Top 346 Quotes & Sayings by Tony Blair - Page 4

The first big choice: a government with the strength to deliver stability, or a government that takes the country back to boom and bust.

I actually did trouble to read Marx first hand. I found it illuminating in so many ways; in particular, my perception of the relationship between people and the society in which they live was irreversibly altered.

I think the people like myself who are in the center ground of politics and who think that center left and center right can cooperate and work together. Who don't like this sort of insurgent populism because we think it's not really going to deliver for the people, I think there's a big responsibility on us in the center to get our act together. And to work out radical but serious solutions to the problems people face.

It [the intelligence service] concludes that Iraq has chemical and biological weapons, that Saddam has continued to produce them, that he has existing and active military plans for the use of chemical and biological weapons, which could be activated within 45 minutes, including against his own Shia population; and that he is actively trying to acquire nuclear weapons capability.

Society works by putting opportunity and responsibility together.

I shall not rest until, once again, the destinies of our people and our party are joined together again in victory at the next general election Labour in its rightful place in government again.

As the world transforms, moves closer together, jobs are displaced, and the world of work completely changes the way we live, the way we think. As that revolution goes on around us, it is going to pose political challenges of which immigration is one very obvious one, which are going to be extremely difficult to deal with. But it's like free trade. You know, in the end, if we go protectionist, we'll make a mistake.

I hope that people know me well enough and realise that I would never do anything to harm the country or anything improper. I never have. I think most people who have dealt with me think I am a pretty straight sort of a guy.

I think the single most important political distinction today is actually between open-minded versus closed-minded, and that's why I think this crosses the boundaries of traditional - center-right and center-left have much more in common with each other right now than the right does with the center-right, and the left does with the center-left.

All the way through, we have been willing to take risks, provided at the end of it we can get a decent lasting settlement in Northern Ireland

I think what happened with 9/11 is that people sort of felt that it came from nowhere. Whereas I think now we understand the roots are very deep. I say it's like revolutionary Communism, something that is going to have to be knocked out over a very long period of time. This strain of extremism continues to be very strong, whether it's in Afghanistan, or Somalia or Yemen, or any of these places.

How do we deal with not just the acts of violence, but the extremist ideology that lies behind them? Because though the numbers of fanatics that go and join and kill for a group like ISIS are measured in tens of thousands, those that support the wider ideology, I'm afraid, you measure in tens of millions or more.

I do not want to end up with an American style of politics, with us going out there beating our chest about our faith. Politics and religion - it is not that they do not have a lot in common, but if [religion] ends up being used in the political process, I think that is a bit unhealthy.

There are people who are anxious about immigration for reasons that are perfectly sensible. They think it's uncontrolled. They think it's, therefore, arbitrary in its consequences, and there are some communities affected much more deeply than others.

I think it's important for people like me to evaluate and reevaluate.

Our ultimate weapon is not our guns but our beliefs ... Ours are not Western values. They are the universal values of the human spirit and anywhere, any time, 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. The spread of freedom is the best security for the free. It is our last line of defence and our first line of attack.

One thing I'm not sure of - and it's a very open question - is whether the type of politics that I represent really has had its day or not. Now I obviously believe passionately it hasn't, that it's still the answer and not the problem, and, you know, the evidence points both ways.

I see the Koran very much as an outsider. It stands in the great prophetic tradition of trying to return people to the basic principles of spirituality. Taken for its time, it was an extraordinarily progressive declaration of principle. It is also extraordinary for a Christian to read: for example, there are more references to Mary than in the Gospels. The tragedy is that it has been so warped and misapplied.

The view we took at the time and we take it now is that the war was justified legally because he [Saddam Hussein] remained in breach of UN resolutions.

We know British Muslims, in general, abhor the actions of the extremists.

I think crime is a huge issue for people. If you were living in the poorest state, and you've got drug dealers at the end of the street, and your life's in misery, and you're afraid of your kids going out the door. I mean, the job of progressive politicians is to do something about that.

The appalling details of the campaign of intimidation - which include grave-robbing - show the depths to which the animal extremists are prepared to stoop.

Can we be sure that terrorism and WMD will join together? If we are wrong, we will have destroyed a threat that, at its least is responsible for inhuman carnage and suffering. That is something I am confident history will forgive. But if our critics are wrong and we do not act, then we will have hesitated in face of this menace, when we should have given leadership. That is something history will not forgive.

I think most people who have dealt with me think I'm a pretty straight sort of guy, and I am.

I'm not prepared to have someone tell me there is only one view of what Europe is. Europe isn't owned by any of them, Europe is owned by all of us.

The world is a better place with Saddam in prison not in power.

Actually the royal family were very gracious and good to me. But I also found that the British establishment were never quite sure what to make of me. I was a Labour figure, but I'd come from a very middle-class background. In one sense I offended both traditional right and traditional left. But I thought that was no bad thing.

Examine the legacy that we inherited and what we did. We had boom-and-bust economics and a doubled national debt.

One of the things that I've been doing over the past few years is reevaluating my own powers of political analysis.

The 21st century will not be about the battle between capitalism and socialism but between the forces of progress and the forces of conservatism.

The free enterprise system has not failed; the financial system has failed.

I think, there is a possibility - I would say it's more than that - that we will come to a view of foreign policy going forward that learns from the past but doesn't get captured by it.

There are unquestionably links between al-Qaida and Iraq.

We expected, I expected to find actual usable, chemical or biological weapons after we entered Iraq.

People divide into groups where they talk to each other, but don't talk across the divide. And yet most of the challenges we face in the world today are challenges that are to do with trade, with technology, with how you make sure that people are properly educated, reform your health care system.

Terrorism brings the reprisal; the reprisal brings the additional hatred; the additional hatred breeds the additional terrorism, and so on.

We fall for... the theories of betrayal very easily, and one of the things that's always depressed me about the left, ever since I started in politics, is their ability to imbibe the propaganda of the right and regurgitate it to the left.

I think all of our experience with Iraqi President Saddam Hussein teaches us that diplomacy has very little chance of working unless it is clear to him that if diplomacy does not work, that the threatened reality of force is there.

Our party: New Labour. Our mission: new Britain. New Labour new Britain.

The intelligence is clear: (Saddam) continues to believe his WMD programme is essential both for internal repression and for external aggression.

Deportation is a decision taken by the home secretary under statute, The new grounds will include fostering hatred, advocating violence to further a person's beliefs, or justifying or validating such violence.

I abhor Saddam's regime, but the basis has to be disarmament.

I haven't got the time to sit here arguing with someone whose idea of a coherent foreign policy is what comes up in Google when you type in peace!

There has to be certainty and there has to be clarity. There can't be ambiguity, .. This has to be certain, clear in all respects from all the parties so nobody is in any doubt about what the future holds.

One thing, change, is what everyone says. The question is, what type of change? What's the right change to produce a different outcome for the people left behind by globalization?

Nothing is more important to England's arrangements for the World Cup than the state of David Beckham's foot.

Some may belittle politics, but we know - who are engaged in it - that it is where people stand tall. And, although I know it has its many harsh contentions, it is still the arena that sets the heart beating a little faster. And if it is, on occasions, the place of low skulduggery, it is more often the place for the pursuit of noble causes.

Our determination to defend our values and way of life is greater than their (terrorists) determination to cause death and destruction to innocent people in a desire to impose extremism upon the world.

There will be no peace in our world without an understanding of the place of religion within it.

...we must support and protect individuals and companies engaged in life saving medical research

If you've got communities that feel they've been left behind, if you've got - as you do in Britain at the moment, you have communities that believe they're being changed by immigration, that they don't have job opportunities, and that they're disregarded and that they don't - they've got no stake in a future which embraces globalization, you've got to address that issue.

Your loss we count as our loss. Your struggle we take as our struggle.

Now you may do it badly, you may do it well, some people like you, some people hate you, all the rest of it - but you have got a real motivating life purpose. [on being Prime Minister

We've seen the reality of Saddam's regime: his thugs prepared to kill their own people, the parading of prisoners of war and now the release of those pictures of executed British soldiers.

What I don't know is whether there is a way politically that you can beat away these, some of these populist movements because in the end I don't think they really do provide answers. They ride the anger. But they don't really have the answers. Or whether this is an experiment we're just going to have to go through first.

What is true about (ex-Iraq Survey Group head) David Kay's evidence, and this is something I have to accept, and is one of the reasons why I think we now need a new inquiry - it is true David Kay is saying we have not found large stockpiles of actual weapons.

My view is that we're entering into a situation of enormous instability, insecurity, fragility.

If people in the end think that you can't do something in a way which is acceptable then it won't fly. The only way you get anything like this done is if people think, 'I understand why it is being done.'

Our task is not to fight old battles, but to show that there is a third way, a way of marrying together an open competitive society and successful economy with a just and decent society.

Fanaticism is not a state of religion but a state of mind.