Quotes by Tony Benn

About Tony Benn:

Anthony Neil Wedgwood Benn was a British politician who was a Member of Parliament (MP) for forty-seven years between 1950 and 2001 and a Cabinet minister under Harold Wilson and James Callaghan in the 1960s and 1970s. A member of the Labour Party, he was situated on the party's hard left, ideologically identifying as a democratic socialist.
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

Age does take it out of you, and I haven't the energy I had before. Sometimes I have breakfast and sit in this chair, and I wake up and it is lunchtime. In the past, the idea of sleeping through a morning would have horrified me, but you have to acce...

Tony Benn

The exhaustion of old age is something people who are younger don't fully appreciate.

Tony Benn

If you file your waste-paper basket for fifty years, you have a public library.

Tony Benn

Britain today is suffering from galloping obsolescence.

Tony Benn

Broadcasting is really too important to be left to the broadcasters.

Tony Benn

I am on the right wing of the middle of the road and with a strong radical bias.

Tony Benn

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

My filing system is messy but orderly.

Tony Benn

The House of Lords is the British Outer Mongolia for retired politicians.

Tony Benn

I can't go to bed if I haven't done my diary. I always record them just as I've always recorded all my interviews and speeches.

Tony Benn

The uncut diaries are 16 million words. It's very tiring to do your diary every night before you go to bed.

Tony Benn

I've made every mistake - but mistakes are how you learn.

Tony Benn

You have to try to build support around causes. It is uniting to campaign on a single issue, and it is never just a single issue; it's always more than that.

Tony Benn

I think there are two ways in which people are controlled. First of all frighten people and secondly, demoralise them.

Tony Benn

There is no moral difference between a Stealth bomber and a suicide bomber. They both kill innocent people for political reasons.

Tony Benn

My day rotates around my family. I am very lucky.

Tony Benn

All war represents a failure of diplomacy.

Tony Benn

Normally, people give up parliament because they want to do more business or spend more time with family. My wife said 'why don't you say you're giving up to devote more time to politics?'. And it is what I have done.

Tony Benn

We are not just here to manage capitalism but to change society and to define its finer values.

Tony Benn

I'm not frightened about death. I don't know why, but I just feel that at a certain moment your switch is switched off, and that's it. And you can't do anything about it.

Tony Benn

Author Bio

  • NameTony Benn
  • DescriptionBritish Labour Party politician
  • AliasesAnthony Neil Wedgwood Benn
  • BornApril 3, 1925
  • DiedMarch 14, 2014
  • CountryUnited Kingdom
  • ProfessionPolitician; Autobiographer