I am a public library

Making mistakes is how you learn.

My filing system is messy but orderly.

The Tory party is the enemy of democracy.

All war represents a failure of diplomacy.

I am not a reluctant peer but a persistent commoner

She believes in something. It is an old-fashioned idea

Britain today is suffering from galloping obsolescence.

The way a government treats refugees is very instructive.

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

I have had the advantage of a radical Christian upbringing

The Internet is only the street corner meeting on a big scale

The peace movement here is the biggest thing in human history.

An educated, healthy and confident nation is harder to govern.

Some of the jam we thought was for tomorrow, we've already eaten

Through talk, we tamed kings, restrained tyrants, averted revolution

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

I now want more time to devote to politics and more freedom to do so.

It is tempting to deny, but if you deny you confirm what you won't deny.

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

Undoubtedly the war with Iraq was a tragedy. I think it was also a crime.

When I think of Cool Britannia I think of old people dying of hypothermia.

An MP is the only job where you have 70,000 employers, and only one employee.

Middle class Labour leaders are recaptured by the establishment when they die.

If we can find the money to kill people, we can find the money to help people.

Hope is the fuel of progress and fear is the prison in which you put yourself.

America is now the dominant force and the only countervailing force is Europe.

If you want your debt lifted you've got to sell your school and your hospitals.

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

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

The one thing that unites Sunni, Shiites and Kurds is they want the Americans out.

The thought that my mother would suddenly be a foreigner would upset me very much.

In the end, the tragedy of Harold Wilson was that you couldn't believe a word he said

I do not share the general view that market forces are the basis of personal liberty.

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

I'm a democrat - I don't support Bush, I don't support Blair, I don't support Bin Laden.

I think very often the boat-rockers turn out to be the people who are building the craft

It is obvious I shall have to abandon my hopes of getting the Queen's head off the stamps.

Britain is the only colony in the British Empire and it is up to us now to liberate ourselves.

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

If ever I left the House of Commons it would be because I wanted to spend more time on politics.

When we have a majority we will do it. I think the days of the Lords are quite genuinely numbered.

If I rescued a child from drowning, the press would no doubt headline the story: 'Benn grabs child

I think if journalists were responsible for international policy we'd have a nuclear war every week.

I'd rather die on my feet making a speech than die of Alzheimer's - and that's what I'm planning to do.

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

The 1973 Labour Conference will have before it the most radical programme the Party has prepared since 1945.

Choice depends on the freedom to choose and if you are shackled with debt you don't have the freedom to choose.

I did not enter the Labour Party 47 years ago to have our manifesto written by Dr Mori, Dr Gallup and Mr Harris

It is wholly wrong to blame Marx for what was done in his name, as it is to blame Jesus for what was done in his

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