Tony Blair Quotes
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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.
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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.
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King Fahd was a man of great vision and leadership who inspired his countrymen for a quarter of a century as king. He led Saudi Arabia through a period of unparalleled progress and development.
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The evidence about Saddam having actual biological and chemical weapons, as opposed to the capability to develop them, has turned out to be wrong. I acknowledge that and accept it. I simply point out, such evidence was agreed by the whole international community, not least because Saddam had used such weapons against his own people and neighbouring countries.
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The kaleidoscope has been shaken. The pieces are in flux. Soon they will settle again. Before they do, let us re-order this world around us.
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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.
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I do believe that if you reach a just and fair settlement between the Israelis and the Palestinians it will have a massive influence on countering extremism. Which is not to say that the Israel-Palestinian situation is the source of the problem, but it is very potent fuel.
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If there is one thing Britain should learn from the last 50 years, it is this: Europe can only get more important for us.
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Values unrelated to modern reality are not just electorally hopeless, the values themselves become devalued. They have no purchase on the real world.
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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.
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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.
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Sometimes people say to me, 'Well, what was the difference between Kosovo, which was a successful intervention, and Iraq and Afghanistan that have been so difficult?' And the answer is perfectly simple. In Kosovo, you have, after the removal of the loss of its regime, you had a process of political and economic reconstruction that took its part without the intervention of terrorism. If you had the intervention of terrorism, by the way, it would have been extremely difficult there - but we didn't.
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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
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We have taken a situation in the U.K. because of concerns, for example, over immigration and other things, so Britain now is on a path out of Europe.
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Ah yes, liberal democrats unified as ever in opportunism and in error.
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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.'
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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.
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One of the paradoxes of globalization is that, in the developing world, we've seen massive reductions in property.
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The Iraq Survey Group has already found massive evidence of a huge system of clandestine laboratories.
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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.
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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
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I do not seek unpopularity as a badge of honour, but sometimes it is the price of leadership and the cost of conviction.
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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.
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Climate change is the world's greatest environmental challenge. It is now plain that the emission of greenhouse gases, associated with industrialization and economic growth...is causing global warming at a rate that is unsustainable.