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In Downing Street They Called Me 'boss'. Civil Servants Would Always Call Me 'prime Minister'.

-Tony Blair

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In Downing Street They

Tony Blair

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In Downing Street They Called Me 'boss'. Civil Servants Would Always Call Me 'prime Minister'.

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Politics May Be The Art Of The Possible; But, At Least In Life, Give The Impossible A Go.

Our Party: New Labour. Our Mission: New Britain. New Labour New Britain.

I'm Afraid That's In The Nature Of Modern Politics - It's As Much Conducted By Abuse As Argument.

There Are Solutions That Are Proper, But They Require The Painstaking And Difficult Work Of Building Alliances And Also Being Prepared To Analyze The Problem Realistically. And Exactly The Same Thing Is Going On My Side Of The Atlantic As Is Going On Your Side Of The Atlantic.

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.

People Divide Into Groups Where They Talk To Each Other, But Don't Talk Across The Divide. And Yet Most Of The Challenges We Face In The World Today Are Challenges That Are To Do With Trade, With Technology, With How You Make Sure That People Are Properly Educated, Reform Your Health Care System.

Our Ultimate Weapon Is Not Our Guns But Our Beliefs ... Ours Are Not Western Values. They Are The Universal Values Of The Human Spirit And Anywhere, Any Time, Ordinary People Are Given The Chance To Choose, The Choice Is The Same. Freedom Not Tyranny. Democracy Not Dictatorship. The Rule Of Law Not The Rule Of The Secret Police. The Spread Of Freedom Is The Best Security For The Free. It Is Our Last Line Of Defence And Our First Line Of Attack.

Immigration Was Probably The Driving Thing Behind Brexit.

You've Got To Listen But You've Also Got To Lead.

There Are Millions Of Young Children Being Educated To A Very Narrow-minded View Of Religion. And It's Out Of That Education Of Large Numbers Of Young People That You Then Get This Extremism.

Every So Often, I Feel I Should Graduate To Classical Music, Properly. But The Truth Is, I'm More Likely To Listen To Rock Music.

In April 1991, After The Gulf War, Iraq Was Given 15 Days To Provide A Full And Final Declaration Of All Its Wmd.

I Am A Pretty Straight Sort Of Guy.

A Lot Of The Politics That Is Going On Left And Right At The Moment Is More About A Protest, Which We Should Respond To. It's Not Often About A Policy. And That's Why What You Get Is This Strange Coalition Of Different Views Of What The Future Should Be, Coming Together In Alliance To Protest Against The Status Quo.

Today The Impulse Towards Interdependence Is Immeasurably Greater. We Are Witnessing The Beginnings Of A New Doctrine Of International Community.

In No Relationship At The Top Of Any Walk Of Life Is It Always Easy, Least Of All In Politics Which Matters So Much And Which Is Conducted In Such A Piercing Spotlight.

Self-interest And Mutual Interest Are Inextricably Linked. National Interests Can Best Be Advanced Through Collective Action, ... Calculate Not Just The Human Misery Of The Poor Themselves. Calculate Our Loss: The Aid, The Lost Opportunity To Trade, The Short-term Consequences Of The Multiple Conflicts; The Long-term Consequences On The Attitude To The Wealthy World Of Injustice And Abject Deprivation Amongst The Poor.

It Is Not An Arrogant Government That Chooses Priorities, It's An Irresponsible Government That Fails To Choose.

The Emphasis Placed By More And More Companies On Corporate Social Responsibility, Symbolises The Recognition That Prosperity Is Best Achieved In An Inclusive Society.

I Think The Journey For A Politician Goes From Wanting To Please All The People All The Time, To A Political Leader That Realises In The End His Responsibility Is To Decide. And When He Decides, He Divides.

There Is Good Evidence That Last Year's European Heat Wave Was Influenced By Global Warming. It Resulted In 26,000 Premature Deaths And Cost $13.5bn.

When Europe And America Stand Together The World Is A Better And More Prosperous Place.

Europe And America

I Always Say, When They Ask Me About American Politics, Is For You Guys To Decide Who You Elect.

American Politics

The Kaleidoscope Has Been Shaken. The Pieces Are In Flux. Soon They Will Settle Again. Before They Do, Let Us Re-order This World Around Us.

The Best Philanthropy Is Not Just About Giving Money But Giving Leadership. The Best Philanthropists Bring The Gifts That Made Them Successful-the Drive, The Determination, The Refusal To Accept That Something Can't Be Done If It Needs To Be Into Their Philanthropy.

We Expected, I Expected To Find Actual Usable, Chemical Or Biological Weapons After We Entered Iraq. But I Have To Accept, As The Months Have Passed, It Seems Increasingly Clear That At The Time Of Invasion, Saddam Did Not Have Stockpiles Of Chemical Or Biological Weapons Ready To Deploy.

There Are Big Questions About The Sort Of Skills You Need In Modern Government Today. You Put Politicians In Charge Of Billions Of Dollars With Absolutely No Training And Very Little Support System Around Them. It's An Extraordinary Thing.

Support Systems

I Still Think The World Is Better Off And Safer Without Saddam Hussein.

I Think We've, Again, Got To Be Extremely Careful; Otherwise We'll Misunderstand What's Going On In Iraq And In Syria Today. Of Course, You Can't Say That Those Of Us Who Removed Saddam In 2003 Bear No Responsibility For The Situation In 2015.

...we Must Support And Protect Individuals And Companies Engaged In Life Saving Medical Research

Real Progress Cannot Be Measured By Money Alone. We Must Ensure That Economic Growth Contributes To Our Quality Of Life, Rather Than Degrading It

I Think The Center Ground Have Got To Become The People Of Change Again And Not The Guardians Of The Status Quo. And That Is The Weakness It Comes To In Our Campaign. You Can See It In Your Politics, You Can See It Everywhere.

After The Terrible Events Of Last Week, There Is Still The Shock And Disbelief; There Is Anger; There Is Fear; But There Is Also, Throughout The World, A Profound Sense Of Solidarity; There Is Courage; There Is A Surging Of The Human Spirit.

Terrible Events

Personally, I Have Already Turned Down The Downing St Thermostat By 1 Degree

Sometimes It Is Better To Lose And Do The Right Thing Than To Win And Do The Wrong Thing.

The Free Enterprise System Has Not Failed; The Financial System Has Failed.

Free Enterprise

I Also, As I Think Most People Do, Have A Healthy Instinct That If We Upset The Balance Of Nature, We Are In All Probability Going To Suffer A Reaction. With World Growth, And Population As It Is, This Reaction Must Increase.

The Donald Trump Phenomenon In The U.s. Is Mirrored Completely By The Brexit Phenomenon In The U.k. It's Very Similar Forces. And What Is Interesting To Me Is There Are Two Different Groups That Come Together, Who Don't Really Agree With Each Other, But Have Come Together In Unity Against, If You Like, What Is Perceived As The Status Quo, Or - And Certainly What Is A More Center-right Or Center-left Type Of Politics.

The Threat From Saddam Hussein And Weapons Of Mass Destruction - Chemical, Biological, Potentially Nuclear Weapons Capability - That Threat Is Real.

Mass Destruction

My Faith Foundation Works To Bring About A Greater Respect And Understanding Between Different Faiths. We Basically Work With Six Popular Religions In The World Which Are The Three Abrahamic Religions, Hinduism And Buddhism And Sikhism.

I Don't Concede It At All That The Intelligence At The Time Was Wrong.

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.

What We Have Got To Do Now Is Use This Event, The Resignation Of The Whole Commission, To Drive Through Root And Branch Reform.

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.

Genetic Modification Has Many Different Areas, For Example In Medicine, And Britain Is At The Leading Edge Of This New Technology. I Don't Know, But People Tell Me, It Could Indeed By The Leading Science Of The 21st Century. All I Say To People Is: 'just Keep An Open Mind And Let Us Proceed According To Genuine Scientific Evidence.'

One Of The Things That I've Been Doing Over The Past Few Years Is Reevaluating My Own Powers Of Political Analysis.

The Trouble Is Nowadays That Parts Of The Media Operate In A Very Partisan Way. There's No Point In Complaining About It, That's The Way It Is. But Let's Be Clear, A Lot Of It Is Driven By The Views Of A Pretty Small Number Of People, Rather Than A Normal Standard Of Journalism.

My Course Has Never Been About Triangulation, And Neither, Really, Is Bill Clinton's. It's Not - It's About Applying Your Values To The Future In A Practical And Unblinking Way, And That Is An Ideological View That Is Every Bit As Strong As Views From The Left Or From The Right.

Education, Education, Education

I Do Believe That If You Reach A Just And Fair Settlement Between The Israelis And The Palestinians It Will Have A Massive Influence On Countering Extremism. Which Is Not To Say That The Israel-palestinian Situation Is The Source Of The Problem, But It Is Very Potent Fuel.

We Expected, I Expected To Find Actual Usable, Chemical Or Biological Weapons After We Entered Iraq.

My View Is That We're Entering Into A Situation Of Enormous Instability, Insecurity, Fragility.

Human Progress Has Never Been Shaped By Commentators, Complainers Or Cynics.

Where Radical Islamism Is Going To Be A Factor, It's Going To Be Very, Very Tough.

We Have Taken A Situation In The U.k. Because Of Concerns, For Example, Over Immigration And Other Things, So Britain Now Is On A Path Out Of Europe.

I Can't Stand Politicians Who Wear God On Their Sleeves.

You Wouldn't Be Human If You Didn't Feel Both A Sense Of Responsibility And A Deep Sadness For Those Who Have Lost Their Lives.

I Think, There Is A Possibility - I Would Say It's More Than That - That We Will Come To A View Of Foreign Policy Going Forward That Learns From The Past But Doesn't Get Captured By It.

We Have A Situation Where We Are Rich Really As A World Overall, And Yet We Have The Capacity To Destroy Ourselves, Either Through Nuclear Weapons Or Through Environmental Degradation, And We Allow The Life Chances Of Hundreds Of Millions Of People To Be Destroyed Because We Haven't Found The Will To Tackle It

But As I Always Say To People I'm Essentially A Public Service Person.

In Retrospect, The Millennium Marked Only A Moment In Time. It Was The Events Of September 11 That Marked A Turning Point In History, Where We Confront The Dangers Of The Future And Assess The Choices Facing Humankind.

Be A Doer And Not A Critic.

I Will Do What It Takes To Help Ed Miliband Win General Election.

Leaders Lead But In The End It's The People Who Deliver.

There Can Be No Freedom For Africa Without Justice; And No Justice Without Declaring War On Africa's Poverty, Disease And Famine With As Much Vehemence As We Remove The Tyrant And The Terrorist.

Our Task Is Not To Fight Old Battles, But To Show That There Is A Third Way, A Way Of Marrying Together An Open Competitive Society And Successful Economy With A Just And Decent Society.

All The Way Through, We Have Been Willing To Take Risks, Provided At The End Of It We Can Get A Decent Lasting Settlement In Northern Ireland

However Much I Dislike The Idea Of Abortion, You Should Not Criminalize A Woman Who, In Very Difficult Circumstances, Makes That Choice.

I Have Never Pretended To Be A Great House Of Commons Man, But I Pay The House The Greatest Compliment I Can By Saying That, From First To Last, I Never Stopped Fearing It.

The Socialism Of Centralised State Control Of Industry And Production, Is Dead. It Misunderstood The Nature And Development Of A Modern Market Economy. It Failed To Recognise That The State And Public Sector Can Become A Vested Interest Capable Of Oppression As Much As The Vested Interests Of Wealth And Capital. It Was Based On A False View Of Class That Became Too Rigid To Explain Or Illuminate The Nature Of Class Division Today.

The Threat Today Is Not That Of The 1930s. It's Not Big Powers Going To War With Each Other. The Ravages Which Fundamentalist Political Ideology Inflicted On The 20th Century Are Memories. The Cold War Is Over. Europe Is At Peace, If Not Always Diplomatically.

We Have No Plans To Increase Tax At All.

People Always Think American Politics Is Very Different, But Usually It Is A Predictor Of What Happens In The Politics Elsewhere.

Some May Belittle Politics, But We Know - Who Are Engaged In It - That It Is Where People Stand Tall. And, Although I Know It Has Its Many Harsh Contentions, It Is Still The Arena That Sets The Heart Beating A Little Faster. And If It Is, On Occasions, The Place Of Low Skulduggery, It Is More Often The Place For The Pursuit Of Noble Causes.

But The World Is Ever More Interdependent. Stock Markets And Economies Rise And Fall Together. Confidence Is The Key To Prosperity. Insecurity Spreads Like Contagion. So People Crave Stability And Order.

I Want To See A Publicly-owned Railway, Publicly Accountable.

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.

We Need To Develop The New Green Industrial Revolution That Develops The New Technologies That Can Confront And Overcome The Challenge Of Climate Change; And That Above All Can Show Us Not That We Can Avoid Changing Our Behaviour But We Can Change It In A Way That Is Environmentally Sustainable.

I Think Social Media Is A Revolutionary Phenomenon All In Itself.

One Thing, Change, Is What Everyone Says. The Question Is, What Type Of Change? What's The Right Change To Produce A Different Outcome For The People Left Behind By Globalization?

She Was The People's Princess And That Is How She Will Stay, How She Will Remain In Our Hearts And Our Memories For Ever.

Can We Be Sure That Terrorism And Wmd Will Join Together? If We Are Wrong, We Will Have Destroyed A Threat That, At Its Least Is Responsible For Inhuman Carnage And Suffering. That Is Something I Am Confident History Will Forgive. But If Our Critics Are Wrong And We Do Not Act, Then We Will Have Hesitated In Face Of This Menace, When We Should Have Given Leadership. That Is Something History Will Not Forgive.

What The Commission That Myself And Leon Panetta Is Trying To Do Is Analyze This In Two Respects. First Of All, What's The Right Military Response And Security Response?

This Mass Terrorism Is The New Evil In Our World Today

Stirring Is Ok. It Just Depends What Happens In The End.

And The Problem Is, I Can Apologise For The Information That Turned Out To Be Wrong, But I Can't, Sincerely At Least, Apologise For Removing Saddam.

My View Always Is That We Should Learn The Lessons, Both Of The Last Sort Of 50 Years Of Policy-making And It Is Possible To Get To A Foreign Policy That Is Engaged And Active Without Going Back To Where We Were In The Post-9/11 World.

I Mean, You Can Agree Or Disagree With Iraq Or Afghanistan, But By The Way, Now The Great Campaigning Cause Out There Is The Absence Of Intervention In Syria. And Then In Libya, It's Partial Intervention. And That Doesn't Really Explain Why Some Countries That Have Literally Nothing To Do With The Interventions In The Middle East End Up Getting Targeted.

Enough Of Talking: It Is Time Now To Do.

Examine The Legacy That We Inherited And What We Did. We Had Boom-and-bust Economics And A Doubled National Debt.

I Have Long Believed This Interdependence Defines The New World We Live In.

Interdependence

Surely We Have The Wit And Will To Develop Economically Without Despoiling The Very Environment We Depend Upon

Ideals Survive Through Change. They Die Through Inertia In The Face Of Challenge.

There's A Huge Wave Of Anti-establishment Feeling. There's An Enormous Amount Of Anger. And It's Collapsing Governments And Political Movements Across The World Right Now.

I'm A Labour Politician, But, You Know, I Can See Decent Tories With Good Ideas.

I'm Not Prepared To Have Someone Tell Me There Is Only One View Of What Europe Is. Europe Isn't Owned By Any Of Them, Europe Is Owned By All Of Us.

There Is Nothing Like Waking Up At Six In The Morning And Changing A Baby's Nappy To Bring You Face To Face With Life's Reality.

We Know The Problems, And We Know The Solution: Sustainable Development. The Issue Is The Political Will.

The Spread Of Freedom Is The Best Security For The Free.

I See The Koran Very Much As An Outsider. It Stands In The Great Prophetic Tradition Of Trying To Return People To The Basic Principles Of Spirituality. Taken For Its Time, It Was An Extraordinarily Progressive Declaration Of Principle. It Is Also Extraordinary For A Christian To Read: For Example, There Are More References To Mary Than In The Gospels. The Tragedy Is That It Has Been So Warped And Misapplied.

We Are All Internationalists Now, Whether We Like It Or Not...

We Can Only Protect Liberty By Making It Relevant To The Modern World.

Lord Cranborne Told The Leader Of The Opposition To 'back Me Or Sack Me' - He Succeeded In Doing Both.

I Don't Think It's Surprising We Will Have To Look For Them. I'm Confident That When The Iraq Survey Group Has Done Its Work We Will Find What's Happened To Those Weapons Because He Had Them.

One Of The Paradoxes Of Globalization Is That, In The Developing World, We've Seen Massive Reductions In Property.

If You've Got Communities That Feel They've Been Left Behind, If You've Got - As You Do In Britain At The Moment, You Have Communities That Believe They're Being Changed By Immigration, That They Don't Have Job Opportunities, And That They're Disregarded And That They Don't - They've Got No Stake In A Future Which Embraces Globalization, You've Got To Address That Issue.

We Can Debate This Or That Aspect Of Climate Change, But The Reality Is That Most People Now Accept Our Climate Is Indeed Subject To Change As A Result Of Greenhouse Gas Emissions.

I Believe The Bicentenary Offers Us A Chance Not Just To Say How Profoundly Shameful The Slave Trade Was - How We Condemn Its Existence Utterly And Praise Those Who Fought For Its Abolition - But Also To Express Our Deep Sorrow That It Could Ever Have Happened And Rejoice At The Better Times We Live In Today.

In Government You Carry Each Hope; Each Disillusion. And In Politics It's Always About The Next Challenge.

If We Want To Contrast What We Have Done In The Past Few Years On Delivery With What The Right Hon. And Learned Gentleman Delivered, Let Us Remember The Interest Rates At 10 Per Cent. To 15 Per Cent., The 1.5 Million Fewer People In Work, The Boom And The Bust And The Borrowing At 8 Per Cent.

We Fall For... The Theories Of Betrayal Very Easily, And One Of The Things That's Always Depressed Me About The Left, Ever Since I Started In Politics, Is Their Ability To Imbibe The Propaganda Of The Right And Regurgitate It To The Left.

Our Determination To Defend Our Values And Way Of Life Is Greater Than Their (terrorists) Determination To Cause Death And Destruction To Innocent People In A Desire To Impose Extremism Upon The World.

You Only Require Two Things In Life: Your Sanity And Your Wife.

The Relationship Between Britain And The Us Is Fantastically Important When Confronting Terrorism.

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!'

All The Evidence Here, For Example, In Britain, Is That Migrants, Particularly From The Rest Of Europe, Who Come Here Contribute Far More In Taxes.

You Don't Have To Keep Looking At The Future Foreign Policy In Terms, Simply, Of The Past.

I Feel Like Everyone Else In This Country Today. I Am Utterly Devastated.

There Are Those People Who Basically Don't Like Those Who Are Different. Now, That Is A Prejudice And It's A Prejudice That's Dangerous Because In The World Today, The World Works Through Connectivity. It Works Through Going Across The Boundaries, But Faith And Culture And Race In A Nation.

I Think The Single Most Important Political Distinction Today Is Actually Between Open-minded Versus Closed-minded, And That's Why I Think This Crosses The Boundaries Of Traditional - Center-right And Center-left Have Much More In Common With Each Other Right Now Than The Right Does With The Center-right, And The Left Does With The Center-left.

So Actually I Only Got A Mobile Phone The Day After I Left Being Prime Minister.

If There Is One Thing Britain Should Learn From The Last 50 Years, It Is This: Europe Can Only Get More Important For Us.

Make The Wrong Choices Now And Future Generations Will Live With A Changed Climate, Depleted Resources And Without The Green Space And Biodiversity That Contribute Both To Our Standard Of Living And Our Quality Of Life

We Know British Muslims, In General, Abhor The Actions Of The Extremists.

You Know, The Media And Politicians Are Always Gonna Be In A Bit Of Tension With One Another And Probably Most Of The Time That's Healthy And Indeed Even Creative. But It's Where - It's Really When News Organisations Are Used As Kind Of Instruments Of Politics That It Gets Tricky.

You've Got Problems In Central Asia. And You've Got Problems Within Our Own Communities Back Home. So If We End Up Saying, Look, This Has Nothing To Do With Islam Or It's Got No Connection With That Broader Question, Then We Look, Frankly, As If We're In Denial About The Problem. And The Interesting Thing In The Middle East Is That They Have Absolutely No Problem There In Identifying That As Islamist Extremism And Calling It That.

I Think What Happened With 9/11 Is That People Sort Of Felt That It Came From Nowhere. Whereas I Think Now We Understand The Roots Are Very Deep. I Say It's Like Revolutionary Communism, Something That Is Going To Have To Be Knocked Out Over A Very Long Period Of Time. This Strain Of Extremism Continues To Be Very Strong, Whether It's In Afghanistan, Or Somalia Or Yemen, Or Any Of These Places.

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.

I Think The People Like Myself Who Are In The Center Ground Of Politics And Who Think That Center Left And Center Right Can Cooperate And Work Together. Who Don't Like This Sort Of Insurgent Populism Because We Think It's Not Really Going To Deliver For The People, I Think There's A Big Responsibility On Us In The Center To Get Our Act Together. And To Work Out Radical But Serious Solutions To The Problems People Face.

Real Integrity Means An Answer. It Doesn't Just Mean - It Doesn't Mean Riding The Anger. And This Is Very Difficult To Do.

Ask Me My Three Main Priorities For Government, And I Tell You: Education, Education And Education.

But In Terms Of How People Live Together, How We Minimize The Prospects Of Conflict And Maximize The Prospects Of Peace, The Place Of Religion In Our Society Today Is Essential.

I Do Not Want To End Up With An American Style Of Politics, With Us Going Out There Beating Our Chest About Our Faith. Politics And Religion - It Is Not That They Do Not Have A Lot In Common, But If [religion] Ends Up Being Used In The Political Process, I Think That Is A Bit Unhealthy.

My Dad Was A Militant Atheist, Or Is A Militant Atheist. My Mum Was Sort Of Bought Up In A Religious Family Because She Was A Protestant From Ireland But Wasn't Especially Religious.

I Didn't Come Into Politics To Change The Labour Party. I Came Into Politics To Change The Country.

Obviously It Is Right That The Afghans Take Responsibility For Their Own Future In The End, But They Need To Know And Feel That We Are There As Partners For Them If They Are Prepared To Make The Necessary Changes. But We Should Be In No Doubt As To Why We Are In Afghanistan. We Ended Up There Because Terrorism Hatched There Erupted Thousands Of Miles Away In New York On Sept. 11.

If We Don't Act Now, Then We Will Go Back To What Has Happened Before And Then Of Course The Whole Thing Begins Again And He Carries On Developing These Weapons And These Are Dangerous Weapons, Particularly If They Fall Into The Hands Of Terrorists Who We Know Want To Use These Weapons If They Can Get Them.

The British Are Special. The World Knows It. In Our Innermost Thoughts We Know It. This Is The Greatest Nation On Earth.

That's The Art Of Leadership. To Make Sure That What Shouldn't Happen, Doesn't Happen.

Yes, I Feel I've Got Something To Say. If People Want To Listen, That's Great, And If They Don't, That's Their Choice.

Most Of The Problems Of Government Come From People Being Overwhelmed By The Size And Scale Of What They Have To Do.

Terrorism Brings The Reprisal; The Reprisal Brings The Additional Hatred; The Additional Hatred Breeds The Additional Terrorism, And So On.

One Of The Most Important Things In Politics Is You've Got To Keep Your Mind Infinitely Curious And Alive To What Is Happening Differently.

Their Barbarism Will Stand As Their Shame For All Eternity.

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.

My Teachers Used To Call Me A Failure

In Downing Street They Called Me 'boss'. Civil Servants Would Always Call Me 'prime Minister'.

Because I Happen To Believe That The Best Policy Solutions Lie In The Center Ground, Then I Want To See, How Does The Center Revitalize Itself? How Does It Develop The Policy Agenda For The Future? And How Do We Link Up People Who Have The Same Basic Ideas And Attachments To The Same Basic Values Across The World?

I Think Everyone's Had Their Pound Of Flesh And Now It's Time To Move On.

Time To Move On

Saddam Hussein's Regime Is Despicable, He Is Developing Weapons Of Mass Destruction, And We Cannot Leave Him Doing So Unchecked. He Is A Threat To His Own People And To The Region And, If Allowed To Develop These Weapons, A Threat To Us Also.

Mass Destruction

The Big Issue Of Our Time Is Trying To Deal With Extremism Based On A Perversion Of Religion And How You Get Peaceful Coexistence Between People Of Different Faiths And Cultures.

Choice Dependent On Wealth; Those Are The Tory Words.

Climate Change Is Probably The Greatest Long-term Challenge Facing The Human Race.

What People Should Understand Is That I Adore The Labour Party.

Do I Know I'm Right? Judgements Aren't The Same As Facts. Instinct Is Not Science. I'm Like Any Other Human Being As Fallible And As Capable Of Being Wrong. I Only Know What I Believe.

Any Action Taken Will Be Against The Terrorist Network Of Bin Laden.... As For The Taleban, They Can Surrender The Terrorists Or Face The Consequences - And Again In Any Action The Aim Will Be To Eliminate Their Military Hardware, Cut Off Their Finances, Disrupt Their Supplies, Target Their Troops, Not Civilians.

I Mean, I Went To A Church School When I Was Younger And Imbibed A Certain Amount Of Religion Then But It Was Really In University That I Got Interested In Religion And Politics At The Same Time. I Don't Think As If It Were One Moment Of Conversion But My Spiritual Journey Really Began Then.

The Purpose Of Terrorism Lies Not Just In The Violent Act Itself. It Is In Producing Terror. It Sets Out To Inflame, To Divide, To Produce Consequences Which They Then Use To Justify Further Terror.

I Can Only Go One Way. I've Not Got A Reverse Gear.

When I Started Out As Prime Minister I Wanted To Please All The People All The Time. By The End I Was Wondering If I Pleased Any Of The People Any Of The Time.

For Me, 9/11 Was A Game Changer. It Altered My Perception Of The Security Threat We Faced. I Took The Position That Britain Should Be Shoulder To Shoulder With The U.s. It Was A Big Decision; I Didn't Take It Lightly, Or In Ignorance Of Its Consequences. It's A Big Commitment For A Country To Give, But I Believed It Was The Right Thing To Do.

Whatever The Dangers Of The Action We Take, The Dangers Of Inaction Are Far, Far Greater.

I Think I Made The Wrong Career Choice

Our Tolerance Is Part Of What Makes Britain, Britain. Conform To It; Or Don't Come Here.

If You're Interested In Politics And You're Not Following It, Then It's A Little Bizarre.

My Office Is On Twitter. I Don't Tweet Myself - At Least, Not Intentionally, But I Probably Should Do.

Well, We Definitely Need A Strong And Clear And Assertive America. That's For Sure. But You've Always Got To Build Alliances. And So It's Very Important That We Are Able To Build Those Alliances. And Where We Don't Do What In A Way To Extremists Want Us To Do, Which Is To Make This Into A Battle Between The West And Islam - It's Not. This Isn't A Clash Between Civilizations. It's About Whether The Values Of Tolerance And Respect For Difference Prevail.

Before People Crow About The Absence Of Weapons Of Mass Destruction, I Suggest They Wait A Bit.

Mass Destruction

Saddam Was A Threat, That The Threat Had To Be Dealt With.

It's Not A Burning Ambition For Me To Make Sure That David Beckham Earns Less Money.

There Are People Who Are Anxious About Immigration For Reasons That Are Perfectly Sensible. They Think It's Uncontrolled. They Think It's, Therefore, Arbitrary In Its Consequences, And There Are Some Communities Affected Much More Deeply Than Others.

Fifteen Years Ago, If You Said Business Will Help Save The Environment People Would Have Laughed At You. Today, I Believe That Is A Serious Proposition.

There Is No Meeting Of Minds, No Point Of Understanding With Such Terror. Just A Choice: Defeat It Or Be Defeated By It. And Defeat It We Must.

I Think It's Important For People Like Me To Evaluate And Reevaluate.

There Should Not Be A Party Within A Party.

The Moment You Stigmatize A Whole Group Of People - For Example, Muslims - Then, Obviously, You Make The Decent, Law-abiding Muslims Feel As If They're Under Threat In Some Way Or That Their Legitimacy, As Members Or Citizens Of Society, Is Brought Into Question.

Retreat Might Give Us A Moment Of Respite But Years Of Repentance At Our Weakness Would, I Believe, Follow.

What We Also Know Is We Haven't Found Them [weapons Of Mass Destruction] In Iraq - Now Let The Survey Group Complete Its Work And Give Us The Report... They Will Not Report That There Was No Threat From Saddam, I Don't Believe.

Mass Destruction

If People In The End Think That You Can't Do Something In A Way Which Is Acceptable Then It Won't Fly. The Only Way You Get Anything Like This Done Is If People Think, 'i Understand Why It Is Being Done.'

The Iraqi Elections Struck A Blow To The Heart Of Global Terrorism.

The Spanish Pm Rang Me To Say: 'i Have The Support Of Only 4 Per Cent Of The People.' I Said, 'crikey, That's Even Less Than Think Elvis Presley Is Still Alive.'

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.

Immigration Is Good For A Country. It Brings Fresh Energy.

There's A Great Frustration With The System. There's A Lot Of Anger Out There. But In The End, You Need Answers And Not Just Anger. But Anyway, Let Me Not Trespass Too Much Into Your Politics. I've Got Enough Problems In My Own Politics.

If You're Living In A Community That's Become Fragmented And Left Behind, There's Not Proper Investment In It And So On, In The End, The Answer Is To Make Sure That We Go And We Help Those Communities, We Educate The People Properly, We Build The Necessary Infrastructure Of Support For People.

King Fahd Was A Man Of Great Vision And Leadership Who Inspired His Countrymen For A Quarter Of A Century As King. He Led Saudi Arabia Through A Period Of Unparalleled Progress And Development.

When My Parents Were Growing Up The World's Population Was Under Three Billion. During My Children's Lifetime, It Is Likely To Exceed Nine Billion. You Don't Need To Be An Expert To Realise That Sustainable Development Is Going To Become The Greatest Challenge We Face This Century

Sometimes People Say To Me, 'well, What Was The Difference Between Kosovo, Which Was A Successful Intervention, And Iraq And Afghanistan That Have Been So Difficult?' And The Answer Is Perfectly Simple. In Kosovo, You Have, After The Removal Of The Loss Of Its Regime, You Had A Process Of Political And Economic Reconstruction That Took Its Part Without The Intervention Of Terrorism. If You Had The Intervention Of Terrorism, By The Way, It Would Have Been Extremely Difficult There - But We Didn't.

Society Works By Putting Opportunity And Responsibility Together.

I Think People Think Their Incomes Have Been Flat Lining For A Long Period Of Time. They Feel That The Next Generation's Opportunities Are Not Going To Be Improvement. So And I Also Think That Social Media Then Allows Insurgent Movements To Gain Scale At Speed.

It [the Intelligence Service] Concludes That Iraq Has Chemical And Biological Weapons, That Saddam Has Continued To Produce Them, That He Has Existing And Active Military Plans For The Use Of Chemical And Biological Weapons, Which Could Be Activated Within 45 Minutes, Including Against His Own Shia Population; And That He Is Actively Trying To Acquire Nuclear Weapons Capability.

Intelligence Services

It Is Absurd To Say In Respect Of Any Intelligence That It Is Infallible, But If You Ask Me What I Believe, I Believe The Intelligence Was Correct, And I Think In The End We Will Have An Explanation.

Now You May Do It Badly, You May Do It Well, Some People Like You, Some People Hate You, All The Rest Of It - But You Have Got A Real Motivating Life Purpose. [on Being Prime Minister

I Had No Intention Of Returning Into The British Political Debate, Really At All, Even Though I've Obviously Got Very Strong Views On It, Until Brexit Happened, Because I Think Brexit Is A Destiny-changing Decision For My Country.

Times Are Tough But They Are Tough Because The Government Is Trying To Do The Right Thing, Whether On Public Service Reform, Education, Health, Anti-social Behaviour And Welfare, Or In Counter-terrorism.

Values Unrelated To Modern Reality Are Not Just Electorally Hopeless, The Values Themselves Become Devalued. They Have No Purchase On The Real World.

I Do Not Seek Unpopularity As A Badge Of Honour, But Sometimes It Is The Price Of Leadership And The Cost Of Conviction.

Our Aim Is Not Just An Educated Nation But An Intelligent One

I Think Most People Who Have Dealt With Me Think I'm A Pretty Straight Sort Of Guy, And I Am.

The Jolt That Tony Blair Received 35,000ft Above The Pacific Ocean Was Not Normal Turbulence.

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Johnny Knoxville

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