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What Is Obviously Unfair Is That The Half Of The Population That Doesn't Go To University That's Often On Lower Incomes Pays More Taxes In Order To Send Other People To University, Without Them, You Know, Contributing.

-Tony Blair

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What Is Obviously Unfair

Tony Blair

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What Is Obviously Unfair Is That The Half Of The Population That Doesn't Go To University That's Often On Lower Incomes Pays More Taxes In Order To Send Other People To University, Without Them, You Know, Contributing.

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One Thing I'm Not Sure Of - And It's A Very Open Question - Is Whether The Type Of Politics That I Represent Really Has Had Its Day Or Not. Now I Obviously Believe Passionately It Hasn't, That It's Still The Answer And Not The Problem, And, You Know, The Evidence Points Both Ways.

It's Not That Tens Of Millions Of People All Want To Be Violent. But They Share The Worldview That Then, At Its Extreme, Gives Rise To The Violence. And In My View, This Is Why This Is Such A Global Problem.

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.

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.

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

There Are Two Outstanding Issues In Democratic Politics These Days. One Is The Relationship With The Media, Which Is Now 24/7, And Operates With A Completely Different Intensity Than Even 15 Or 20 Years Ago. How Do We Have A Proper Conversation Between Leaders And Country When It's Moderated Sometimes In A Very Partisan And Inflammatory Way? And The Second Thing Is The Effectiveness Of Our Democracy. How Do We Get The Right Gene And Talent Pool In Politics?

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The Appalling Details Of The Campaign Of Intimidation - Which Include Grave-robbing - Show The Depths To Which The Animal Extremists Are Prepared To Stoop.

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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.

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.

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.

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

Nothing Is More Important To England's Arrangements For The World Cup Than The State Of David Beckham's Foot.

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

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

At The Heart Of My Politics Has Always Been The Value Of Community, The Belief That We Are Not Merely Individuals Struggling In Isolation From Each Other, But Members Of A Community Who Depend On Each Other, Who Benefit From Each Other's Help, Who Owe Obligations To Each Other. From That Everything Stems: Solidarity, Social Justice, Equality, Freedom.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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The World Is A Better Place With Saddam In Prison Not In Power.

I Think All Of Our Experience With Iraqi President Saddam Hussein Teaches Us That Diplomacy Has Very Little Chance Of Working Unless It Is Clear To Him That If Diplomacy Does Not Work, That The Threatened Reality Of Force Is There.

This Mass Terrorism Is The New Evil In Our World Today

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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.

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Mass Destruction

They Could Have Been Removed. They Could Have Been Hidden. They Could Have Been Destroyed.

Could Have Been

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

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Mass Destruction

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Mass Destruction

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Free Enterprise

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.

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

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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.

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 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.

If You Are Trying To Take A Difficult Decision And You're Weighing Up The Pros And Cons, You Have Frank Conversations. Everybody Knows This In Their Walk Of Life.

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

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.

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

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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.

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

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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.

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 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!

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

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.'

Enough Of Talking: It Is Time Now To Do.

My View Is That You Still, In Order To Win From The Labour Perspective, Have To Have A Strong Alliance With Business As Well As The Unions. You Have Got To Be Very Much In The Centre Ground On Things Like Public Sector Reform.

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.

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

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

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

You Get These Insurgent Movements Of Populism, Left And Right. An Insurgent Movement Of Populism Took My Political Party Over In The Uk For Example.

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

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

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.

The Understanding Which Has Driven New Labour's Reform Is To Put The Individual Citizen - The Patient, The Parent, The Pupil, The Law Abiding Citizen - At The Centre Of Each Public Service, With The Service Reformed To Meet Their Individual Requirements

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

I've Never Ruled Out The Possibility Of Going Back Into Public Service.

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.

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.

People Should Go About Their Daily Lives, To Work, To Live, To Travel, To Shop, To Do The Things People Did In The Same Way As They Did Them Before 11 September.

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.

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.

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.

The Full Horror Of What Has Happened In The United States Earlier Today Is Now Becoming Clearer. It Is Hard Even To Contemplate The Utter Carnage And Terror Which Has Engulfed So Many Innocent People. We've Offered President Bush And The American People Our Solidarity, Our Profound Sympathy, And Our Prayers. But It Is Plain That Citizens Of Many Countries Round The World, Including Britain, Will Have Been Caught Up In This Terror.

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

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

My Teachers Used To Call Me A Failure

Education, Education, Education

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.

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

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

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

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

I Think Conspiracy Theories Have Gotten More And More Close To The Mainstream Because What You've Got Is A Fragmentation Of The Media, Where The Media Becomes Much More Polarized Today, Left And Right.

There Are Unquestionably Links Between Al-qaida And Iraq.

Their Barbarism Will Stand As Their Shame For All Eternity.

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.

What We Want To See Is The Development Of Human Rights And Greater Democracy, Not Just Because It Is Our System But Because We Think That's The Best Way That Economic And Political Development Go Hand In Hand.

The Biological Agents We Believe Iraq Can Produce Include Anthrax, Botulinum, Toxin, Aflatoxin And Ricin. All Eventually Result In Excruciatingly Painful Death.

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

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 Art Of Leadership Is Saying No, Not Saying Yes. It Is Very Easy To Say Yes.

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.

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

Sovereignty Rests With Me As An English Mp And That's The Way It Will Stay.

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.

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.

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

Europe And America

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

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

Whatever The Short Term Clashes Between Protecting The Environment And Eradicating Poverty, Medium Term And Long Term It Is Clear. Unless We Grow Sustainably, At Some Point We Face Catastrophe

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.

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.

Bill Clinton Has Been A True Leader Of The Western World. He Has Been A Friend And A Counsel To Me And Other Leaders Right Around The World.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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

We've Seen The Reality Of Saddam's Regime: His Thugs Prepared To Kill Their Own People, The Parading Of Prisoners Of War And Now The Release Of Those Pictures Of Executed British Soldiers.

You Know, One Of The Things I've Learnt Since Coming Out Of Office Is How Much Easier It Is To Give The Advice Than Take The Decision. I Mean, You Know, It's Tough.

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

Mass Destruction

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

I Think I Made The Wrong Career Choice

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?

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.

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 Are Going To Expand Enormously -- Our Economy, Our Consumption, Over The Years To Come ... But The Consequences Of That On Emissions Are Going To Be Severe Unless We Change Direction.

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.

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Chelsea Handler

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