Tony Blair
56 quotes
Biography
"The art of leadership is saying no, not saying yes. It is very easy to say yes."
"Sometimes it is better to lose and do the right thing than to win and do the wrong thing."
"We should be tough on crime and tough on the underlying causes of crime."
"In the end there is no escaping from the fact that businesses run business. And the best thing government can do is set a framework within which business has the stability to plan and invest in the future [...] I want a situation more like the Democrats and the Republicans in the US. People don't even question for a single moment that the Democrats are pro-business party. They should not be asking the question about the New Labour [...] New Labour is pro-business, pro-enterprise, and we believe there is nothing inconsistent between that and a decent and just society."
"The blunt truth about the politics of climate change is that no country will want to sacrifice its economy in order to meet this challenge."
"That's the art of leadership. To make sure that what shouldn't happen, doesn't happen."
"I couldn't live with myself if I thought that these big strategic choices for my generation were there, and I wasn't even making them – or I was making them according to what was expedient rather than what I actually thought was right."
"We should engage with the new de facto power and help make the new government make the changes necessary, especially on the economy, so they can deliver for the people. The events that led to the Egyptian army's removal of President Mohamed Morsi confronted the military with a simple choice: intervention or chaos. Seventeen million people on the streets are not the same as an election. But it as an awesome manifestation of power. I am a strong supporter of democracy. But democratic government doesn't on its own mean effective government. Today efficacy is the challenge. This is a sort of free democratic spirit that operates outside the convention of democracy that elections decide the government. It is enormously fuelled by social media, itself a revolutionary phenomenon. And it moves very fast in precipitating crisis. It is not always consistent or rational. A protest is not a policy, or a placard a programme for government. But if governments don't have a clear argument with which to rebut the protest, they're in trouble."
"The battles of this century … are less likely to be the product of extreme political ideology—like those of the 20th century—<nowiki/>but they could easily be fought around the questions of cultural or religious difference."
"I pay tribute to the campaign [<nowiki/>Jeremy Corbyn] ran, I think that he showed a lot of character in the way that he ran that campaign. He generated a lot of enthusiasm. I buy all of that. But I also think that it's important and salutary for us to remember this government is in a greater degree of mess than any government I can remember. Even in the 1990s the Tory government was a paragon of stability compared with this, and yet we're a couple of points ahead and I think I'm right that [Corbyn] is not yet ahead of her as Prime Minister. So I pay tribute to all of that, but I still say 'Come on guys, we should be 15, 20 points ahead."
"Too often the sensible people aren’t radical, and the radical people aren’t sensible."
"Torture, encouraged from above, became a fact of life [in occupied Iraq]. Perhaps some good liberal apologist for Blair will soon explain how democratic torture is much nicer than authoritarian torture."
"Don’t be shameless, Mr Blair. Don’t be immoral, Mr. Blair. You are one of those who have no morals. You are not one who has the right to criticize anyone about the rules of the international community. You are an imperialist pawn who attempts to curry favor with Danger Bush-Hitler, the number one mass murderer and assassin there is on the planet. Go straight to hell, Mr. Blair."
"Tony Blair, a passionate Christian, has expressed his conviction that WMDs will be found in almost directly religious terms of credo quia absurdum: despite the lack of evidence, he personally is deeply convinced that they will be found. ... The only appropriate answer to this conundrum is not the boring liberal plea for innocence until guilt is proved but, rather, the point made succintly by 'Rachel from Scotland' on the BBC website in September 2003: 'We know he had weapons; we sold him some of them.' This is the direction a serious investigation should have taken."
"My view is that you still, in order to win from the Labour perspective, have to have a strong alliance with business as well as the unions. You have got to be very much in the centre ground on things like public sector reform."
"I didn't come into politics to change the Labour Party. I came into politics to change the country."
"My dad was a militant atheist, or is a militant atheist. My mum was sort of bought up in a religious family because she was a Protestant from Ireland but wasn't especially religious."
"Education is the best economic policy there is."
"My faith foundation works to bring about a greater respect and understanding between different faiths. We basically work with six popular religions in the world which are the three Abrahamic religions, Hinduism and Buddhism and Sikhism."
"My dad was a militant atheist, or is a militant atheist. My mum was sort of bought up in a religious family because she was a Protestant from Ireland but wasn't especially religious."
"Anywhere, anytime ordinary people are given the chance to choose, the choice is the same: freedom, not tyranny democracy, not dictatorship the rule of law, not the rule of the secret police."
"The spread of freedom is the best security for the free."
"In retrospect, the Millennium marked only a moment in time. It was the events of September 11 that marked a turning point in history, where we confront the dangers of the future and assess the choices facing humankind."
"It is not an arrogant government that chooses priorities, it's an irresponsible government that fails to choose."
"I cannot think of any circumstances in which a government can go to war without the support of parliament."