Latest Tony Benn Quotes from Interviews

Quotes about:

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

  Tony Benn

  War, Thinking, Week

  Source: designermagazine.tripod.com

• Mandela didn't end Apartheid in South Africa, the poor guy was in jail for 27 years, it was the African people that ended it but he was a symbol of their struggle. Or Gandhi in India, Gandhi was a great believer in non-violence and he was in and out of jail, but India became free. I think it's better to look at what people can do collectively and that's why it's so important to encourage them.

  Tony Benn

  Struggle, Thinking, People

  Source: designermagazine.tripod.com

• 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.

  Tony Benn

  Real, Thinking, People

  Source: designermagazine.tripod.com

• 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.

  Tony Benn

  Ambition, Lovely, Age

  Source: think-left.org

• Christians believe that God created man, and humanists believe that man invented God. But whichever way you look at it, we're brothers and sisters. Either we're brothers and sisters because we're children of God, or because we've banded together to invent God. So the ethics of the humanist and the ethics of some Christians are very similar. And we don't want to create divisions between humanists and Liberation Theologians, any more than we want between the New Worker and the Trots. It's not helpful.

  Tony Benn

  Christian, Brother, Children

  Source: think-left.org

• 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.

  Tony Benn

  Giving Up, Thinking, People

  Source: think-left.org

• 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.

  Tony Benn

  Men, People, Giving

  Source: think-left.org

• Nelson Mandela was a terrorist. And then he wins the world peace prize and becomes president of South Africa. That's how change happens. It's very important not to differentiate protest from the democratic process.

  Tony Benn

  Winning, Important, President

  Source: think-left.org

• When somebody comes up with a progressive idea, to begin with, you're mad, bonkers. Then if you go on, you're dangerous. Then there's a pause. Then you can't find anyone who can say they thought of it in the first place. That's how progress is made. This is why I do believe in the vote. In the end, all these people who've been tempted to the right realise the warning lights in their constituency are brighter than the bright lights from No. 10 offering them things.

  Tony Benn

  Believe, People, Mad

  Source: think-left.org

• The police are controlled by the whites, the media are controlled by the whites, the army's controlled by the whites, what hope is there for change? Administration changes from underneath.

  Tony Benn

  Police

  Source: think-left.org

• The quickest way to get to the top in society probably is to be a Blair Babe now. And then all of a sudden you find you're invited to parties. I don't want to be cynical, because I'm not. But I've seen it happen to so many people who move from the left to the right so damn quickly.

  Tony Benn

  Party, Moving, People

  Source: think-left.org

• I was radicalised by being a minister. That's when I saw how the system really worked. And that is not a very usual process, but it certainly happened to me: it gave me a lot more experience, it helped me to understand where power really lay, develop strategies for undermining or changing it, and so on. But that isn't the norm. Mr Gladstone moved to the left as he got older, and one or two other people have, but normally you swing the other way.

  Tony Benn

  People, Strategy, Norm

  Source: think-left.org

• I'm interested in language. We used to call it the War Office. Then it became the Ministry of Defence. We used to talk about the hydrogen bomb, now we talk about a deterrent. And the language is very cleverly constructed to give the impression that it's not what it is.

  Tony Benn

  War, Giving, Office

  Source: think-left.org

• Remember, imperialism is always presented as humanitarian: the white man's burden, the cross going round the world, the poor benighted natives, the sun never sets. . . So you have to be very careful about humanitarianism.

  Tony Benn

  World, Remember, Imperialism

  Source: think-left.org

• I met somebody once who said, "I'm a lapsed-atheist" by what he meant was, "I don't believe in God but the older I get the more I realise there is a spirituality in everybody that has to be cherished and nourished." That made a lot of sense to me.

  Tony Benn

  Believe, Spirituality, Believe In God

  Source: mattkennard.tumblr.com

• If you're going to make sense of politics you have to have a historical perspective and also recognise that you have to work with people you don't agree with.

  Tony Benn

  People, Perspective, Historical

  Source: mattkennard.tumblr.com

• When Blair was elected leader of the Labour Party, he said, "New Labour is a new political party" - that was the phrase he used, and I'm so glad he said it because he set up his own party and I'm not a member of it.

  Tony Benn

  Party, Leader, Political

  Source: mattkennard.tumblr.com

• 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.

  Tony Benn

  Thinking, People, Democracy

  Source: mattkennard.tumblr.com

• 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.

  Tony Benn

  Thinking, Democracy, Socialism

  Source: mattkennard.tumblr.com

• If you read Mein Kampf, Hitler's book, which I have outside, I bought it when I was eleven, Hitler said, "democracy inevitably leads to Marxism" - now you work that one out. It's so interesting that when the poor have the vote they will use it to remove the privileges of the rich.

  Tony Benn

  Book, Interesting, Democracy

  Source: mattkennard.tumblr.com

• If I were the American President I would rather be popular than have the power the destroy the world because however many puppets they have all over the Middle East - Saudi Arabia, Egypt and so on - they haven't got support from the people.

  Tony Benn

  People, Support, President

  Source: mattkennard.tumblr.com

• The New York Times said, "There are two superpowers in the world: the United States and the world peace movement."

  Tony Benn

  World, Superpower

  "Former Labour MP Tony Benn on how Britain Secretly Helped Israel Build Its Nuclear Arsenal". "Democracy Now!" with Amy Goodman, www.democracynow.org. March 10, 2006.

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

  Tony Benn

  Source: mattkennard.tumblr.com

• 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.

  Tony Benn

  Threatening, Nuclear Weapons, Spread

  Source: mattkennard.tumblr.com

• The one thing that unites Sunni, Shiites and Kurds is they want the Americans out.

  Tony Benn

  Source: mattkennard.tumblr.com