Ken Livingstone Quotes
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There isn't much about my life that's been particularly conventional.
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When reporters say to me I'm only doing this because it's my job... that's the same abdication of moral responsibility at the thin end of the wedge that in its most extreme and horrific version ends up with others being prepared to stand as a concentration camp guard.
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Well, I mean, I'm very much a pragmatic person.
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I Kenneth Robert Livingstone, having been elected to the office of mayor of London, declare that I take that office upon myself, and will duly and faithfully fulfil the duties of it to the best of my judgement and ability.
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Everyone is bisexual. Almost everyone has the sexual potential for anything.
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I would like to sound like James Mason. I reckon if I'd had a better voice I could have been prime minister. It is the most irritating voice in public life.
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I was a weedy kid, not like one of those working-class men who can accommodate not being academically clever by physical strength and prowess.
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When you see someone trying to manoeuvre it round the school gates you have to think, you are a complete idiot.
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I came into politics because I wished to change things. You can't do that by lying to people; you have to educate, and persuade, and carry them with you - and it's often a long haul.
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All the politics of the post-war period was about the clash between the Soviet Union and America, and virtually all issues ended up being subordinated to that. Now, the question is, what is the most a socialist can achieve in a global economy?
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You lose power in Britain and you are just Joe Public again.
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Politics is not a healthy lifestyle.
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Some US journalist came up to me and said: 'How can you say this about President Bush?' Well, I think what I said then was quite mild. I actually think that Bush is the greatest threat to life on this planet that we've most probably ever seen. The policies he is initiating will doom us to extinction.
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The IMF and World Bank are still appalling, and now the World Trade Organisation too. All over the world people die unnecessarily because of the international financial system. Every year the international financial system kills more people than World War II. But at least Hitler was mad.
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I actually think the civil service, who are the malignancy at the heart of public life, have consciously prevented, talked ministers out of, made it difficult regulatory-wise, to allow more pressure on alternative energy sources to grow.
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The market is a brilliant system for the exchange of goods and services, but it doesn't protect the environment unless it's regulated, it doesn't train your workforce unless it's regulated, and it doesn't give you the long-term investment you want.
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The world is run by monsters and you have to deal with them. Some of them run countries, some of them run banks, some of them run news corporations.
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I can only admire people who I have never met and are dead - because you know so much about anyone who is alive.
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The press keep asking me, 'What was your biggest mistake?' But if I had made a big mistake, they'd all be writing about it, wouldn't they?
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Jewish voters are not one homogenous block.
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My only regret is the media's obsession with the past.
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I swim three times a week.
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Perhaps if they're not happy here they can go back to Iran and try their luck with ayatollahs, if they don't like the planning regime or my approach.
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The civil service are risk averse.