Top 346 Quotes & Sayings by Tony Blair - Page 2

I mean, I went to a church school when I was younger and imbibed a certain amount of religion then but it was really in university that I got interested in religion and politics at the same time. I don't think as if it were one moment of conversion but my spiritual journey really began then.

In government you carry each hope; each disillusion. And in politics it's always about the next challenge.

You know, the media and politicians are always gonna be in a bit of tension with one another and probably most of the time that's healthy and indeed even creative. But it's where - it's really when news organisations are used as kind of instruments of politics that it gets tricky.

I happen to think it's the politics that makes you electable, but the reason for that is politicians sometimes talk about electability as if it's just a matter of conning the public. Actually, it's a matter of persuading the public, and in my experience, usually, the public gets it right.

My office is on Twitter. I don't tweet myself - at least, not intentionally, but I probably should do.

I learnt a lot in government, and I've learnt a lot since leaving government. The kind of journey of being in government is that you start at your most popular and least capable, and you end at your most capable and least popular.

My faith foundation works to bring about a greater respect and understanding between different faiths. We basically work with six popular religions in the world which are the three Abrahamic religions, Hinduism and Buddhism and Sikhism.

Our new world rests on order. The danger is disorder. And in today's world, it can now spread like contagion.

So actually I only got a mobile phone the day after I left being Prime Minister.

If we want to contrast what we have done in the past few years on delivery with what the right hon. and learned Gentleman delivered, let us remember the interest rates at 10 per cent. to 15 per cent., the 1.5 million fewer people in work, the boom and the bust and the borrowing at 8 per cent.

No one is to blame for the breakdown in trust between politics, media and the public.

As I have said throughout, I have no doubt that they will find the clearest possible evidence of Saddam's weapons of mass destruction.

Moreover, for decades we have been prone to far greater swings in the economic cycle than our continental counterparts. It has been boom and bust....Under this Government, there is an entirely new framework for economic management in place.

The big issue of our time is trying to deal with extremism based on a perversion of religion and how you get peaceful coexistence between people of different faiths and cultures.

At the heart of my politics has always been the value of community, the belief that we are not merely individuals struggling in isolation from each other, but members of a community who depend on each other, who benefit from each other's help, who owe obligations to each other. From that everything stems: solidarity, social justice, equality, freedom.

I can't stand politicians who wear God on their sleeves.

The British are special. The world knows it. In our innermost thoughts we know it. This is the greatest nation on earth.

What we also know is we haven't found them [weapons of mass destruction] in Iraq - now let the survey group complete its work and give us the report... They will not report that there was no threat from Saddam, I don't believe.

If what the science tells us about climate change is correct, then unabated it will result in catastrophic consequences for our world.

I can stand here today, leader of the Labour Party, Prime Minister, and say to the British people: you have never had it so ... prudent.

September 11 was, and remains, above all an immense human tragedy. But September 11 also posed a momentous and deliberate challenge not just to America but to the world at large. The target of the terrorists was not only New York and Washington but the very values of freedom, tolerance and decency which underpin our way of life.

This mass terrorism is the new evil in our world today. It is perpetrated by fanatics who are utterly indifferent to the sanctity of human life, and we the democracies of this world are going to have to come together and fight it together.

The emphasis placed by more and more companies on corporate social responsibility, symbolises the recognition that prosperity is best achieved in an inclusive society.

One of the paradoxes of globalization is that, in the developing world, we've seen massive reductions in property.

We have a situation where we are rich really as a world overall, and yet we have the capacity to destroy ourselves, either through nuclear weapons or through environmental degradation, and we allow the life chances of hundreds of millions of people to be destroyed because we haven't found the will to tackle it

There can be no freedom for Africa without justice; and no justice without declaring war on Africa's poverty, disease and famine with as much vehemence as we remove the tyrant and the terrorist.

The only society that works today is also one founded on mutual respect, on a recognition that we have a responsibility collectively and individually, to help each other on the basis of each other's equal worth. A selfish society is a contradiction in terms.

When my parents were growing up the world's population was under three billion. During my children's lifetime, it is likely to exceed nine billion. You don't need to be an expert to realise that sustainable development is going to become the greatest challenge we face this century

We know the problems, and we know the solution: sustainable development. The issue is the political will.

I think Hillary Clinton is an outstandingly capable and decent person.

Politics is about listening and it's about leading.

We in a sense went for the Bernie Sanders model OK? Now we're also in turmoil as a result of this result.

Immigration is good for a country. It brings fresh energy.

I had discovered long ago the first lesson of political courage: to think anew. I had then learned the second: to be prepared to lead and to decide. I was now studying the third: how to take the calculated risk. I was going to alienate some people, like it or not. The moment you decide, you divide.

Real progress cannot be measured by money alone. We must ensure that economic growth contributes to our quality of life, rather than degrading it

I also, as I think most people do, have a healthy instinct that if we upset the balance of nature, we are in all probability going to suffer a reaction. With world growth, and population as it is, this reaction must increase.

We are going to expand enormously -- our economy, our consumption, over the years to come ... But the consequences of that on emissions are going to be severe unless we change direction.

Terrorist threats are not happening just in this country, but in every European country and every country across the globe. As a result of that, we do sometimes have to take measures we would rather not take in order to give us the security we need.

The blunt truth about the politics of climate change is that no country will want to sacrifice its economy in order to meet this challenge.

Our tolerance is part of what makes Britain, Britain. Conform to it; or don't come here.

Self-interest and mutual interest are inextricably linked. National interests can best be advanced through collective action, ... Calculate not just the human misery of the poor themselves. Calculate our loss: The aid, the lost opportunity to trade, the short-term consequences of the multiple conflicts; the long-term consequences on the attitude to the wealthy world of injustice and abject deprivation amongst the poor.

I couldn't live with myself if I thought that these big strategic choices for my generation were there, and I wasn't even making them - or I was making them according to what was expedient rather than what I actually thought was right.

The first rule in politics is that there are no rules, at least not in the sense of inevitable defeats or inevitable victories. If you have the right policy and the right strategy, you always have a chance of winning. Without them, you can lose no matter how certain the victory seems.

I will do what it takes to help Ed Miliband win general election.

Global warming is too serious for the world any longer to ignore its danger or split into opposing factions on it.

I'm not asking you to agree with me, but at least open your mind.

My teachers used to call me a failure

I want to see a publicly-owned railway, publicly accountable.

If we don't act now, then we will go back to what has happened before and then of course the whole thing begins again and he carries on developing these weapons and these are dangerous weapons, particularly if they fall into the hands of terrorists who we know want to use these weapons if they can get them.

If we are going to carry on growing, and we will, because no country is going to forfeit its right to economic growth, we have to find a way of doing it sustainably.

Stirring is OK. It just depends what happens in the end.

If there are further steps to European integration, the people should have their say at a general election or in a referendum.

I'm the f***ing Prime Minister!

The problem with the old ideology was that it suppressed the individual by starting with society. But it is from a sense of individual duty that we connect the greater good and the interests of the community

Education, education, education

Most of the problems of government come from people being overwhelmed by the size and scale of what they have to do.

I want my son to grow up in a place where the people are more powerful than the government and not the other way around.

The socialism of centralised state control of industry and production, is dead. It misunderstood the nature and development of a modern market economy. It failed to recognise that the state and public sector can become a vested interest capable of oppression as much as the vested interests of wealth and capital. it was based on a false view of class that became too rigid to explain or illuminate the nature of class division today.

Of particular importance to us is the recognition... that what we want is a Europe of nations, not a federal super-state.

What we want to see is the development of human rights and greater democracy, not just because it is our system but because we think that's the best way that economic and political development go hand in hand.