Top 35 Aneurin Bevan Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “The NHS will last as long as there are folk left with faith to fight for it.”

— Aneurin Bevan

2. “No society can legitimately call itself civilized if a sick person is denied medical aid because of lack of means.”

— Aneurin Bevan

3. “You don’t have to gaze into a crystal ball when you can read an open book.”

— Aneurin Bevan

4. “How can wealth persuade poverty to use its political freedom to keep wealth in power? Here lies the whole art of Conservative politics in the twentieth century.”

— Aneurin Bevan

5. “Discontent arises from a knowledge of the possible, as contrasted with the actual.”

— Aneurin Bevan

6. “Not even the apparently enlightened principle of the ‘greatest good for the greatest number’ can excuse indifference to individual suffering. There is no test for progress other than its impact on the individual.”

— Aneurin Bevan

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

— Aneurin Bevan

8. “We know what happens to people who stay in the middle of the road. They get run down.”

— Aneurin Bevan

9. “Soon, if we are not prudent, millions of people will be watching each other starve to death through expensive television sets.”

— Aneurin Bevan

10. “You call that statesmanship. I call it an emotional spasm.”

— Aneurin Bevan

11. “Politics is a blood sport.”

— Aneurin Bevan

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

— Aneurin Bevan

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

— Aneurin Bevan

14. “What should be the glory of the profession is that a doctor should be able to meet his patients with no financial anxiety.”

— Aneurin Bevan

15. “The language of priorities is the religion of socialism.”

— Aneurin Bevan

16. “Damn it all you can’t have the crown of thorns and the thirty pieces of silver.”

— Aneurin Bevan

17. “Virtue is its own punishment.”

— Aneurin Bevan

18. “Stand not too near the rich man lest he destroy thee – and not too far away lest he forget thee.”

— Aneurin Bevan

19. “Why should I question the monkey when I can question the organ grinder.”

— Aneurin Bevan

20. “Freedom is the by-product of economic surplus.”

— Aneurin Bevan

21. “Trade unions are islands of anarchy in a sea of chaos.”

— Aneurin Bevan

22. “There is only one hope for mankind – and that is democratic Socialism.”

— Aneurin Bevan

23. “The Prime Minister wins debate after debate and loses battle after battle. The country is beginning to say that he fights debates like a war and the war like a debate.”

— Aneurin Bevan

24. “I welcome this opportunity of pricking the bloated bladder of lies with the poniard of truth.”

— Aneurin Bevan

25. “Poor fellow, he suffers from files.”

— Aneurin Bevan

26. “In Germany democracy died by the headman’s axe. In Britain it can be by pernicious anaemia.”

— Aneurin Bevan

27. “If freedom is to be saved and enlarged, poverty must be ended. There is no other solution.”

— Aneurin Bevan

28. “He brings to the fierce struggle of politics the tepid enthusiasm of a lazy summer afternoon at a cricket match.”

— Aneurin Bevan

29. “We could manage to survive without money changers and stockbrokers. We should find it harder to do without miners, steel workers and those who cultivate the land.”

— Aneurin Bevan

30. “I am not going to spend any time whatsoever in attacking the Foreign Secretary. If we complain about the tune, there is no reason to attack the monkey when the organ grinder is present.”

— Aneurin Bevan

31. “There can be no immaculate conception of socialism.”

— Aneurin Bevan

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

— Aneurin Bevan

33. “He has the lucidity which is the by-product of a fundamentally sterile mind.”

— Aneurin Bevan

34. “The hero’s need of the people outlasts their need of him.”

— Aneurin Bevan

35. “We should not be pushing out figured when the facts are in the opposite direction.”

— Aneurin Bevan

36. “A Society in which the people’s wants do not exceed their possessions is not a Socialist society.”

— Aneurin Bevan

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

— Aneurin Bevan

38. “There are two ways of getting into the Cabinet – you can crawl in or kick your way in.”

— Aneurin Bevan

39. “There is only one hope for mankind – and that is democratic socialism. There is only one party in Great Britain which can do it – and that is the Labour Party.”

— Aneurin Bevan