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

Through talk, we tamed kings, restrained tyrants, averted revolution

Bush is actually encouraging the spread of nuclear weapons because the one thing I do know is if Iran did have nuclear weapons they wouldn't be threatening them.

No medieval monarch in the whole of British history ever had such power as every modern British Prime Minister has in his or her hands. Nor does any American President have power approaching this

I think if journalists were responsible for international policy we'd have a nuclear war every week.

I think democracy is the most revolutionary thing in the world….because if you have power you use it to meet the needs of you and your community.

The peace movement here is the biggest thing in human history.

I try to operate on two unconnected levels. One on the practical level of action in which I am extremely cautious and conservative. The second is the realm of ideas where I try to be very free

I think very often the boat-rockers turn out to be the people who are building the craft

Hope is the fuel of progress and fear is the prison in which you put yourself.

I think to understand how the democratic process works is the most important thing, so people don't get frightened by it, and get put off, and give up.

The one thing that is absolutely essential is that there shouldn't be any governmental control [of the media] directly or indirectly.

It's lovely to be old. I've got age, experience and zero personal ambition. No body could corrupt me by anything: possibly a job in the government, a peerage, a quango, I don't want any of it.

The Labour party has never been a socialist party, although there have always been socialists in it - a bit like Christians in the Church of England.

We are paying a heavy political price for 20 years in which, as a party, we have played down our criticism of capitalism and soft-peddled our advocacy of socialism

Encouragement is the most important thing in the world for young people, rather than league tables, which demoralise everyone.

There may be a legal obligation to obey, but there will be no moral obligation to obey. When it comes to history, it will be the people who broke the law for freedom who will be remembered and honoured.

The Tory party is the enemy of democracy.

The way a government treats refugees is very instructive...

The peace movement didn't stop the Iraq but I think that Blair would not be able to go along and support an Iranian war.

There is no final victory, as there is no final defeat. There is just the same battle. To be fought, over and over again. So toughen up, bloody toughen up.

I think if you're going to be committed to doing anything, you really have to care about it, and I suppose that is a romantic idea.

People in debt become hopeless and hopeless people don’t vote. They always say that that everyone should vote but I think that if the poor in Britain or the United States turned out and voted for people that represented their interests there would be a real democratic revolution.

When I saw how the European Union was developing, it was very obvious what they had in mind was not democratic. In Britain, you vote for a government so the government has to listen to you, and if you don't like it you can change it.

I try not to make political arguments personal. It doesn't help and it switches a lot of people off. The real questions: Will we have peace? Will we have justice? Will we have pensions? Will we have free education? Will we have public services? .... those are the sort of things which interest me. I don't think that having a go at individuals really helps get your point across apart from anything else.

The First World War created the Second World War because that was a war between three grandsons of Queen Victoria: The King of England, the Kaiser and the Tsar married Queen Victoria's granddaughter. And that triggered Communism in Russia and Fascism in Germany and led to the Second World War.

I think democracy is not a destination. I don't think socialism is a railway station and if we catch the right train with the right driver, we'll get there. I think it's a way of thinking about things and every generation has to do it again.