There is no moral difference between a Stealth bomber and a suicide bomber. They both kill innocent people for political reasons.

Most things in life are moments of pleasure and a lifetime of embarrassment; photography is a moment of embarrassment and a lifetime of pleasure.

Britain today is suffering from galloping obsolescence.

Making mistakes is part of life. The only things I would feel ashamed of would be if I had said things I hadn't believed in order to get on. Some politicians do do that.

My filing system is messy but orderly.

At the end of my life, I was told to vote for it for pensioners; I' m not in favour of means tests for pensioners or anybody.

All war represents a failure of diplomacy.

I am on the right wing of the middle of the road and with a strong radical bias.

It's the same each time with progress. First they ignore you, then they say you're mad, then dangerous, then there's a pause and then you can't find anyone who disagrees with you.

Broadcasting is really too important to be left to the broadcasters.

Normally, people give up parliament because they want to do more business or spend more time with family. My wife said 'why don't you say you're giving up to devote more time to politics?'. And it is what I have done.

A faith is something you die for, a doctrine is something you kill for. There is all the difference in the world.

We are not just here to manage capitalism but to change society and to define its finer values.

The House of Lords is the British Outer Mongolia for retired politicians.

If you file your waste-paper basket for fifty years, you have a public library.

My day rotates around my family. I am very lucky.

I can't go to bed if I haven't done my diary. I always record them just as I've always recorded all my interviews and speeches.

Someone comes every morning at nine o'clock to see if I am still alive. I do get lonely, yes, but I have the children who come and see me. I see all my children every week, and there are the grandchildren, too.

I'm not frightened about death. I don't know why, but I just feel that at a certain moment your switch is switched off, and that's it. And you can't do anything about it.

The exhaustion of old age is something people who are younger don't fully appreciate.

I think there are two ways in which people are controlled. First of all frighten people and secondly, demoralise them.

Age does take it out of you, and I haven't the energy I had before. Sometimes I have breakfast and sit in this chair, and I wake up and it is lunchtime. In the past, the idea of sleeping through a morning would have horrified me, but you have to accept the limitations that old age imposes on you.

The uncut diaries are 16 million words. It's very tiring to do your diary every night before you go to bed.

I've had a very full life, and I've enjoyed it very much. I've learned a great deal and feel indebted to all the people who have worked so hard.

Five questions for politicians: 1. What power have you got? 2. Where did you get it from? 3. In whose interest do you exercise it? 4. To whom are you accountable? 5. How can we get rid of you?

I see myself as an old man and an unqualified teacher to the nation. I think being a teacher is probably the most important thing you can be in politics.

I've got four lovely children, ten lovely grandchildren, and I left parliament to devote more time to politics, and I think that what is really going on in Britain is a growing sense of alienation. People don't feel anyone listens to them.

An educated, healthy and confident nation is harder to govern.

I've been a member of the Labour Party sixty five years, and I remain in it, but I think it's all about campaigning for justice and peace, and if you do that, you get a lot of support.

I believe the more difficult the circumstances, the more people will be inclined to trust those in charge at the moment.

If we can find the money to kill people, we can find the money to help people.

I've made every mistake - but mistakes are how you learn.

What power have you got? Where did you get it from? In whose interests do you exercise it? To whom are you accountable? And how can we get rid of you

The Marxist analysis has got nothing to do with what happened in Stalin's Russia: it's like blaming Jesus Christ for the Inquisition in Spain.

The nature of the economic system should be a matter for public choice, and free market capitalism should not be accepted without any discussion of the rich variety of alternatives ... Unlike civil laws, economic laws are imposed on people with all the authority of immutable laws of nature. But the economy is created by people, supported by government intervention, regulation, statute and subsidy, and implemented in such a way that it gives substantial wealth and power to a privileged few, while the majority face a life of relentless work, stress and periodic financial insecurity.

You have to try to build support around causes. It is uniting to campaign on a single issue, and it is never just a single issue; it's always more than that.

If democracy is ever to be threatened, it will not be by revolutionary groups burning government offices and occupying the broadcasting and newspaper offices of the world. It will come from disenchantment, cynicism and despair caused by the realisation that the New World Order means we are all to be managed and not represented.

There's people on the left who say, the ballot box is a waste of time. Forget them. When Mandela voted for the first time at the age of 76 there was a lot of grown men, including me, wept buckets. That was what it was about. It doesn't solve things, but it gives you the mechanism to hold to account the people with power.

I think if you do have democracy it would transform the world because if the millions of people who die live on a dollar a day, had the vote, they would redistribute the wealth of the world, and the people at the top are not prepared to see that happen.

If democracy is destroyed in Britain it will be not the communists, Trotskyists or subversives but this House which threw it away. The rights that are entrusted to us are not for us to give away. Even if I agree with everything that is proposed, I cannot hand away powers lent to me for five years by the people of Chesterfield. I just could not do it. It would be theft of public rights.

Making mistakes is how you learn.

I'd rather die on my feet making a speech than die of Alzheimer's - and that's what I'm planning to do.

When I think of Cool Britannia I think of old people dying of hypothermia.

If I rescued a child from drowning, the press would no doubt headline the story: 'Benn grabs child

If you want your debt lifted you've got to sell your school and your hospitals.

My alternative to American superpower is the UN and I might add when China becomes the worlds greatest superpower you will need it too.

When you think of the number of men in the world who hate each other, why, when two men love each other, does the church split?

Middle class Labour leaders are recaptured by the establishment when they die.

I really think in the Commonwealth of Europe you should have Russia. I listed a hundred countries that would be in it and it would then be a really European United Nations.

The crisis that we inherit when we come to power will be the occasion for fundamental change and not the excuse for postponing it