Tony Blair Quotes

Really good people are hard to come by. In any walk of life exceptional talent is, well, exceptional. So, if you see someone with such talent, then go after them; if they’re as good as you think they are, you will never regret it.

It is largely from family discipline that social discipline and a sense of responsibility is learnt. A modern notion of society – where rights and responsibilities go together – requires responsibility to be nurtured. Out of a family grows the sense of community. The family is the starting place... All other things being equal, it is easier to do the difficult job of bringing up a child where there are two parents living happily together... If the old left tended to ignore the importance of the family, the new right ignores the conditions in which family life can most easily prosper.

We are asked now seriously to accept that in the last few years–contrary to all history, contrary to all intelligence–Saddam decided unilaterally to destroy those weapons. I say that such a claim is palpably absurd.

That's the art of leadership. To make sure that what shouldn't happen, doesn't happen.

In respect of knife and gun gangs, the laws need to be significantly toughened. There needs to be an intensive police focus on these groups. The ring-leaders need to be identified and taken out of circulation; if very young, as some are, put in secure accommodation. The black community – the vast majority of whom in these communities are decent, law-abiding people horrified at what is happening – need to be mobilised in denunciation of this gang culture that is killing innocent young black kids. But we won't stop this by pretending it isn't young black kids doing it.

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.

Here, now, today, people have had enough of this part of the 1960s consensus. People do not want a return to old prejudices and ugly discrimination. But they do want rules, order and proper behaviour. They know there is such a thing as society. They want a society of respect. They want a society of responsibility. They want a community where the decent law-abiding majority are in charge; where those that play by the rules do well; and those that don't, get punished.

My message to Sinn Fein is clear. The settlement train is leaving. I want you on that train. But it is leaving anyway and I will not allow it to wait for you.

I am a Socialist not through reading a textbook that has caught my intellectual fancy, nor through unthinking tradition, but because I believe that, at its best, Socialism corresponds most closely to an existence that is both rational and moral. It stands for co-operation, not confrontation; for fellowship, not fear. It stands for equality, not because it wants people to be the same but because only through equality in our economic circumstances can our individuality develop properly.

There were people who got me very involved in politics. But then there was also a book. It was a trilogy, a biography of Trotsky by Isaac Deutscher, which made a very deep impression on me and gave me a love of political biography for the rest of my life.

A simple way to take measure of a country is to look at how many want in.. And how many want out.

I reckon it takes ten years to change a country. And that is ten years of focused change-making. At a minimum. Fifteen is better and twenty optimum.

The only difference between compassionate conservatism and conservatism is that under compassionate conservatism they tell you they’re not going to help you but they’re really sorry about it.

We do, as a new Government, have to be extremely careful after 18 years in opposition. A lot of people who worked for us, they then go on and work for the lobby firms. I think we have to be very careful with people fluttering around the new Government, trying to make all sorts of claims of influence, that we are purer than pure, that people understand that we will not have any truck with anything that is improper in any shape or form at all.

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.