Quotes from Tony Benn

I've got four lovely children, ten lovely grandchildren, and I left parliament to devote more time to politics, and I think that what is really going on in Britain is a growing sense of alienation. People don't feel anyone listens to them.

Normally, people give up parliament because they want to do more business or spend more time with family. My wife said 'why don't you say you're giving up to devote more time to politics?'. And it is what I have done.

Age does take it out of you, and I haven't the energy I had before. Sometimes I have breakfast and sit in this chair, and I wake up and it is lunchtime. In the past, the idea of sleeping through a morning would have horrified me, but you have to accept the limitations that old age imposes on you.

Broadcasting is really too important to be left to the broadcasters.

Britain today is suffering from galloping obsolescence.

You have to try to build support around causes. It is uniting to campaign on a single issue, and it is never just a single issue; it's always more than that.

I think if you're going to be committed to doing anything, you really have to care about it, and I suppose that is a romantic idea.

The New York Times said, "There are two superpowers in the world: the United States and the world peace movement."

The peace movement here is the biggest thing in human history.

Hope is the fuel of progress and fear is the prison in which you put yourself.

Through talk, we tamed kings, restrained tyrants, averted revolution

Some of the jam we thought was for tomorrow, we've already eaten

I see myself as an old man and an unqualified teacher to the nation. I think being a teacher is probably the most important thing you can be in politics.

I am not a reluctant peer but a persistent commoner

In the end, the tragedy of Harold Wilson was that you couldn't believe a word he said

No medieval monarch in the whole of British history ever had such power as every modern British Prime Minister has in his or her hands. Nor does any American President have power approaching this

I think democracy is the most revolutionary thing in the world, because if you have power you use it to meet the needs of you and your community.

When you get to No 10, you've climbed there on a little ladder called 'the status quo'. And when you are there, the status quo looks very good

There is good and bad in all of us and the Church uses the idea of original sin to control us by saying that, if we do not obey the bishops, we will rot in Hell.

The way a government treats refugees is very instructive.

I am on the right wing of the middle of the road and with a strong radical bias.

I'm not frightened about death. I don't know why, but I just feel that at a certain moment your switch is switched off, and that's it. And you can't do anything about it.

I think there are two ways in which people are controlled. First of all frighten people and secondly, demoralise them.

The House of Lords is the British Outer Mongolia for retired politicians.