Tony Blair Quotes
- All Quotes
-
I have never pretended to be a great House of Commons man, but I pay the House the greatest compliment I can by saying that, from first to last, I never stopped fearing it.
-
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.
-
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.
-
If you don't see the Internet as an opportunity, it will become a threat. In two or three year's time, the Internet will become as commonplace in the office as the telephone.
-
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.
-
All new schools...should be models for sustainable development: showing every child in the classroom and the playground how smart building and energy use can help tackle global warming...Sustainable development will not just be a subject in the classroom: it will be in its bricks and mortar and the way the school uses and even generates its own power.
-
In government you carry each hope; each disillusion. And in politics it's always about the next challenge.
-
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.
-
My course has never been about triangulation, and neither, really, is Bill Clinton's. It's not - it's about applying your values to the future in a practical and unblinking way, and that is an ideological view that is every bit as strong as views from the left or from the right.
-
Because I happen to believe that the best policy solutions lie in the center ground, then I want to see, how does the center revitalize itself? How does it develop the policy agenda for the future? And how do we link up people who have the same basic ideas and attachments to the same basic values across the world?
-
My view always is that we should learn the lessons, both of the last sort of 50 years of policy-making and it is possible to get to a foreign policy that is engaged and active without going back to where we were in the post-9/11 world.
-
I didn't come into politics to change the Labour Party. I came into politics to change the country.
-
I cannot think of any circumstances in which a government can go to war without the support of parliament.
-
The British are special. The world knows it. In our innermost thoughts we know it. This is the greatest nation on earth.
-
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.
-
Enough of talking: It is time now to do.
-
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.
-
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.
-
Whatever the short term clashes between protecting the environment and eradicating poverty, medium term and long term it is clear. Unless we grow sustainably, at some point we face catastrophe
-
Society works by putting opportunity and responsibility together.
-
I abhor Saddam's regime, but the basis has to be disarmament.
-
There is no doubt that the time to act is now. It is now that timely action can avert disaster. It is now that with foresight and will such action can be taken without disturbing the essence of our way of life, by adjusting behaviour not altering it entirely.
-
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.
-
I can't stand politicians who wear God on their sleeves.