Quotes By Tony Blair

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 may find Saddam Hussein's regime abhorrent - any normal person would - but the survival of it is in his hands.

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.

However much I dislike the idea of abortion, you should not criminalize a woman who, in very difficult circumstances, makes that choice.

Be a doer and not a critic.

The threat from Saddam Hussein and weapons of mass destruction - chemical, biological, potentially nuclear weapons capability - that threat is real.

In April 1991, after the Gulf war, Iraq was given 15 days to provide a full and final declaration of all its WMD.

In government you carry each hope; each disillusion. And in politics it's always about the next challenge.

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.

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.

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

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.

The spread of freedom is the best security for the free.

The public think the politicians don't know or care about their lives; and the politicians feel misunderstood.

You only require two things in life: your sanity and your wife.

Values unrelated to modern reality are not just electorally hopeless, the values themselves become devalued. They have no purchase on the real world.

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.

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.

Education is the best economic policy there is.

Our new world rests on order. The danger is disorder. And in today's world, it can now spread like contagion.

I would've loved to have been in a band, but sadly I just wasn't good enough.

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.

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 cannot think of any circumstances in which a government can go to war without the support of parliament.

Leaders lead but in the end it's the people who deliver.

And just as the terrorist seeks to divide humanity in hate, so we have to unify it around an idea. And that idea is liberty.

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

Labour is the party of law and order in Britain today. Tough on crime, tough on the causes of crime.

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.

There is no way you're going to have an event like 9/11 and expect things to remain the same. They killed 3,000 people in New York on that day, and if they could have they would've killed 300,000.