Aneurin Bevan Quotes

There is only one hope for mankind — and that is democratic Socialism.

It is pertinent here to point to the different conditions under which contemporary revolutions of the East have to be carried out as distinct from those of the Americas in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. In the latter case Investment flowed freely from Europe to America, and along with the investment went skilled artisans of all kinds. It is true America did not have a large peasant population, but this was a further advantage. It was an empty country and it was filled by waves of migrants from Europe; many coming from backward European countries, but the advanced nations also made their contribution. Much of the machinery reaching America took the form of involuntary gifts, for the workings of the capitalist system produced a series of crises accompanied by bankruptcies which left much of the exported capital equipment unencumbered by subsequent financial claims. To this Europe added two wars partly financed by forced sales of European assets in America.

Damn it all, you can't have the crown of thorns and the thirty pieces of silver.

The language of priorities is the religion of socialism.

The Prime Minister must realise that in this country there is a taunt, on everyone's lips, that if Rommel had been in the British Army, he would still have been a sergeant.

Democratic Socialism is not a middle way between capitalism and Communism. If it were merely that, it would be doomed to failure from the start. It cannot live by borrowed vitality. Its driving power must derive from its own principles and the energy released by them. It is based on the conviction that free men can use free institutions to solve the social and economic problems of the day, if they are given a chance to do so.

In times of crisis the Conservative Party invariably attacks State expenditure on the social services so as to relieve the burden on property. The Socialist Party, on the other hand, rushes to the defence of State spending: their supporters are the poor and defenceless who most need it.

I am keeping the mothers and children alive, but he half-starved them to death. He has the impudence to call me Minister of Disease when every single vital statistic by which the health and progress of the population can be measured is infinitely better now under the supervision of a common miner than it was then under the supervision of an aristocrat. I know if you took the vital statistics of the aristocrats they were as well off then as now. He looked after them all right. I am not concerned about that; I am concerned about our own people. Some people are worse off than before the war, of course. We meant them to be.

In 1945 and 1946 we were attacked on our housing policy by every spiv in the country—for what is Toryism except organised spivery? They wanted to let the spivs loose.

We should try to avoid new causes of tension, such as the rearming of Western Germany.

The issue therefore in a capitalist democracy resolves itself into this: either poverty will use democracy to win the struggle against property, or property, in fear of poverty, will destroy democracy.

It is not necessary to spend time in formal greetings. Our presence is itself sufficient to show our support for the Chinese people’s revolution. As Mr Attlee has already said, the Labour movement’s reaction to the Chinese Revolution followed the example it set after the first world war when it rallied to the support of the Russian Revolution. It follows naturally that the struggle of the British workers in their own country against the forces of capitalism causes them to sympathise immediately with the struggles of the workers in other countries.

A very large part of the population of Wales was English-speaking, and the English-speaking part had a contribution just as big, if not bigger, to make towards Welsh cultural life than the Welsh-speaking part. A great deal of the literature of which Welshmen were proud and a great deal of the poetry for which this generation would be noted had been written in English by Welshmen.

Never in the history of mankind have the best religious ideas found greater expression than in the programme we have carried out. “Suffer little children to come unto Me” is now not something said just from the pulpit. We have weaved it into the woof and warp of the national life.

[For Winston Churchill], democracy is a state in which the people acquiesce in the rule of property. Democracy is an admirable institution so long as the poor continue to carry the rich on their backs. When the poor decide to change places, democracy falls into disrepute. That is why, whenever you scratch a Tory, you find a Fascist.