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21 " The Prime Minister keeps me on around here because I make him look good. "
― Tony Benn
22 " Clement Attlee, who looked like a sadistic sanitary inspector... "
23 " On the National Executive sat Charles Clarke, looking like a rather manky chimpanzee with his unkempt beard, jug ears and his air of surly aggression. "
― Tony Benn , The Benn Diaries, 1940-1990
24 " I think democracy is the most revolutionary thing in the world. "
25 " You can’t have an economic structure worldwide whereby capital can move but labour can’t, and if you’re going to follow this, then labour must be able to come to wherever it’s more profitable. These are the people that are being kept out by the Asylum Bill, on the grounds that they are economic migrants and all of that, but of course all the money that’s invested abroad is economic migrant money. "
― Tony Benn , Free at Last! Diaries, 1991-2001
26 " But if there is hope, it lies in ordinary working people. When you put it in words it sounds reasonable: it is when you look at the human beings passing you on the pavement that it becomes an act of faith. "
― Tony Benn , Arguments for Socialism
27 " If there's one thing I've learned, it's that life is one crushing defeat after another until you just wish Kinnock was dead. "
28 " I pledge no fudge of compromise', said Arthur Scargill, 'and no carrots of redundancy'. That would make a nice epitaph for him. 'He pledged no fudge'. "
― Tony Benn , The End of an Era: Diaries, 1980-1990
29 " A letter today from a Mrs Gladys Freeman, 45 Sebastopol Terrace, Blackpool. 'Sir, reference the room you had here during the party conference season. Well, we know what it is. We know who done it. But for heaven's sake tell us where it is! "
― Tony Benn , Out of the Wilderness: Diaries, 1963-1967
30 " Howay yabastaaz I'll t-t-take the f-f-fuckin lorrayaz! Am fuckin al reet me man. Why aye! "
― Tony Benn , Letters to my Grandchildren: Lessons for the Future
31 " Humans and animals inhabit the planet together and we have to find a way to take the cruelty out of it. "
32 " In December 1970, Aristotle Onassis tries to buy the Belfast ship-yard Harland and Woolf. Seven union leaders spend the night in Claridges at his expense. One of them says later that his bed was too soft. "
33 " ... the usual problem of the reformer [is] that we have to run the economic system to protect our people who are now locked into it while we change the system. And if you run it without seeking to change it then you are locked in the decay of the system, but if you simply pass resolutions to change it without consulting those who are locked in the decaying system, then you become irrelevant to the people you seek to represent… We cannot content ourselves with speaking only to ourselves; we must raise these issues publicly and involve the community groups because we champion what they stand for. We must win the argument, broaden the base of membership, not only to win the election but to generate the public support to carry the policies through. "