QUOTES by Tony Benn
Find most favourite and famour Authors from A.A Milne to Zoe Kravitz.
If you want your debt lifted you've got to sell your school and your hospitals.
Quote by -Tony Benn
If I rescued a child from drowning, the press would no doubt headline the story: 'Benn grabs child
Quote by -Tony Benn
I'd rather die on my feet making a speech than die of Alzheimer's - and that's what I'm planning to do.
Quote by -Tony Benn
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.
Quote by -Tony Benn
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.
Quote by -Tony Benn
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.
Quote by -Tony Benn
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.
Quote by -Tony Benn
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.
Quote by -Tony Benn
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.
Quote by -Tony Benn
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.
Quote by -Tony Benn
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
Quote by -Tony Benn
I believe the more difficult the circumstances, the more people will be inclined to trust those in charge at the moment.
Quote by -Tony Benn
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.
Quote by -Tony Benn
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.
Quote by -Tony Benn
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.
Quote by -Tony Benn
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?
Quote by -Tony Benn
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.
Quote by -Tony Benn
The uncut diaries are 16 million words. It's very tiring to do your diary every night before you go to bed.
Quote by -Tony Benn
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.
Quote by -Tony Benn
I think there are two ways in which people are controlled. First of all frighten people and secondly, demoralise them.
Quote by -Tony Benn
The exhaustion of old age is something people who are younger don't fully appreciate.
Quote by -Tony Benn
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.
Quote by -Tony Benn
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.
Quote by -Tony Benn
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.
Quote by -Tony Benn
If you file your waste-paper basket for fifty years, you have a public library.
Quote by -Tony Benn
We are not just here to manage capitalism but to change society and to define its finer values.
Quote by -Tony Benn
A faith is something you die for, a doctrine is something you kill for. There is all the difference in the world.
Quote by -Tony Benn
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.
Quote by -Tony Benn
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.
Quote by -Tony Benn
I am on the right wing of the middle of the road and with a strong radical bias.
Quote by -Tony Benn
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.
Quote by -Tony Benn
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.
Quote by -Tony Benn