Quotes from Tony Blair

Sometimes it is better to lose and do the right thing than to win and do the wrong thing.

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.

A simple way to take measure of a country is to look at how many want in.. And how many want out.

Of particular importance to us is the recognition... that what we want is a Europe of nations, not a federal super-state.

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.

What people should understand is that I adore the Labour party.

People know where I stand in the Labour party and what I believe in.

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.

The blunt truth about the politics of climate change is that no country will want to sacrifice its economy in order to meet this challenge.

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.

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.

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.

The class war is over.

There can be no freedom for Africa without justice; and no justice without declaring war on Africa's poverty, disease and famine with as much vehemence as we remove the tyrant and the terrorist.

The view we took at the time and we take it now is that the war was justified legally because he [Saddam Hussein] remained in breach of UN resolutions.

We've seen the reality of Saddam's regime: his thugs prepared to kill their own people, the parading of prisoners of war and now the release of those pictures of executed British soldiers.

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

Sometimes and in particular dealing with a dictator, the only chance of peace is a readiness for war.

...we must support and protect individuals and companies engaged in life saving medical research

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.

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

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

I have long believed this interdependence defines the new world we live in.

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.