Ken Livingstone Quotes

He asked to see me again. I think he wants me for my body.

I am not in favour of any parental choice in education. You will go to your local school.

What a squalid and irresponsible little profession it is. Nothing prepares you for how bad Fleet Street really is until it craps on you from a great height.

Racism is a uniquely reactionary ideology, used to justify the greatest crimes in history — the slave trade, the extermination of all original inhabitants of the Caribbean, the elimination of every native inhabitant of Tasmania, apartheid. The Holocaust was the ultimate, "industrialised" expression of racist barbarity. Racism serves as the cutting edge of the most reactionary movements. An ideology that starts by declaring one human being inferior to another is the slope whose end is at Auschwitz. That is why I detest racism.

Only some ghastly dehumanised moron would want to get rid of the Routemaster.

One thing that Chairman Mao did was to end the appalling foot binding of women. That alone justifies the Mao Tse-tung era.

You can't expect to work for the Daily Mail group and have the rest of society treat with you respect as a useful member of society, because you are not.

The IMF and World Bank are still appalling, and now the World Trade Organisation too. All over the world people die unnecessarily because of the international financial system. Every year the international financial system kills more people than World War II. But at least Hitler was mad.

When Hitler won his election in 1932 his policy then was that Jews should be moved to Israel. He was supporting Zionism before he went mad and ended up killing six million Jews.

There are other people whose fear is if you bring down South Africa there will be a communist regime takeover - and that's a risk I'm prepared to see. I would much rather see South Africa under a communist regime than under the present one if that's the choice I'm faced with.

The H-block protest is part of the struggle to bring about a free, united Ireland. They have my support, and they have the support of the majority of the Labour Party rank and file. I have been consistently in favour of withdrawal from Ireland and to get away from the idea that it is some sort of campaign against terrorism. It is in fact the last colonial war.

Oliver Finegold: Mr Livingstone, Evening Standard. How did it ...
Ken Livingstone: Oh, how awful for you.
Finegold: How did tonight go?
Livingstone: Have you thought of having treatment?
Finegold: How did tonight go?
Livingstone: Have you thought of having treatment?
Finegold: Was it a good party? What does it mean for you?
Livingstone: What did you do before? Were you a German war criminal?
Finegold: No, I'm Jewish. I wasn't a German war criminal.
Livingstone: Ah … right.
Finegold: I'm actually quite offended by that. So, how did tonight go?
Livingstone: Well you might be, but actually you are just like a concentration camp guard. You're just doing it 'cause you're paid to, aren't you?
Finegold: Great. I've you on record for that. So how did tonight go?
Livingstone: It's nothing to do with you because your paper is a load of scumbags.
Finegold: "How did tonight go?"
Livingstone: It's reactionary bigots ...
Finegold: I'm a journalist. I'm doing my job.
Livingstone: … and who supported fascism.
Finegold: I'm only asking for a simple comment. I'm only asking for a comment.
Livingstone: Well, work for a paper that isn't ...
Finegold: I'm only asking for a comment.
Livingstone: … that had a record of supporting fascism.
Finegold: You've accused me ...

I take a much more pragmatic view than many people on the Left about working with Neil Kinnock. Kinnock represents the best vehicle possible for achieving socialism now.

I feel a degree of regret that Marshall did not push on and say 'Abolish the GLC', because I think it would be a major saving and would have released massive resources for more productive use.

If you go back a couple of hundred years to when the European cities really started to grow and peasants left the land to seek their future in the cities there was a saying that “city air makes you free” and the people who have come to London all races, creeds and colours have come for that. This is a city that you can be yourself as long as you don’t harm anyone else. You can live your life as you chose to do rather than as somebody else tells you to do. It is a city in which you can achieve your potential. That, I think, is our strength and that is what the bombers seek to destroy. They fear that freedom, they fear a world in which the individual makes their own life choices and their own moral value judgements and that is what they seek to snuff out. But they will fail.