Which are your favorite Tony Blair quotes?
Tony Blair is a British politician. He is best known for formerly serving as the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom and Leader of the Labour Party.
Upon his resignation, Blair was notably appointed ‘Special Envoy of the Quartet on the Middle East’. He currently serves as the executive chairman of his non-profit organization, the ‘Tony Blair Institute for Global Change’.
Blair started his career in politics right after he finished his law studies at ‘St. John’s College’. He then became involved in Labour politics and was successfully elected ‘Member of Parliament for Sedgefield’.
During his time serving as prime minister, Blair is well known for many of his policies having reflected a centrist ‘Third Way’ political philosophy.
We’ve put together this collection of the best Tony Blair quotes:
50 Tony Blair Quotes That He Actually Said
1. “Labour is the party of law and order in Britain today. Tough on crime, tough on the causes of crime.” – Tony Blair
2. “Conflict is not inevitable, but disarmament is… everyone now accepts that if there is a default by Saddam the international community must act to enforce its will.” – Tony Blair
3. “Those who wish to cause religious conflict are small in number but often manage to dominate the headline.” – Tony Blair
4. “I feel like everyone else in this country today. I am utterly devastated.” – Tony Blair
5. “The public think the politicians don’t know or care about their lives; and the politicians feel misunderstood.” – Tony Blair
6. “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.” – Tony Blair
7. “I didn’t come into politics to change the Labour Party. I came into politics to change the country.” – Tony Blair
8. “Sometimes it is better to lose and do the right thing than to win and do the wrong thing.” – Tony Blair
9. “By nature, I am a unifier. I am a builder of consensus. I don’t believe in sloppy compromise. But I do believe in bringing people together.” – Tony Blair
10th of 50 Tony Blair Quotes
10. “I say to the Taliban: surrender the terrorists, or surrender power. It’s your choice.” – Tony Blair
11. “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.” – Tony Blair
12. “Human progress has never been shaped by commentators, complainers or cynics.” – Tony Blair
13. “If you are trying to make a difficult decision and you’re weighing up the pros and cons, you have frank conversations. Everybody knows this in their walk of life.” – Tony Blair
14. “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.” – Tony Blair
15. “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.” – Tony Blair
16. “Be a doer and not a critic.” – Tony Blair
17. “My office is on Twitter. I don’t tweet myself – at least, not intentionally, but I probably should do.” – Tony Blair
18. “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.” – Tony Blair
19. “The art of leadership is saying no, not saying yes. It is very easy to say yes.” – Tony Blair
20th of 50 Tony Blair Quotes
20. “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.” – Tony Blair
21. “The threat from Saddam Hussein and weapons of mass destruction – chemical, biological, potentially nuclear weapons capability – that threat is real.” – Tony Blair
22. “The great advantage of the Lib Dems is precisely that no-one knows what they stand for.” – Tony Blair
23. “I can only go one way. I’ve not got a reverse gear.” – Tony Blair
24. “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.” – Tony Blair
25. “I believe Mrs. Thatcher’s emphasis on enterprise was right.” – Tony Blair
26. “I may find Saddam Hussein’s regime abhorrent – any normal person would – but the survival of it is in his hands.” – Tony Blair
27. “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.” – Tony Blair
28. “Education is the best economic policy there is.” – Tony Blair
29. “However much I dislike the idea of abortion, you should not criminalize a woman who, in very difficult circumstances, makes that choice.” – Tony Blair
30th of 50 Tony Blair Quotes
30. “It is not an arrogant government that chooses priorities, it’s an irresponsible government that fails to choose.” – Tony Blair
31. “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.” – Tony Blair
32. “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.” – Tony Blair
33. “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.” – Tony Blair
34. “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.” – Tony Blair
35. “I think the journey for a politician goes from wanting to please all the people all the time to a political leader that realizes, in the end, his responsibility is to decide. And when he decides, he divides.” – Tony Blair
36. “Leaders lead but in the end, it’s the people who deliver.” – Tony Blair
37. “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.” – Tony Blair
38. “I have long believed this interdependence defines the new world we live in.” – Tony Blair
39. “Once his wife goes to sleep it takes a minor nuclear explosion to wake her.” – Tony Blair
40th of 50 Tony Blair Quotes
40. “Whatever the dangers of the action we take, the dangers of inaction are far, far greater.” – Tony Blair
41. “In April 1991, after the Gulf war, Iraq was given 15 days to provide a full and final declaration of all its WMD.” – Tony Blair
42. “I would’ve loved to have been in a band, but sadly I just wasn’t good enough.” – Tony Blair
43. “I cannot think of any circumstances in which a government can go to war without the support of parliament.” – Tony Blair
44. “But I am an optimist about Britain, and the difference between an optimist and a pessimist is not that the optimist believes the world is wonderful and the pessimist believes it’s beset by challenges; the difference is the pessimist believes we will be defeated by them; the optimist thinks the challenges can be overcome.” – Tony Blair
45. “People know where I stand in the Labour party and what I believe in.” – Tony Blair
46. “But as I always say to people I’m essentially a public service person.” – Tony Blair
47. “In Downing Street, they called me ‘Boss’. Civil servants would always call me ‘Prime Minister’.” – Tony Blair
48. “Choice dependent on wealth; those are the Tory words.” – Tony Blair
49. “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.” – Tony Blair
50. “So actually I only got a mobile phone the day after I left being Prime Minister.” – Tony Blair
Summary
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Which are your favorite Tony Blair quotes? Leave a comment below.
