Top 346 Quotes & Sayings by Tony Blair
Explore popular quotes and sayings by an English statesman Tony Blair.
Last updated on September 14, 2024.
Once his wife goes to sleep it takes a minor nuclear explosion to wake her.
Mine is the first generation able to contemplate the possibility that we may live our entire lives without going to war or sending our children to war.
I didn't come into politics to change the Labour Party. I came into politics to change the country.
However much I dislike the idea of abortion, you should not criminalize a woman who, in very difficult circumstances, makes that choice.
It is not an arrogant government that chooses priorities, it's an irresponsible government that fails to choose.
The art of leadership is saying no, not saying yes. It is very easy to say yes.
Look, I am very competitive.
But in terms of how people live together, how we minimize the prospects of conflict and maximize the prospects of peace, the place of religion in our society today is essential.
Every so often, I feel I should graduate to classical music, properly. But the truth is, I'm more likely to listen to rock music.
When Europe and America stand together the world is a better and more prosperous place.
You only require two things in life: your sanity and your wife.
I feel like everyone else in this country today. I am utterly devastated.
I cannot think of any circumstances in which a government can go to war without the support of parliament.
The threat today is not that of the 1930s. It's not big powers going to war with each other. The ravages which fundamentalist political ideology inflicted on the 20th century are memories. The Cold war is over. Europe is at peace, if not always diplomatically.
Yes, I feel I've got something to say. If people want to listen, that's great, and if they don't, that's their choice.
My view is that you still, in order to win from the Labour perspective, have to have a strong alliance with business as well as the unions. You have got to be very much in the centre ground on things like public sector reform.
Those who wish to cause religious conflict are small in number but often manage to dominate the headline.
I would've loved to have been in a band, but sadly I just wasn't good enough.
The great advantage of the Lib Dems is precisely that no-one knows what they stand for.
I can only go one way. I've not got a reverse gear.
I have long believed this interdependence defines the new world we live in.
And just as the terrorist seeks to divide humanity in hate, so we have to unify it around an idea. And that idea is liberty.
The purpose of terrorism lies not just in the violent act itself. It is in producing terror. It sets out to inflame, to divide, to produce consequences which they then use to justify further terror.
Education is the best economic policy there is.
Be a doer and not a critic.
Anywhere, anytime ordinary people are given the chance to choose, the choice is the same: freedom, not tyranny; democracy, not dictatorship; the rule of law, not the rule of the secret police.
Choice dependent on wealth; those are the Tory words.
In no relationship at the top of any walk of life is it always easy, least of all in politics which matters so much and which is conducted in such a piercing spotlight.
Values unrelated to modern reality are not just electorally hopeless, the values themselves become devalued. They have no purchase on the real world.
Human progress has never been shaped by commentators, complainers or cynics.
I may find Saddam Hussein's regime abhorrent - any normal person would - but the survival of it is in his hands.
My dad was a militant atheist, or is a militant atheist. My mum was sort of bought up in a religious family because she was a Protestant from Ireland but wasn't especially religious.
There is no way you're going to have an event like 9/11 and expect things to remain the same. They killed 3,000 people in New York on that day, and if they could have they would've killed 300,000.
Labour is the party of law and order in Britain today. Tough on crime, tough on the causes of crime.
What people should understand is that I adore the Labour party.
The public think the politicians don't know or care about their lives; and the politicians feel misunderstood.
By nature, I am a unifier. I am a builder of consensus. I don't believe in sloppy compromise. But I do believe in bringing people together.
This is not a battle between the United States of America and terrorism, but between the free and democratic world and terrorism.
People know where I stand in the Labour party and what I believe in.
Conflict is not inevitable, but disarmament is... everyone now accepts that if there is a default by Saddam the international community must act to enforce its will.
But the world is ever more interdependent. Stock markets and economies rise and fall together. Confidence is the key to prosperity. Insecurity spreads like contagion. So people crave stability and order.
The spread of freedom is the best security for the free.
But I am an optimist about Britain; and the difference between an optimist and a pessimist is not that the optimist believes the world is wonderful and the pessimist believes it's beset by challenges; the difference is the pessimist believes we will be defeated by them; the optimist thinks the challenges can be overcome.
Power without principle is barren, but principle without power is futile. This is a party of government, and I will lead it as a party of government.
Whatever the dangers of the action we take, the dangers of inaction are far, far greater.
I think the journey for a politician goes from wanting to please all the people all the time, to a political leader that realises in the end his responsibility is to decide. And when he decides, he divides.
There is no meeting of minds, no point of understanding with such terror. Just a choice: Defeat it or be defeated by it. And defeat it we must.
In Downing Street they called me 'Boss'. Civil servants would always call me 'Prime Minister'.
If you are trying to take a difficult decision and you're weighing up the pros and cons, you have frank conversations. Everybody knows this in their walk of life.
I believe Mrs. Thatcher's emphasis on enterprise was right.
In retrospect, the Millennium marked only a moment in time. It was the events of September 11 that marked a turning point in history, where we confront the dangers of the future and assess the choices facing humankind.
The threat from Saddam Hussein and weapons of mass destruction - chemical, biological, potentially nuclear weapons capability - that threat is real.
You know, one of the things I've learnt since coming out of office is how much easier it is to give the advice than take the decision. I mean, you know, it's tough.
We, therefore, here in Britain stand shoulder to shoulder with our American friends in this hour of tragedy, and we, like them, will not rest until this evil is driven from our world.
I say to the Taliban: surrender the terrorists; or surrender power. It's your choice.
Sometimes it is better to lose and do the right thing than to win and do the wrong thing.
Leaders lead but in the end it's the people who deliver.
In April 1991, after the Gulf war, Iraq was given 15 days to provide a full and final declaration of all its WMD.
Genetic modification has many different areas, for example in medicine, and Britain is at the leading edge of this new technology. I don't know, but people tell me, it could indeed by the leading science of the 21st century. All I say to people is: 'Just keep an open mind and let us proceed according to genuine scientific evidence.'
But as I always say to people I'm essentially a public service person.
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