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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

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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
Sense
Also
Going
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Make
Historical
People
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Perspective
Politics

More quotes by 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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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
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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.
Tony Benn
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The present combination of corporate or commercial control theoretically answerable to politically appointed Boards of Governors is not in any sense a democratic enough procedure to control the power the broadcasters have.
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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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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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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Britain today is suffering from galloping obsolescence.
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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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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Democracy is not just voting every 5 years and watching 'Big Brother' in between and wondering why nothing happens. Democracy is what we do and say where we live and work
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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I am on the right wing of the middle of the road and with a strong radical bias.
Tony Benn
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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
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The peace movement here is the biggest thing in human history.
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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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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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.
Tony Benn
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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.
Tony Benn
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It is tempting to deny, but if you deny you confirm what you won't deny.
Tony Benn