David Blunkett Quotes
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I should have been a Trappist monk.
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For six and a half years, I had responsibility for leading the Labour party policy on education and delivering on our promise of improved opportunities for all our children.
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I am not a parliamentarian. I am a politician. Some MPs leave and are itching to get back. I don't feel that. This is just a work environment.
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I have built my reputation on honesty, I have sometimes been too honest.
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I'm as keen as the next person to preserve the right to free speech.
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If surveillance infiltrates our homes and personal relationships, that is a gross breach of our human and civil rights.
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Being home secretary involves having to face some of the worst of human behaviour and challenges of modern society.
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Politics is only worthwhile if you are doing what you believe, regardless of the slings and arrows.
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To punish MPs because of the distance they live from London - those with fast train journeys quite close to London as well as those at some distance from both the capital or an appropriate airport - is perverse, but also dangerous to democracy.
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Parents don't believe that lifting life-chances in one school means reducing them in another.
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In Sheffield, we need support from the community and for the community. We need integration with no loss of heritage, and a clear appreciation of what is and is not acceptable.
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The government must give men and women without power a real say over what happens to them, and the means of engaging in a participative, invigorated and living democracy.
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We need to build on what we know works - local oversight of schools to keep a check on performance, timely interventions in schools to support those at risk of failing, and partnerships between schools to help each one to improve.
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What is it that unites, on the left of British politics, George Orwell, Billy Bragg, Gordon Brown and myself? An understanding that identity and a sense of belonging need to be linked to our commitment to nationhood and a modern form of patriotism.
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History teaches us that, whatever we say, racists will always distort the words of mainstream politicians to make themselves sound more respectable.
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If you have a sense of irony or humour, you're usually cut down, as you're usually distorted or misinterpreted. So it does lead to us being slightly more dour and staid and predictable than would otherwise be the case, which I personally find quite frustrating - because if you don't laugh occasionally in my job, you cry most of the time.
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Children whose parents return to study do much better at school. Offenders who persist with studies are much less likely to reoffend. The national mental health strategy recognises the important role adult learning can play for people recovering from mental illness.
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Solidarity and interdependence, a sense of worth, a pride and hope in the future: these are positive gains for those who believe in progressive politics and the beneficial role of government, rather than a detriment.
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The Home Office culture was one of being just above the problem, of hovering just out of reach of knowing what was going on on the ground, whether it was crime or immigration.
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I don't think anyone can say I have said one thing in public and done another in private.
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We must look to an open, tolerant, inclusive England, which embraces the values of a Britain that still leads the world in terms of an open democracy, as well as an understanding of the needs for responsibilities and obligations to run alongside the affirmation of individual rights.
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By confirming the importance of politics and politicians in Britain, we can build from the bottom up and begin to reverse the worrying anti-politics trend, which will empower the elite technocrats and leave defenceless the man or woman in the street with a mere vote to cast.
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It would be dangerous territory if I wasn't practising what I preach which is to always accept responsibility, always accept the consequences of your actions.
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Being an MP is not a desperately hard life, like going down the pit or working in the steelworks - with which I am all too familiar, having been brought up in the city of Sheffield; and it certainly isn't badly paid compared with any of my constituents.