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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
Library
Public
Politics

More quotes by Tony Benn

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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.
Tony Benn
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The House of Lords is the British Outer Mongolia for retired politicians.
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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Britain today is suffering from galloping obsolescence.
Tony Benn
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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
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I opposed the Suez war, I opposed the Falklands war. I opposed the Libyan bombing and I opposed the Gulf war and I never believed that any of those principled arguments lost a single vote - indeed, I think they gained support though that was not why you did it. What has been lacking in Labour politics over a long period is a principled stand
Tony Benn
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When I think of Cool Britannia I think of old people dying of hypothermia.
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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Marxism is now a world faith and must be allowed to enter into a continuous dialogue with other world faiths, including religious faiths
Tony Benn
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It would be as unthinkable to try to construct the Labour Party without Marx as it would to be to establish university faculties of astronomy,anthropology or psychology without permitting the study of Copernicus, Darwin or Freud, and still expect such faculties to be taken seriously
Tony Benn
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If you want your debt lifted you've got to sell your school and your hospitals.
Tony Benn
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Broadcasting is really too important to be left to the broadcasters.
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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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
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I don't want to commit myself in advocating a definite republican constitution which will get bogged down with the question of who would elect the President and when.
Tony Benn
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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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The thought that my mother would suddenly be a foreigner would upset me very much.
Tony Benn
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I am not a reluctant peer but a persistent commoner
Tony Benn
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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
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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.
Tony Benn