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Tony Blair

90 quotes

“I fear my own conscience on Africa. I fear the judgement of future generations, where history properly calculates the gravity of the suffering. I fear them asking: but how could wealthy people, so aware of such suffering, so capable of acting, simply turn away to busy themselves with other things? What greater call to action could there be? Did they really know and yet do nothing? I feel that judgement of the future alongside the now. It gives me urgency. It fills me with determination.”
Tony Blair (born 1953) first seen 2005 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: At the launch of the Commission for Africa Report (11 March 2005).
“Yes, I did have to struggle very hard to get this [the vote on the Iraq war] through, but the reason I did it was because I thought it was the right thing to do. I didn't take this on myself... just because I thought, 'Let's give myself a really hard time for a couple of years!'”
Tony Blair (born 1953) first seen 2005 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: On BBC Question Time's election special programme, (28 April 2005).
“I understand there is a need for a stable and orderly transition to that leadership, but that people should give me the space to ensure that happens and that this debate is not best conducted in the pages of the Mail on Sunday.”
Tony Blair (born 1953) first seen 2005 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Michael White, "I will go in my own time – Blair", The Guardian (12 May 2005), p. 2.
“Ideals survive through change. They die through inertia in the face of challenge.”
Tony Blair (born 1953) first seen 2005 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Speech to the European Parliament outlining the priorities of the British Presidency, (23 June 2005).
“It is important that those engaged in terrorism realise that our determination to defend our values and our way of life is greater than their determination to cause death and destruction to innocent people in a desire to impose extremism on the world.”
Tony Blair (born 1953) first seen 2005 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Trevor Kavanagh, "We shall prevail .. terrorists shall not", The Sun (8 July 2005), p. 18
“The spirit of our age is one in which the prejudices of the past are put behind us, where our diversity is our strength. It is this which is under attack. Moderates are not moderate through weakness but through strength. Now is the time to show it in defence of our common values.”
Tony Blair (born 1953) first seen 2005 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Prime Minister Blair's speech", The New York Times (16 July 2005).
“The blunt truth about the politics of climate change is that no country will want to sacrifice its economy in order to meet this challenge.”
Tony Blair (born 1953) first seen 2005 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Address to the 2005 G8 climate change summit in London, as reported by David Adam, "Blair signals shift over climate change", The Guardian (1 November 2005).
“Sometimes it is better to lose and do the right thing than to win and do the wrong thing.”
Tony Blair (born 1953) first seen 2005 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Hansard, House of Commons, 6th series, vol. 439, col. 302 (9 November 2005).
“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.”
Tony Blair (born 1953) first seen 2006 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Cahal Milmo, "Blair reveals an unexpected influence: Trotsky", The Independent (3 March 2006).
“This is not a clash between civilisations. It is a clash about civilisation.”
Tony Blair (born 1953) first seen 2006 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Foreign Policy speech at Reuters Headquarters, London (21 March 2006).
“To state a timetable now would simply paralyze the proper working of government, put at risk the changes we are making for Britain and damage the country.”
Tony Blair (born 1953) first seen 2006 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Prime Minister's monthly press conference May 2006, Prime Minister's website.
“He is honey.”
Tony Blair (born 1953) first seen 2006 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Andrew Porter, "Blair and Bush on tape, The Sun (18 July 2006).
“I condemn utterly these brutal and shameful attacks. There can never be any justification for terrorism. Our thoughts are with the victims and their families. We stand united with India, as the world's largest democracy who share our values and determination to defeat terrorism in all its forms.”
Tony Blair (born 1953) first seen 2006 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: July 2006, on the 2006 Mumbai train bombings, quoted in Mumbai bombs: Reaction in quotes
“We can only protect liberty by making it relevant to the modern world.”
Tony Blair (born 1953) first seen 2006 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: In full: Tony Blair's speech, BBC News online. Final speech to the Labour Party Annual Conference as Leader (26 September 2006).
“He wants a Bill of Rights for Britain drafted by a Committee of Lawyers. Have you ever tried drafting anything with a Committee of Lawyers?”
Tony Blair (born 1953) first seen 2006 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Attacking David Cameron, during his Labour Party Conference speech (26 September 2006).
“In this day and age if you've got the technology then it's vital to use that technology to track people down. The number on the database should be the maximum number you can get.”
Tony Blair (born 1953) first seen 2006 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Remarks while touring the Forensic Science Service, concerning the police DNA database (23 October 2006).
“That's the art of leadership. To make sure that what shouldn't happen, doesn't happen.”
Tony Blair (born 1953) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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.”
Tony Blair (born 1953) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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.”
Tony Blair (born 1953) first seen 2007 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Callaghan lecture in Cardiff (11 April 2007), quoted in Patrick Wintour and Vikram Dodd, 'Blair blames spate of murders on black culture', The Guardian (12 April 2007) and 'Tony Blair – 2007 Callaghan Memorial Speech', …
“Economic inequality is a factor and we should deal with that, but I don't think it's the thing that is producing the most violent expression of this social alienation. I think that is to do with the fact that particular youngsters are being brought up in a setting that has no rules, no discipline, no proper framework around them.”
Tony Blair (born 1953) first seen 2007 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Callaghan lecture in Cardiff (11 April 2007), quoted in Patrick Wintour and Vikram Dodd, 'Blair blames spate of murders on black culture', The Guardian (12 April 2007)
“So, of course, the visions are painted in the colours of the rainbow, and the reality is sketched in duller tones of black and white and grey. But I ask you to accept one thing. Hand on heart, I did what I thought was right. I may have been wrong. That is your call. But believe one thing, if nothing else. I did what I thought was right for our country.”
Tony Blair (born 1953) first seen 2007 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Full text of Tony Blair's resignation speech", Times Online (10 May 2007).
“The British are special. The world knows it. In our innermost thoughts we know it. This is the greatest nation on earth. So it has been an honour to serve it. I give my thanks to you, the British people, for the times that I have succeeded, and my apologies to you for the times I have fallen short. But good luck.”
Tony Blair (born 1953) first seen 2007 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Full text of Tony Blair's resignation speech", Times Online (10 May 2007).
“The fear of missing out means today's media, more than ever before, hunts in a pack. In these modes it is like a feral beast, just tearing people and reputations to bits. But no-one dares miss out.”
Tony Blair (born 1953) first seen 2007 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Lecture on Our Nation's Future - Public Life, Reuters (12 June 2007).
“The reason we are finding it hard to win this battle is that we're not actually fighting it properly. We're not actually standing up to these people and saying, "It's not just your methods that are wrong, your ideas are absurd. Nobody is oppressing you. Your sense of grievance isn't justified.”
Tony Blair (born 1953) first seen 2007 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Blair launches stinging attack on 'absurd' British Islamists" The Observer (1 July 2007).
“Some may belittle politics but we who are engaged in it know that it is where people stand tall. Although I know that it has many harsh contentions, it is still the arena that sets the heart beating a little faster. If it is, on occasions, the place of low skulduggery, it is more often the place for the pursuit of noble causes. I wish everyone, friend or foe, well. That is that. The end.”
Tony Blair (born 1953) first seen 2007 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Hansard, Last official words as Prime Minister, said at Prime Minister's Questions (27 June 2007).
“Analogies with the past are never properly accurate and analogies especially with the rising fascism can be easily misleading, but in pure chronology I sometimes wonder if we're not in the 1920s or 1930s again... This ideology now has a state, Iran, that is prepared to back and finance terror in the pursuit of destabilising countries whose people wish to live in peace.”
Tony Blair (born 1953) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I think this has gone beyond, as it were, Al Qaida as a specific network. I mean, this is -- there is no central command in this ideology, the way that, you know, you would normally describe one unit of -- that leads and operation. It's not like that. But the fact is that they are loosely linked by an ideology. They have very strong links with each other, right across the national boundaries. And you know, would be no surprise to me if the people that were engaged in the Mumbai attacks had links with other countries as well.”
Tony Blair (born 1953) first seen 2008 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: CNN (7 December 2008).
“Brexit reminds me a bit of the Mel Brooks comedy Blazing Saddles where the sheriff, at one point during it, holds a gun to his own head and says: "If you don't do what I want I'll blow my brains out" - you want to watch that one of the 26 (other EU members) don't say just go ahead.”
Tony Blair (born 1953) first seen 2013 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: David Cameron promises in/out referendum on EU BBC News (23 January 2013)
“The battles of this century … are less likely to be the product of extreme political ideology—like those of the 20th century—but they could easily be fought around the questions of cultural or religious difference.”
Tony Blair (born 1953) first seen 2015 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: As attributed without citation in Awake! magazine (anonymous), January 2015
“They [voters] don't want a situation where women can't talk about being women. I have this conversation quite often with Labour people and I know their inclination is to walk round this issue, but I am telling you to go right into it and resolve it in a way that makes it absolutely clear where you stand.”
Tony Blair (born 1953) first seen 2022 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Tony Blair: 'Voters don't want a situation where women can't talk about being women'", The Times (11 February 2022).
“Too often the sensible people aren't radical, and the radical people aren't sensible.”
Tony Blair (born 1953) first seen 2026 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: The Labour Party Is Playing With Fire Over Its Future and the Future of the Country" (26 May 2026), Tony Blair Institute for Global Change.
“The news bulletins of the last week have been like hammer blows struck against the sleeping conscience of the country, urging us to wake up and look unflinchingly at what we see... A solution to this disintegration doesn't simply lie in legislation. It must come from the rediscovery of a sense of direction as a country and most of all from being unafraid to start talking once again about the values and principles we believe in and what they mean for us, not just as individuals but as a community. We cannot exist in a moral vacuum. If we do not learn and then teach the value of what is right and what is wrong, then the result is simply moral chaos which engulfs us all...”
Tony Blair (born 1953) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Tony Blair: Has the Prime Minister secured even the minimal guarantee from the Euro-rebels that, on a future vote of confidence on Europe, they will support him? John Major: I can sense the concern in the right hon. Gentleman's voice. Perhaps he would like to tell me whether he has received the support of the 50 MPs who defied his Front Bench over Maastricht; of the 40 who defied him over European finance; on a single currency, where the right hon. Member for Copeland (Dr. Cunningham) was in dispute with the deputy leader of the Labour party; and on clause IV, which half his, I think he called them, infantile MEPs want to keep. He does not, and his deputy leader does one day and does not the next. These are party matters. Will the right hon. Gentleman tell us what his position is? Tony Blair: There is one very big difference—I lead my party, he follows his.”
Tony Blair (born 1953) first seen 1995 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Prime Minister's Question Time (25 April 1995).
“Socialism for me was never about nationalization or the power of the state, not just about economics or even politics. It is a moral purpose to life, a set of values, a belief in society, in co-operation, in achieving together what we cannot achieve alone. It is how I try to live my life, how you try to live yours—the simple truths—I am worth no more than anyone else, I am my brother’s keeper, I will not walk by on the other side. We are not simply people set in isolation from one another, face to face with eternity, but members of the same family, same community, same human race. This is my socialism and the irony of all our long years in opposition is that those values are shared by the vast majority of the British people.”
Tony Blair (born 1953) first seen 2018 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: As quoted in "Socialism is So Hot Right Now" (17 September 2018), by Jonah Goldberg, Commentary
“There have been the most terrible, shocking events taking place in the United States of America within the last hour or so, including two hijacked planes being flown deliberately into the World Trade Center. I am afraid we can only imagine the terror and the carnage there and the many, many innocent people who will have lost their lives. I know that you would want to join with me in sending the deepest condolences to President Bush and to the American people on behalf of the British people at these terrible events.This mass terrorism is the new evil in our world today. It is perpetrated by fanatics who are utterly indifferent to the sanctity of human life and we, the democracies of this world, are going to have to come together to fight it together and eradicate this evil completely from our world.”
Tony Blair (born 1953) first seen 2001 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Speech to the Trades Union Congress (11 September 2001), shortly after the World Trade Center terrorist attack had begun.
“It has been an unrelenting, but, I have to accept, at least partly successful campaign to persuade Britain that Europe is a conspiracy aimed at us, rather than a partnership designed for us and others to pursue our national interest properly in a modern, interdependent world. It is right to confront this campaign head on. Provided that the treaty embodies the essential British positions, we shall agree to it as a Government. Once agreed – either at the June Council, which is our preference, or subsequently – Parliament should debate it in detail and decide upon it. Then, let the people have the final say.”
Tony Blair (born 1953) first seen 2004 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: House of Commons Statement on the publication White Paper on Europe (20 April 2004).
“But with this change in the 1960s came something else, not necessarily because of it but alongside it. It was John Stuart Mill who articulated the modern concept that with freedom comes responsibility. But in the 1960's revolution, that didn't always happen. Law and order policy still focussed on the offender's rights, protecting the innocent, understanding the social causes of their criminality. All through the 1970s and 1980s, under Labour and Conservative Governments, a key theme of legislation was around the prevention of miscarriages of justice. Meanwhile some took the freedom without the responsibility. The worst criminals became better organised and more violent. The petty criminals were no longer the bungling but wrong-headed villains of old; but drug pushers and drug-abusers, desperate and without any residual moral sense. And a society of different lifestyles spawned a group of young people who were brought up without parental discipline, without proper role models and without any sense of responsibility to or for others.”
Tony Blair (born 1953) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Sir Michael Spicer: What are the characteristics of old Labour that he dislikes so much? Tony Blair: I am afraid that the Hon. Gentleman will have to repeat that. Sir Michael Spicer: What are the characteristics of old Labour that he dislikes so much? Tony Blair: Basically, that it never won two successive terms of Government and, perhaps, that it never put the Conservative party flat on its back, which is where it is now. Thankfully, we are running an economy with low inflation, low mortgage rates and low unemployment; fortunately, we are doing a darn sight better than the Government of whom the right hon. Gentleman was a Member, who had—I thank him for allowing me to mention this—interest rates at 10 per cent. for four years, 3 million unemployed and two recessions. Whether it is old Labour or new Labour, it is a darn sight better than the Tories.”
Tony Blair (born 1953) first seen 2005 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: In the House of Commons (26 January 2005).
“We should engage with the new de facto power and help make the new government make the changes necessary, especially on the economy, so they can deliver for the people. The events that led to the Egyptian army's removal of President Mohamed Morsi confronted the military with a simple choice: intervention or chaos. Seventeen million people on the streets are not the same as an election. But it as an awesome manifestation of power. I am a strong supporter of democracy. But democratic government doesn't on its own mean effective government. Today efficacy is the challenge. This is a sort of free democratic spirit that operates outside the convention of democracy that elections decide the government. It is enormously fuelled by social media, itself a revolutionary phenomenon. And it moves very fast in precipitating crisis. It is not always consistent or rational. A protest is not a policy, or a placard a programme for government. But if governments don't have a clear argument with which to rebut the protest, they're in trouble.”
Tony Blair (born 1953) first seen 2013 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Blair justifying the Egyptians army actions on removing Morsi" The Guardian (6 July 2013).
“I pay tribute to the campaign [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.”
Tony Blair (born 1953) first seen 2017 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Interviewed on Today (BBC Radio 4 (11 November 2017).