Top 15 Tony Blair Quotes

The art of leadership is saying no, not yes. It is very easy to say yes.

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

If we take all this actions and if it turns out not be true, we have reduced pollution and have better ways to live, the downside is very small. The other way around, and we don’t act, and it turns out to be true, then we have betrayed future generations and we don’t have the right to do that.

Sometimes it is better to lose and do the right thing than to win and do the wrong thing.

Our tolerance is part of what makes Britain Britain. So conform to it, or don't come here.

I had discovered long ago the first lesson of political courage: to think anew. I had then learned the second: to be prepared to lead and to decide. I was now studying the third: how to take the calculated risk. I was going to alienate some people, like it or not. The moment you decide, you divide.

The first rule in politics is that there are no rules, at least not in the sense of inevitable defeats or inevitable victories. If you have the right policy and the right strategy, you always have a chance of winning. Without them, you can lose no matter how certain the victory seems.

The single hardest thing for a practicing politician to understand is that most people, most of the time, don’t give politics a first thought all day long.

What Dad taught me above all else, and did so utterly unconsciously, was why people like him became Tories. He had been poor. He was working class. He aspired to be middle class. He worked hard, made it on his merits, and wanted his children to do even better than him. He thought – as did many others of his generation – that the logical outcome of this striving, born of this attitude, was to be a Tory. Indeed, it was part of the package. You made it; you were a Tory: two sides of the same coin. It became my political ambition to break that connection, and replace it with a different currency. You are compassionate; you care about those less fortunate than yourself; you believe in society as well as the individual. You can be Labour. You can be successful and care; ambitious and compassionate; a meritocrat and a progressive. These are entirely compatible ways of making sure progress happens; and they answer the realistic, not utopian, claims of human nature.

"Tony Blair's response when asked by one of his Parliament members why he believes so much in America: "A simple way to take measure of a country is to look at how many want in.. And how many want out.

What matters is what works.

I think life is a gift from God and should be lived to the full and with purpose.

I just want to say this. I want to say it gently but I want to say it firmly: There is a tendency for the world to say to America, ‘the big problems of the world are yours, you go and sort them out,’ and then to worry when America wants to sort them out.

On these issues, the public fib. They say they want increased spending, and in theory they do — but in practice they think someone else should pay for it. However, there it is. As I used to say, the public aren’t always logical, but that’s their prerogative. They do expect their government to be, nonetheless.

I want a Britain that is one nation, with shared values and purpose, where merit comes before privilege, run for the many not the few, strong and sure of itself at home and abroad.