Top 98 Quotes & Sayings by Jess Phillips

I'm the kind of leader who would try to have honest and difficult conversations.

One of the things I want to achieve in the potentially short time I'm in Westminster is to stop people thinking we're all the same. Because while they believe that, the establishment stays in the same people's hands.

Because I sometimes shopped in Waitrose, I thought I was actually quite posh. I've realised that I'm basically a scullery maid. Even the middle-class people who I meet in parliament, people who live in London - which I think is remarkable because how can anybody afford to live there - seem much, much more middle class than me.

I'm stunned at the amount of young women who get in touch with me every single day, trying to become somebody like me. As a teenager, I would never have done that. And I was someone who was interested in politics. But I wouldn't have emailed the local MP.

I was never a ringleader, but I was willing, when asked questions, to give my opinion. And when you say things quite bluntly, it's very easy for people to hang their hats on that.

My family is just like most other families - we rise and fall on good and bad government policy. Politics affects us all.

I hate when people send me LinkedIn requests.

I was politically complacent during the Blair years. Things were good and people thought things would be good forever.

The trouble for lots of politicians is they worry so much about everybody liking every single thing that they do.

To be honest, I've always been forthright.

In every single place I have campaigned in and every single place I have lived, people want some fairly basic things. They want to believe that they are safe, they want to know that their children will be educated and that if they are ill, they will be made better.

Every time I speak up about anything to do with women or ethnic minorities, hundreds of messages pour in to attempt to silence or frighten me.

Every time I speak out about anything feminist I will be shot down by people calling me fat, calling me stupid. And it's all because I am speaking from a feminist perspective.

When you're left on the floor of a hospital gasping for breath, or you can't get your kid a school place, the simplest things are your idea of radical.

I was born in Birmingham and raised in Birmingham.

Any MP who deals with immigration a huge amount, which I do, is going to worry about giving powers to the executive to change immigration law without scrutiny.

The fact that I stick up for women doesn't mean that I think all men are rapists. But that's lost somewhere in translation. Obviously I don't think that. I married one! I gave birth to two of them.

There's not a single diet I haven't been on.

People just don't believe we'll deliver what we say we will. They don't believe we want to listen or to understand their lives. And they don't believe we are able to do much to make their lives better.

All my life I've been interested in politics. I went on the miners march when I was six months old. My parents are really political.

Fear and hatred can be the things that drive you. I don't always think of fear as a bad thing, it gives you fight-or-flight.

Anyone standing for leader of the Labour party has a responsibility to speak truth, because without that we will never win power.

My mum was always extremely political. I have fond memories of making signs as a child for the nuclear disarmament protests at Greenham Common, or helping her bake cakes for them.

I had pneumonia when I was 18 months old and I was given penicillin, which I was allergic to, and since then my teeth have been yellow.

I'm a believer in forgiveness. I have worked with people who have been in gangs and now dedicate their lives to helping inner city kids. I've run offender services with teachings of responsibility, empathy and understanding of the victims at their heart. I've seen people change.

I am Left-wing. I am a socialist. I believe in sharing wealth. There's no two ways about it.

I would do whatever I could to make Jeremy Corbyn more electable, but you've got to give me something to work with, mate.

My mum taught me the power of protest.

My childhood dream was to be prime minister.

Our challenge is to restore both trust in Labour as a party of government and trust in democracy as the best means of delivering what the public wants.

I do find it funny, actually, why I'm not more of a Corbyn fan. I am a classic Corbyn fan, really. Not so much on the foreign policy, but I'm leftwing, pro-immigration, pro-welfare spending, there's very little that we wouldn't agree on.

I am utterly ambitious. I'm ambitious for the sake of being so, too.

There's something wrong with the Labour party. There's something wrong with the fact that women never rise to the top.

I wanted to be an MP who was normal. I believe in politics, I'm a proud parliamentarian, and I want people to want parliamentarians again.

Growing up with my father was like growing up with Jeremy Corbyn. He still hasn't rejoined the party; it's not left wing enough for him.

Join Labour to help change Labour. Help those of us willing to ask the difficult questions by adding your voice to the debate that's coming.

The greatest lie that was ever told is that I'm some sort of rightwinger.

I will stand up for all of those who feel they can't stand up for themselves.

My favourite film is probably 'Star Wars'. I do love 'Starship Troopers', it is a great film but it's not a film I watch over and over again. Whereas 'Star Wars' I've watched over and over again all my life, and it's a film I can tolerate watching with my children.

We have got to be brave and bold and bring people with us, not try and look all ways. Trying to please everyone usually means we have pleased no one.

I am apoplectic that people no longer expect progress because for so long they have worn the clothes of decline.

Lisa Nandy is absolutely right that we need to devolve economic power away from Westminster and learn from what Labour councils around the country are doing.

We've all got to discover the courage to ask the difficult questions about the future of our party and the future of the working-class communities who need a Labour government.

The NHS was hard to deliver, so was the minimum wage. It's time now - we need to have a proper conversation about how much is the individual cost, how much is the burden that we're all going to share together, and how much are we going to put on older adults now versus a future system like national insurance.

Every day I receive messages that I'm not good enough, that I should lose my job.

If we reduce the minimum voting age to 16, as we should, then people could be auto-registered when they are issued with a national insurance card.

Ah, well, I do think the generation that came after me has changed. I think there is a growing sense that young women should like themselves a bit more.

I under no circumstances want to be seen as a victim. I have worked with victims of sexual violence and I don't have a candle to hold to the experiences of those victims.

I've never bent the knee to anyone in my life.

If you cut me I bleed Birmingham. Others would say it's being a woman, but coming from Birmingham is the single most important part of my identity. I'm not always sure I feel English or British, but I always feel like a Brummie.

As a woman, I don't trust Boris Johnson with my rights and that's largely because of the things that he has said and done in his political life.

Boris Johnson needs to be challenged, with passion, heart and precision.

I loathe and detest people who pretend they don't care what people think about them as if that is a virtue, when it is simply rude.

I enjoy taking people on on Twitter, because often I'm cleverer and funnier.

I've made a career out of being able to talk about difficult things, and that comes from growing up in an environment where nothing was embarrassing.

I think power will do anything to survive and one of its main techniques is the rule of exceptions. So it makes an exception out of people and we worship them, whether that's Nelson Mandela, Martin Luther King or Rosa Parks. These people become beatified beyond recognition.

I refuse to believe this rhetoric that the Labour party can't get under one big umbrella with a common enemy - sometimes a common enemy is an absolutely delightful unifier.

To liberate women and end violence is to break down the culture of power imbalance.

I am manic and that leads me to behave badly at times.

I like to go camping with my kids. I've got an amazing group of friends. Just like any 30-year-old woman I like to go out dancing, eating food, drinking with my mates, like any normal person.