.

David Miliband

#41. The window of opportunity to avoid dangerous climate change is closing more quickly than previously thought.

David Miliband

#42. People want more power over their own lives. That's not just true in Britain, it's true around the world.

David Miliband

#43. What's now urgently needed [to stop environmental disaster] is the international political commitment to take action to avoid dangerous climate change.

David Miliband

#44. The science is getting worse faster than the politics is getting better

David Miliband

#45. I can't admit to myself that the creation of a Palestinian state won't happen. What I know is that with each passing year it gets more and more difficult to happen, not least because there is more and more bloodshed, generation upon generation.

David Miliband

#46. The whole of government needs to contribute to the shared goal of restructuring the British economy. But that means taking on the myth that the Treasury either knows best or can run it all. It just doesn't.

David Miliband

#47. If you want to fight against a declining trend, you've got to have a much bigger bazooka.

David Miliband

#48. Israelis and Palestinians are suspicious of each other and of promises from outside. But the need for a negotiated solution between the parties should not stymie international clarity and consensus about the endgame in terms of borders and other issues.

David Miliband

#49. Crushing defeat for Great Britain #Euref. History will show no one won today.

David Miliband

#50. You know, you only get to live life once, so there are two things that that yields. One is that there's no point in crying over spilt milk, but secondly you hate wasting time, energy, and whatever talent you've got.

David Miliband

#51. Al Qaeda has no place in Pakistan. It's a threat to Pakistan. And there should be a convergence of interests between the Pakistani state and the West on security issues, but also on wider economic and social issues.

David Miliband

#52. Communism was meant to be an alternative religion.

David Miliband

#53. We are a European nation - must stay one.

David Miliband

#54. I've committed myself to serve my constituents in South Shields and I have committed myself to British politics.

David Miliband

#55. The biggest opportunity in 2013 is in Africa. It has seven out of the ten fastest-growing economies in the world. In Nigeria alone there are 100 million people with mobile phones. In total, 300 million Africans - five times the population of Britain - are in the middle class.

David Miliband

#56. The two biggest threats to international security in 2013 are Iran getting a nuclear weapon, and Iran being bombed to stop it getting a nuclear weapon. Both would precipitate a long and dangerous conflict in an already unstable Middle East. Both would be a disaster.

David Miliband

#57. My favourite poem is called 'Roots and Wings' - it's a very moving poem about how if you've got real roots you can fly.

David Miliband

#58. Everything about my politics has been about the future.

David Miliband

#59. I'm a great believer in the Arsene Wenger school of management - which is, you don't worry about the opposition, you just get your own act together

David Miliband

#60. We keep the terrorist threat to the United Kingdom under very careful scrutiny. We think it's right to keep the public informed about the general threat level.

David Miliband