Top 100 Tony Benn Quotes
#1. 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
Tony Benn
#2. Clement Attlee, who looked like a sadistic sanitary inspector...
Tony Benn
#3. All war represents a failure of diplomacy.
Tony Benn
#4. Although socialism is widely held by the establishment to be outdated, the things that are most popular in British society today are little pockets of socialism, where areas of life have been excluded from the crude operation of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
Tony Benn
#5. The way a government treats refugees is very instructive ...
Tony Benn
#6. You have to try to build support around causes. It is uniting to campaign on a single issue, and it is never just a single issue; it's always more than that.
Tony Benn
#7. Britain's continuing membership of the Community would mean the end of Britain as a completely self-governing nation
Tony Benn
#8. 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
Tony Benn
#9. 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?
Tony Benn
#10. The uncut diaries are 16 million words. It's very tiring to do your diary every night before you go to bed.
Tony Benn
#11. I've been a member of the Labour Party sixty five years, and I remain in it, but I think it's all about campaigning for justice and peace, and if you do that, you get a lot of support.
Tony Benn
#12. Of course, Mao made his mistakes, because everybody does, but at least he allowed working people to smoke, even in the most trying circumstances, such as when, for one reason or another, they found themselves up before the firing squad.
Tony Benn
#13. If I rescued a child from drowning, the press would no doubt headline the story: 'Benn grabs child
Tony Benn
#14. Thanks to the tabloid campaigns I have many death threats and I was very pleased to get another one the other day.
Tony Benn
#15. 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.
Tony Benn
#16. 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.
Tony Benn
#17. 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.
Tony Benn
#18. I have had the advantage of a radical Christian upbringing
Tony Benn
#19. I now want more time to devote to politics and more freedom to do so.
Tony Benn
#20. I think there are two ways in which people are controlled. First of all frighten people and secondly, demoralise them.
Tony Benn
#21. He referred to Aneurin Bevan as 'Urinal' Bevan. As for the working classes, they couldn't write their own names in shit on a lavatory wall. I said I thought they could.
Tony Benn
#22. Undoubtedly the war with Iraq was a tragedy. I think it was also a crime.
Tony Benn
#23. 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.
Tony Benn
#24. 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
Tony Benn
#25. Middle class Labour leaders are recaptured by the establishment when they die.
Tony Benn
#26. If we can find the money to kill people, we can find the money to help people.
Tony Benn
#27. I believe the more difficult the circumstances, the more people will be inclined to trust those in charge at the moment.
Tony Benn
#28. It's the same each time with progress. First they ignore you, then they say you're mad, then dangerous, then there's a pause and then you can't find anyone who disagrees with you.
Tony Benn
#29. There is no moral difference between a Stealth bomber and a suicide bomber. They both kill innocent people for political reasons.
Tony Benn
#30. 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.
Tony Benn
#31. 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'.
Tony Benn
#32. But if there is hope, it lies in ordinary working people. When you put it in words it sounds reasonable: it is when you look at the human beings passing you on the pavement that it becomes an act of faith.
Tony Benn
#33. My day rotates around my family. I am very lucky.
Tony Benn
#34. The Civil Service is a bit like a rusty weathercock. It moves with opinion then it stays where it is until another wind moves it in a different direction
Tony Benn
#35. When we have a majority we will do it. I think the days of the Lords are quite genuinely numbered.
Tony Benn
#37. 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.
Tony Benn
#38. After fifteen years I have decided to resign my membership of the Dennis The Menace Fanclub. It
brought me no benefits worth mentioning.
Tony Benn
#39. It is not surprising that more and more people are coming to the conclusion that the ballot box is no longer an instrument that will secure political solutions ... They can see that the parliamentary democracy we boast of is becoming a sham.
Tony Benn
#40. We have been in recess since July, and during that time there have been a fuel crisis, a Danish no vote, the collapse of the Euro and a war in the middle east, but what is our business tomorrow? The Insolvency Bill [Lords]. It ought be called the Bankruptcy Bill [Commons], because we play no role.
Tony Benn
#41. I've made every mistake - but mistakes are how you learn.
Tony Benn
#42. [I am against] the Treaty of Rome which entrenches laissez faire as its philosophy and chooses bureaucracy as its administrative method.
Tony Benn
#43. Britain is the only colony in the British Empire and it is up to us now to liberate ourselves.
Tony Benn
#44. 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
Tony Benn
#45. People say that if we work for the Single European Act, women will get their rights, the water will be purer, and training will be better. That is rubbish. It is part of the attempt to consolidate the EEC.
Tony Benn
#46. The present combination of corporate or commercial control theoretically answerable to politically appointed Boards of Governors is not in any sense a democratic enough procedure to control the power the broadcasters have.
Tony Benn
#47. I did not enter the Labour Party 47 years ago to have our manifesto written by Dr Mori, Dr Gallup and Mr Harris
Tony Benn
#48. An MP is the only job where you have 70,000 employers, and only one employee.
Tony Benn
#49. Normally, people give up parliament because they want to do more business or spend more time with family. My wife said 'why don't you say you're giving up to devote more time to politics?'. And it is what I have done.
Tony Benn
#50. There is good and bad in all of us and the Church uses the idea of original sin to control us by saying that, if we do not obey the bishops, we will rot in Hell.
Tony Benn
#51. Age does take it out of you, and I haven't the energy I had before. Sometimes I have breakfast and sit in this chair, and I wake up and it is lunchtime. In the past, the idea of sleeping through a morning would have horrified me, but you have to accept the limitations that old age imposes on you.
Tony Benn
#52. I've got four lovely children, ten lovely grandchildren, and I left parliament to devote more time to politics, and I think that what is really going on in Britain is a growing sense of alienation. People don't feel anyone listens to them.
Tony Benn
#53. 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.
Tony Benn
#54. Britain today is suffering from galloping obsolescence.
Tony Benn
#55. Food movement organic food stores supplies health food products and facilitate with instrumental support in organic agriculture.
Tony Benn
#56. Marxism is now a world faith and must be allowed to enter into a continuous dialogue with other world faiths, including religious faiths
Tony Benn
#57. The crisis that we inherit when we come to power will be the occasion for fundamental change and not the excuse for postponing it
Tony Benn
#58. 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.
Tony Benn
#59. 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!
Tony Benn
#60. It is obvious I shall have to abandon my hopes of getting the Queen's head off the stamps.
Tony Benn
#61. The Prime Minister keeps me on around here because I make him look good.
Tony Benn
#62. 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
Tony Benn
#63. The one thing that is absolutely essential is that there shouldn't be any governmental control [of the media] directly or indirectly.
Tony Benn
#64. It is government policy to phase out subsidies to nationalised industries. In line with this, the government hopes that the coal industry will be able to operate without the need for assistance apart from social grants.
Tony Benn
#65. 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.
Tony Benn
#66. Someone comes every morning at nine o'clock to see if I am still alive. I do get lonely, yes, but I have the children who come and see me. I see all my children every week, and there are the grandchildren, too.
Tony Benn
#67. 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.
Tony Benn
#68. Choice depends on the freedom to choose and if you are shackled with debt you don't have the freedom to choose.
Tony Benn
#69. 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
Tony Benn
#70. The Establishment decided Thatcher's ideas were safer with a strong Blair government than with a weak Major government. We are given all these personalities to choose between to disguise the fact that the policies are the same.
Tony Benn
#71. 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.
Tony Benn
#72. 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
Tony Benn
#73. 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
Tony Benn
#74. I am on the right wing of the middle of the road and with a strong radical bias.
Tony Benn
#75. 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.
Tony Benn
#76. My filing system is messy but orderly.
Tony Benn
#78. The Internet is only the street corner meeting on a big scale
Tony Benn
#79. The exhaustion of old age is something people who are younger don't fully appreciate.
Tony Benn
#80. Broadcasting is really too important to be left to the broadcasters.
Tony Benn
#81. In the end, the tragedy of Harold Wilson was that you couldn't believe a word he said
Tony Benn
#82. The 1973 Labour Conference will have before it the most radical programme the Party has prepared since 1945.
Tony Benn
#83. 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
Tony Benn
#84. She believes in something. It is an old-fashioned idea
Tony Benn
#85. The thought that my mother would suddenly be a foreigner would upset me very much.
Tony Benn
#86. I see myself as an old man and an unqualified teacher to the nation. I think being a teacher is probably the most important thing you can be in politics.
Tony Benn
#87. If ever I left the House of Commons it would be because I wanted to spend more time on politics.
Tony Benn
#88. When I saw how the European Union was developing, it was very obvious what they had in mind was not democratic. In Britain, you vote for a government so the government has to listen to you, and if you don't like it you can change it.
Tony Benn
#89. I think very often the boat-rockers turn out to be the people who are building the craft
Tony Benn
#90. Howay yabastaaz I'll t-t-take the f-f-fuckin lorrayaz! Am fuckin al reet me man. Why aye!
Tony Benn
#91. I'd rather die on my feet making a speech than die of Alzheimer's - and that's what I'm planning to do.
Tony Benn
#92. A letter today from a Mrs Gladys Freeman, 45 Sebastopol Terrace, Blackpool. 'Sir, reference the room you had here during the party conference season. Well, we know what it is. We know who done it. But for heaven's sake tell us where it is!
Tony Benn
#93. An educated, healthy and confident nation is harder to govern.
Tony Benn
#94. The House of Lords is the British Outer Mongolia for retired politicians.
Tony Benn
#95. 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.
Tony Benn
#96. We are not just here to manage capitalism but to change society and to define its finer values.
Tony Benn
#97. Most things in life are moments of pleasure and a lifetime of embarrassment; photography is a moment of embarrassment and a lifetime of pleasure.
Tony Benn
#98. Some of the jam we thought was for tomorrow, we've already eaten
Tony Benn
#99. A faith is something you die for, a doctrine is something you kill for. There is all the difference in the world.
Tony Benn
#100. If you file your waste-paper basket for fifty years, you have a public library.
Tony Benn
Famous Authors
Popular Topics
Scroll to Top
