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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

-Tony Blair

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We Have A Situation

Tony Blair

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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

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The Fear Of Missing Out Means That 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.

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.

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

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I Abhor Saddam's Regime, But The Basis Has To Be Disarmament.

There Are Literally Thousands Of Sites. As I Was Told In Iraq, Information Is Coming In The Entire Time, But It Is Only Now That The Iraq Survey Group Has Been Put Together That A Dedicated Team Of People, Which Includes Former Un Inspectors, Scientists And Experts, Will Be Able To Go In And Do The Job Properly.

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.

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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.

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

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

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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.

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.

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

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.

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.

Climate Change Is The World's Greatest Environmental Challenge. It Is Now Plain That The Emission Of Greenhouse Gases, Associated With Industrialization And Economic Growth...is Causing Global Warming At A Rate That Is Unsustainable.

I Think It Is Having Answers And Not Simply Anger, And Providing Solutions That People Believe Will Change Their Lives In A Radical Way But Do It In A Way That's Sensible.

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

This Mass Terrorism Is The New Evil In Our World Today

I Don't Think There Is A Way Politically To Beat "insurgent Movement Of Populism".

As So Often Before, On The Courage And Determination Of British Men And Women, Serving Our Country, The Fate Of Many Nations Rests.

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Genuine Concern

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I Shall Not Rest Until, Once Again, The Destinies Of Our People And Our Party Are Joined Together Again In Victory At The Next General Election Labour In Its Rightful Place In Government Again.

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

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

We Have No Plans To Increase Tax At All.

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.

I Learnt A Lot In Government, And I've Learnt A Lot Since Leaving Government. The Kind Of Journey Of Being In Government Is That You Start At Your Most Popular And Least Capable, And You End At Your Most Capable And Least Popular.

There Are Unquestionably Links Between Al-qaida And Iraq.

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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.

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.

Nato's Got A Vital Role To Play. It's Very Important That We Protect Nato.

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

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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.

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

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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.

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Fanaticism Is Not A State Of Religion But A State Of Mind.

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I Haven't Got The Time To Sit Here Arguing With Someone Whose Idea Of A Coherent Foreign Policy Is What Comes Up In Google When You Type In Peace!

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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.

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I Am A Pretty Straight Sort Of Guy.

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Ah Yes, Liberal Democrats Unified As Ever In Opportunism And In Error.

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

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I'm One Of These People That, Once You Have Had Your Election And You Have Elected Your Candidate, Let's See What Actually Happens.

The Great Advantage Of The Lib Dems Is Precisely That No-one Knows What They Stand For.

I'm Not Asking You To Agree With Me, But At Least Open Your Mind.

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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.

Deportation Is A Decision Taken By The Home Secretary Under Statute, The New Grounds Will Include Fostering Hatred, Advocating Violence To Further A Person's Beliefs, Or Justifying Or Validating Such Violence.

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

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

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.

We In A Sense Went For The Bernie Sanders Model Ok? Now We're Also In Turmoil As A Result Of This Result.

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

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.

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

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People Know Where I Stand In The Labour Party And What I Believe In.

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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.

I Actually Did Trouble To Read Marx First Hand. I Found It Illuminating In So Many Ways; In Particular, My Perception Of The Relationship Between People And The Society In Which They Live Was Irreversibly Altered.

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 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.

And Just As The Terrorist Seeks To Divide Humanity In Hate, So We Have To Unify It Around An Idea. And That Idea Is Liberty.

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

Time To Move On

I'm The F***ing Prime Minister!

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

I Have Absolutely No Doubt At All That We Will Find Evidence Of Weapons Of Mass Destruction Programmes.

Mass Destruction

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

Europe And America

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

The Problem Is Some Of The Populism On Both The Far Left And The Far Right, It Can Make A Tweet But Not Make A Policy. And, You Know, When You Are Dealing With Issues That Are As Important And Serious As This, I Understand Why People Search For Simple Solutions.

What Is True About (ex-iraq Survey Group Head) David Kay's Evidence, And This Is Something I Have To Accept, And Is One Of The Reasons Why I Think We Now Need A New Inquiry - It Is True David Kay Is Saying We Have Not Found Large Stockpiles Of Actual Weapons.

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.

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

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

I'm An Avowed Centrist, And I Believe That - Centrism Is Often - It's Almost The Wrong Word To Use, Because It's Often Seen As Sort Of Splitting The Difference Between Right And Left.

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.

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.

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

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

The First Big Choice: A Government With The Strength To Deliver Stability, Or A Government That Takes The Country Back To Boom And Bust.

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

What I'm Really More Interested In Doing - Because I Think, In A Way That's Kind Of Obvious - And You Can See, Look Into Austria - You've Got A Far-right Candidate Who May Become The President Because He's In A Close-run Race.

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.

There Will Be No Peace In Our World Without An Understanding Of The Place Of Religion Within It.

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

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.

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

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

Global Warming Is Too Serious For The World Any Longer To Ignore Its Danger Or Split Into Opposing Factions On It.

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.

I Can Stand Here Today, Leader Of The Labour Party, Prime Minister, And Say To The British People: You Have Never Had It So ... Prudent.

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.

What I Will Say To People Is What You Require Are Rules And Not Prejudices.

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

Choice Dependent On Wealth; Those Are The Tory Words.

I May Find Saddam Hussein's Regime Abhorrent - Any Normal Person Would - But The Survival Of It Is In His Hands.

If What The Science Tells Us About Climate Change Is Correct, Then Unabated It Will Result In Catastrophic Consequences For Our World.

I Think It Is Vitally Important To Study History. If We Are Going To Lead Britain Safely Into The Future, It Is Essential That We Understand Our Country's Historical Roots. If We Can Learn The Lessons Of The Past, We Will Be Able To Avoid Making Mistakes In The Future.

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.

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 And Fight It Together.

If There Are Further Steps To European Integration, The People Should Have Their Say At A General Election Or In A Referendum.

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

Education Is The Best Economic Policy There Is.

Economic Policy

The Money From Iraqi Oil Will Be Yours - It Will No Longer Be Used By Saddam Hussein For His Own Benefit.

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 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.

If I'd Proposed Solving The Pension Problem By Compulsory Euthanasia For Every Fifth Pensioner I'd Have Got Less Trouble For It.

Look, I Am Very Competitive.

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

Understand The Causes Of Terror? Yes, We Should Try, But Let There Be No Moral Ambiguity About This: Nothing Could Ever Justify The Events Of September 11 And It Is To Turn Justice On Its Head To Pretend It Could

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

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.

Terrorist Threats Are Not Happening Just In This Country, But In Every European Country And Every Country Across The Globe. As A Result Of That, We Do Sometimes Have To Take Measures We Would Rather Not Take In Order To Give Us The Security We Need.

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

Interdependence

I Still Think There Is A Residual Desire Amongst The Majority Of The Public To Be Given A Proper Solution.

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

American Politics

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?

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.

Power Without Principle Is Barren, But Principle Without Power Is Futile. This Is A Party Of Government, And I Will Lead It As A Party Of Government.

There Has To Be Certainty And There Has To Be Clarity. There Can't Be Ambiguity, .. This Has To Be Certain, Clear In All Respects From All The Parties So Nobody Is In Any Doubt About What The Future Holds.

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.

The Intelligence Is Clear: (saddam) Continues To Believe His Wmd Programme Is Essential Both For Internal Repression And For External Aggression.

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

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