All Quotes

"The issues raised in the historic conflict between Charles I, resting his claim to govern Britain on the divine right of kings, and Parliament - representing, however imperfectly, a demand for the wider sharing of power - concerned the use and abuse of state power, the right of the governed to a say in their government, and the nature of political freedom. The Levellers grew out of this conflict. They represented the aspirations of working people who suffered under the persecution of kings, landowners and the priestly class, and they spoke for those who experienced the hardships of poverty and deprivation. They developed and campaigned, first with Cromwell and then against him, for a political and constitutional settlement of the civil war which would embody principles of political freedom, anticipating by a century and a half the ideas of the American and French revolutions."

"Well I came across Marx rather late in life actually, and when I read him, two things: first of all I realised that he'd come to the conclusion about capitalism which I'd come to much later, and I was a bit angry he'd thought of it first; and secondly, I see Marx who was an old Jew, as the last of the Old Testament Prophets, this old bearded man working in the British Library, studying capitalism, that's what 'Das Kapital' was about, it was an explanation of British capitalism. And I thought to myself, 'Well anyone could write a book like that, but what infuses, what comes out of his writing, is the passionate hostility to the injustice of capitalism. He was a Prophet, and so I put him in that category as an Old Testament Prophet."

"People at the top do not want to share their power. They’ve always got some marvellous reason: I’m following my religion; I’m following the laws of economics. Even Stalin: I’m representing the vanguard of the working class, so please don’t cause trouble. That is the battle that every generation has, and yet we mustn’t be pessimistic about it..."

"The Morning Star had an article by George Galloway, and in it he said, "Britain is currently run by a blood-splattered, lying, crooked group of war criminals." Now, first of all I think that's a totally ineffective way of getting your case across, but secondly, last November George pleaded with me to try to persuade the National Executive to let him stay in the party. So if I'd succeeded, he would have been still a member of a party currently run by a "blood-splattered, lying, crooked group of war criminals". It put me off George Galloway in a fairly fundamental way."

"The Americans would not allow an anti-American government to be elected in Britain - I mean an anti-capitalist government, a socialist government, to be elected in Britain. So how would you ever make a change, unless you put on such pressure that the system falls and then people take over. The idea that a little debate in Parliament will change things is really an illusion. I’m not in favour of a bloody revolution, because we saw what happened with Stalin, but I’m not in favour of surrendering, step by step, the right of people to dec ide the policies that the elected government follows, because otherwise you might just as well hang the whole thing up. That is the issue that interests me very much, and Paul Foot’s book, The Vote: How It Was Won and How It Was Undermined, is highly relevant to it."

"My Great-grandfather was a Congregational Minister and my Mother was a Bible scholar, and I was brought up on the Bible, that the story of the Bible was conflict between the kings who had power, and the prophets who preached righteousness. And I was taught to believe in the prophets, got me into a lot of trouble. And my Dad said to me when I was young, "Dare to be a Daniel, Dare to stand alone, Dare to have a purpose firm, Dare to let it (be) known.""

"[The Labour Party]'s never been a socialist party, but it's always had socialists in it, just as there are some Christians in the Church, it's an exact parallel."

"I was born about a quarter of a mile from where we are sitting now and I was here in London during the Blitz. And every night I went down into the shelter. 500 people killed, my brother was killed, my friends were killed. And when the Charter of the UN was read to me, I was a pilot coming home in a troop ship: 'We the peoples of the United Nations determined to save succeeding generations from the scourge of war, which twice in our lifetime has brought untold sorrow to mankind.' That was the pledge my generation gave to the younger generation and you tore it up. And it's a war crime that's been committed in Iraq, because there is no moral difference between a stealth bomber and a suicide bomber. Both kill innocent people for political reasons."

"Ideas are more powerful than guns."

"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."

"Choice depends on the freedom to choose and if you are shackled with debt you don’t have the freedom to choose."

"I think democracy is the most revolutionary thing in the world, because if you have power you use it to meet the needs of you and your community."

"The way change occurs to begin with, if you come up with a good idea, like healthcare, you're ignored. If you go on you must be mad, absolutely stark-staring bonkers. If you go on after that you're dangerous. Then, if the pressure keeps up there's a pause. And then you can't find anyone at the top who doesn't claim to have thought of it in the first place. That's how progress is made."

"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."

"When you think of the number of men in the world who hate each other, why, when two men love each other, does the church split?"

"The key to any progress is to ask the question why? All the time. Why is that child poor? Why was there a war? Why was he killed? Why is he in power? And of course questions can get you into a lot of trouble, because society is trained by those who run it, to accept what goes on. Without questions we won't make any progress at all."

"I never liked meat - and my son Hilary, 30 years ago, said, 'If the world ate the grain instead of feeding it to animals and killing them, there would be enough food for everybody,'"

"In Labour Governments we did our best to make capitalism work in a civilised way. And we failed. It never can work. It will always exploit and oppress the people."

"I don't think people realise how the establishment became established. They simply stole land and property from the poor, surrounded themselves with weak minded sycophants for protection, gave themselves titles and have been wielding power ever since."

"The way a government treats refugees is very instructive because it shows you how they would treat the rest of us if they thought they could get away with it."

"[Tony Benn is] an Old Testament prophet preaching the sort of New Jerusalem he wants to see."

"Well then, who had he had time for, during his 24 years in the Party, if he didn't like collectivists and didn't like moderates? There was a pause. "Well, Benn. I have a high opinion of Wedgwood Benn. He is committed to a form of collectivism, but at least he is honest and original. I'd like to see him leading the Labour Party." You could have knocked me down with a feather. But, I said, would not Benn's leadership of the Labour Party make it still more likely that the country would go collectivist, with the inevitable erosion of our liberties as outlined by Johnson in his "Farewell"? Not necessarily, Johnson replied, because Benn was a genuine democrat, and might, when it came to the crunch between collectivism and liberty, choose liberty. But it would be too late by then! Well, said Johnson, it might be. But at least Benn leading Labour and Thatcher leading the Tories would present the country with "a proper choice" between collectivism and individualism. This struck me as dotty."

"He was a very good Postmaster General, all those coloured stamps, still going well. Tony's obsessed with shop stewards. That is why he liked planning agreements, because they would be run by shop stewards. We were having a shadow cabinet meeting and I asked for any other business. There was a deep sigh because we knew Tony would have something. And he said, I have just attended a meeting of the Bristol Aerospace workers, I think it was, and they just passed a resolution saying that they should have the right to sack the management at a week's notice. I said, why should they have a week? Why not give them just a weekend to clear out their lockers? I have always said about Tony that he immatures with age."

"Some of the Civil Servants used to contribute a lot to counter-briefing directed against Tony Benn on the assumption that he being anti-Europe everything he said should be resisted. I disliked this intensely. This kind of official politicking is one of the most unattractive aspects of the Civil Service... There is a sort of top Civil Servants' mafia. I soon found that they were trying systematically to get pro-European Ministers to gang up against anti-European Ministers. I used to receive briefings from the Foreign Office beginning with: "We expect Mr Benn to say the following..." I made it clear that these briefings about what Mr Benn would say and in the view of officials ought to say should not come from officials in the Department of Energy."

"Failure is always much more interesting than success, and Tony Benn remains in many ways the most fascinating left-wing figure of our time. These Diaries, covering the dawn of his Ministerial career ... serve as an opportune reminder of just how much he has thrown away. What they reveal is a young politician of the highest promise who a quarter of a century ago appeared to have the world of Labour politics at his feet."

"The story of the Postmaster General and the Queen and the conflict that arose between them over the need to have the monarch's head on every postage stamp provides easily the best part of this book (those who would dismiss it as trivial merely betray how little they understand the true nature of the power structure in Britain). It offers, in fact, a highly illuminating constitutional parable and one that Crossman, for all his desire to produce a twentieth-century Bagehot, was never quite able to match. No one interested in the political influence of the Crown, the intrigues of the civil service or the highly traditionalist character of Harold Wilson as the Queen's First Minister can afford to ignore it."

"Republican Legislature let down America. I’m ashamed of them. They completely misled the President and me."

"It is ironic that Tony Benn's ministerial career should have left only two monuments behind — the uranium mine in Namibia he authorised as Energy Secretary, which helps to support Apartheid and is in territory illegally occupied by South Africa, and an aircraft [Concorde] which is used by wealthy people on their expense accounts, whose fares are subsidised by much poorer taxpayers."

"Another star was Tony Benn, at that time still rattling his full complement of syllables as the Hon. Anthony Wedgwood Benn. From start to finish he and I have rarely agreed on anything, but he was always a courteous and effective debater, an English patriot, and as time has made socialism more and more a thing of the past, even a traditional figure. But perhaps we enjoy a sympathy based on our religious roots. When Tony became President of the Union I was invited to a celebration, attended by his father Viscount Stansgate, which, true to Tony's Nonconformist principles, was teetotal."

"Last night I had a talk with Tony Benn. He was the only person even half-right on the subject of North Sea oil. And how fascinating he is to talk to! His mind is so quick and versatile – but the loony prejudice (and this of course the motivation that keeps him active) never far below the surface. 'We want an Asia economy so as to be like Singapore – with its penal code' etc."

"Tony Benn is described as a politician by those who have never met him."

"One of the twentieth century's most committed parliamentarians."

"Tony Benn was at his apogee [in 1980], the hero of the left with an appeal that went far beyond their relatively small numbers. He was to me an enigma. Personally he was the sweetest of men, concerned about his friends and colleagues, ready to help, funny and self-effacing. His socialist values ran deep, owing more to the Levellers of the English Civil War than to Marx or Trotsky. The iconic leader for him was Colonel Rainborough of Cromwell's New Model Army, the man who declared during the famous Putney Debates: "The poorest he that is in England hath a life to live as the greatest he." Benn's charisma overwhelmed his reason, and his eloquence washed away his logic when he was responding to an adoring audience. One of my journalist friends observed that, during his speech to the conference, Tony held forth through the applause, not pausing for it to die down. He seemed to be in a self-induced trance. Indeed, some of his own supporters began to get worried. Comments were made on his staring eyes, even his sanity."

"Admired so many things about Benn. Unwavering principles; always open to new ideas; stellar political speaker but unfailingly courteous."

"Supposed former infatuation junkie, I sink three pointers and you wax poetically."

"I remember vividly a day years ago, We were camping. You knew more than you thought you should know. You said I don't want ever to be brainwashed And you were mind-boggling, you were intense. You were uncomfortable in your own skin, You were thirsty. But mostly, you were beautiful."

"If we were their condemnations, If we were their projections, If we were our paranoias, I'd be joining you. If we were our incomes, If we were our obsessions, If we were our afflictions, I'd be joining you."

"Do you derive joy when someone else succeeds? Do you not play dirty when engaged in competition? Do you have a big intellectual capacity, But know that it alone does not equate to wisdom? Do you see everything as an illusion, But enjoy it even though you are not of it? Are you both masculine and feminine, politically aware, and don't believe in capital punishment?These are 21 things that I want in a lover, Not necessarily needs but qualities that I prefer."

"Rudy Giuliani — there's only three things he mentions in a sentence: a noun, a verb, and 9/11."

"Dear popular boy, I know you're used to getting everything so easily, A stranger to the concept of reciprocity. People honor boys like you in this society."

"If it weren't for your maturity, none of this would have happened. If you weren't so wise beyond your years, I would've been able to control myself. If it weren't for my attention, you wouldn't have been successful and if If it weren't for me, you would never have amounted to very much.Ooh, this could be messy But you don't seem to mind, and Ooh, don't go telling everybody And overlook this supposed crime.We'll fast forward to a few years later And no one knows except the both of us. And I have honored your request for silence And you've washed your hands clean of this."

"I can feel so unsexy for someone so beautiful, So unloved and for someone so fine. I can feel so boring for someone so interesting, So ignorant for someone of sound mind."

"But this won't work as well as the way it once did Because I want to decide between survival and bliss. And though I know who I'm not I still don't know who I am, But I know I won't keep on playing the victim.These precious illusions in my head Did not let me down when I was a kid And parting with them is like parting with a childhood best friend."

"My misery has enjoyed company, And although I have ached, I don't threaten anybody. Sometimes I feel more bigness than I've shared with you. Sometimes I wonder why I quell When I'm not required to. I've tried to be small, I've tried to be stunted, I've tried roadblocks and all My happy endings prevented. Sometimes I feel it's all just too big To be true. I sabotage myself for fear of what My bigness could do."

"You're unsure and you're not ready, So that must mean I want you. You're unavailable and disinterested, To you I look for comfort. A million times in a million ways, I will try to change you. A million months and a million days, I'll try to convince you."

"When I'd speak of artistry you would roll your eyes skyward. When I'd speak of spirituality you would label it absurd. When I spoke of possibility you would frown and shake your head. If I had stayed much longer, I'd have surely imploded. These are my words. This is my house. These are my friends of which you've had no part of."

"How to lie to yourself and thereby to everyone else, How to keep smiling when you're thinking of killing yourself, How to numb a-la-holic to avoid going within, How to stay stuck in blue by blaming them for everything.I'll teach you all this in eight easy steps, A course of a lifetime, you'll never forget. I'll show you how to in eight easy steps, I'll show you how leadership looks when taught by the best."

"My tendency to want to do away feels natural and My urgency to dream of softer places feels understandable, But I knowThe only way out is through, The faster we're in, the better. The only way out is through ultimately."

"I wanna be naked running through the streets. I wanna invite this so-called chaos that you'd think I dare not be. I wanna be weightless flying through the air, I wanna drop all these limitations but the shoes upon my feet."

"Not in contact, not a letter, Such communication, telepathic. You've been vilified, used as fodder. You deserve a piece of every record."