Aneurin Bevan Quotes (25 Quotes)

The worst thing I can say about democracy is that it has tolerated the Right Honorable Gentleman for four and a half years.

I read the newspapers avidly. It is my one form of continuous fiction.

Reading is not a duty, and has consequently no business to be made disagreeable.

Freedom is the by-product of economic surplus.

Fascism is not in itself a new order of society. It is the future refusing to be born.

He seems determined to make a trumpet sound like a tin whistle.

I know that the right kind of political leader for the Labour Party is a desiccated calculating machine.

He has the lucidity which is the by-product of a fundamentally sterile mind. . . . He does not have to struggle. . . with the crowded pulsations of a fecund imagination. On the contrary he is almost devoid of imagination.

This island is almost made of coal and surrounded by fish. Only an organizing genius could produce a shortage of coal and fish in Great Britain at the same time.

It is an axiom, enforced by all the experience of the ages, that they who rule industrially will rule politically.

The purpose of getting power is to be able to give it away.

It is not possible to create peace in the Middle East by jeopardizing the peace of the world.

Poor fellow, he suffers from files.

The Tories, every election, must have a bogy man. If you haven't got a programme, a bogy man will do.

Politics is a blood sport.

I would rather be kept alive in the efficient if cold altruism of a large hospital than expire in a gush of warm sympathy in a small one.

This island is made mainly of coal and surrounded by fish. Only an organizing genius could produce a shortage of coal and fish at the same time.

Stand not too near the rich man lest he destroy thee - and not too far away lest he forget thee.

I know that the right kind of leader for the Labour Party is a kind of desiccated calculating machine.

Reactionary: a man walking backwards with his face to the future.

No amount of cajolery, and no attempts at ethical or social seduction, can eradicate from my heart a deep burning hatred for the Tory Party. So far as I am concerned they are lower than vermin.

I have never regarded politics as the arena of morals. It is the arena of interest.

The Prime Minister has an absolute genius for putting flamboyant labels on empty luggage.

This is my truth, tell me yours.

You're not an M.P., you're a gastronomic pimp.