Tony Blair Quotes

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 art of leadership is saying no, not saying yes. It is very easy to say yes.

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 want my son to grow up in a place where the people are more powerful than the government and not the other way around.

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.

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.

Global warming is too serious for the world any longer to ignore its danger or split into opposing factions on it.

September 11 was, and remains, above all an immense human tragedy. But September 11 also posed a momentous and deliberate challenge not just to America but to the world at large. The target of the terrorists was not only New York and Washington but the very values of freedom, tolerance and decency which underpin our way of life.

A simple way to take measure of a country is to look at how many want in.. And how many want out.

Politics is about listening and it's about leading.

One of the paradoxes of globalization is that, in the developing world, we've seen massive reductions in property.

I didn't come into politics to change the Labour Party. I came into politics to change the country.

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.

The emphasis placed by more and more companies on corporate social responsibility, symbolises the recognition that prosperity is best achieved in an inclusive society.

If there are further steps to European integration, the people should have their say at a general election or in a referendum.

I can only go one way. I've not got a reverse gear.

Anywhere, anytime 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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

My teachers used to call me a failure

...we must support and protect individuals and companies engaged in life saving medical research

Education is the best economic policy there is.

This is not a battle between the United States of America and terrorism, but between the free and democratic world and terrorism.

It is not an arrogant government that chooses priorities, it's an irresponsible government that fails to choose.

I want to see a publicly-owned railway, publicly accountable.

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.

Mine is the first generation able to contemplate the possibility that we may live our entire lives without going to war or sending our children to war.

Moreover, for decades we have been prone to far greater swings in the economic cycle than our continental counterparts. It has been boom and bust....Under this Government, there is an entirely new framework for economic management in place.

Of particular importance to us is the recognition... that what we want is a Europe of nations, not a federal super-state.

Real progress cannot be measured by money alone. We must ensure that economic growth contributes to our quality of life, rather than degrading it

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.

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.

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 intelligence is clear: (Saddam) continues to believe his WMD programme is essential both for internal repression and for external aggression.

What I don't know is whether there is a way politically that you can beat away these, some of these populist movements because in the end I don't think they really do provide answers. They ride the anger. But they don't really have the answers. Or whether this is an experiment we're just going to have to go through first.

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.

Our tolerance is part of what makes Britain, Britain. Conform to it; or don't come here.

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.

As I have said throughout, I have no doubt that they will find the clearest possible evidence of Saddam's weapons of mass destruction.

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.

So actually I only got a mobile phone the day after I left being Prime Minister.

Those who wish to cause religious conflict are small in number but often manage to dominate the headline.

How do we deal with not just the acts of violence, but the extremist ideology that lies behind them? Because though the numbers of fanatics that go and join and kill for a group like ISIS are measured in tens of thousands, those that support the wider ideology, I'm afraid, you measure in tens of millions or more.

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.

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.

Stirring is OK. It just depends what happens in the end.

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.

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.