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The Civil Service is a bit like a rusty weathercock. It moves with opinion then it stays where it is until another wind moves it in a different direction

Tony Benn

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Tony Benn
Age: 88 †
Born: 1925
Born: April 3
Died: 2014
Died: March 14
Autobiographer
Diarist
Former Member Of The European Parliament
Politician
Anthony Neil Wedgwood Benn
Another
Civil
Different
Direction
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Service
Wind
Bits
Opinion
Rusty
Politics
Stays
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Moves

More quotes by Tony Benn

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Anyone from abroad will tell you that it is the class system that really lies at the root of our problems, economic and industrial. The House of Lords symbolises that.
Tony Benn
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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.
Tony Benn
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The Tory party is the enemy of democracy.
Tony Benn
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The flag of racialism which has been hoisted in Wolverhampton is beginning to look like the one that fluttered 25 years ago over Dachau and Belsen.
Tony Benn
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There is good and bad in all of us and the Church uses the idea of original sin to control us by saying that, if we do not obey the bishops, we will rot in Hell.
Tony Benn
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If one meets a powerful person--Adolf Hitler, Joe Stalin or Bill Gates--ask them five questions: 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?
Tony Benn
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I am not a reluctant peer but a persistent commoner
Tony Benn
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Choice depends on the freedom to choose and if you are shackled with debt you don't have the freedom to choose.
Tony Benn
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An educated, healthy and confident nation is harder to govern.
Tony Benn
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The New York Times said, There are two superpowers in the world: the United States and the world peace movement.
Tony Benn
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Britain's continuing membership of the Community would mean the end of Britain as a completely self-governing nation...
Tony Benn
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When we have a majority we will do it. I think the days of the Lords are quite genuinely numbered.
Tony Benn
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Cabinet members are soon overwhelmed by the insistent demands of running their departments. On the whole, a period in high office consumers intellectual capital it does not create it....The less ministers know at the outset, the more dependent they are on the only sources of available knowledge the permanent officials.
Tony Benn
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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.
Tony Benn
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I have had the advantage of a radical Christian upbringing
Tony Benn
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It is tempting to deny, but if you deny you confirm what you won't deny.
Tony Benn
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Workers are not going to be fobbed off with a few shares...or by a carbon copy of the German system of co-determination.
Tony Benn
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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.
Tony Benn
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There is no moral difference between a stealth bomber and a suicide bomber. Both kill innocent people for political reasons.
Tony Benn
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I'm a democrat - I don't support Bush, I don't support Blair, I don't support Bin Laden.
Tony Benn