Top 80 Tony Benn Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “There is no final victory, as there is no final defeat. There is just the same battle. To be fought, over and over again. So toughen up, bloody toughen up.”

— Tony Benn

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

— Tony Benn

3. “Five questions for politicians: 1. What power have you got? 2. Where did you get it from? 3. In whose interest do you exercise it? 4. To whom are you accountable? 5. How can we get rid of you?”

— Tony Benn

4. “The Civil Service is a bit like a rusty weathercock. It moves with opinion then it stays where it is until another wind moves it in a different direction.”

— Tony Benn

5. “If we can find the money to kill people, we can find the money to help people.”

— Tony Benn

6. “The Labour party has never been a socialist party, although there have always been socialists in it – a bit like Christians in the Church of England.”

— Tony Benn

7. “It’s the same each time with progress. First they ignore you, then they say you’re mad, then dangerous, then there’s a pause and then you can’t find anyone who disagrees with you.”

— Tony Benn

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

— Tony Benn

9. “When I saw how the European Union was developing, it was very obvious what they had in mind was not democratic. In Britain, you vote for a government so the government has to listen to you, and if you don’t like it you can change it.”

— Tony Benn

10. “If you file your waste-paper basket for fifty years, you have a public library.”

— Tony Benn

11. “The Tory party is the enemy of democracy.”

— Tony Benn

12. “I’ve made every mistake – but mistakes are how you learn.”

— Tony Benn

13. “There may be a legal obligation to obey, but there will be no moral obligation to obey. When it comes to history, it will be the people who broke the law for freedom who will be remembered and honoured.”

— Tony Benn

14. “Food movement organic food stores supplies health food products and facilitate with instrumental support in organic agriculture.”

— Tony Benn

15. “The way a government treats refugees is very instructive...”

— Tony Benn

16. “An educated, healthy and confident nation is harder to govern.”

— Tony Benn

17. “People in debt become hopeless and hopeless people don’t vote. They always say that that everyone should vote but I think that if the poor in Britain or the United States turned out and voted for people that represented their interests there would be a real democratic revolution.”

— Tony Benn

18. “I am not a reluctant peer but a persistent commoner.”

— Tony Benn

19. “We are paying a heavy political price for 20 years in which, as a party, we have played down our criticism of capitalism and soft-peddled our advocacy of socialism.”

— Tony Benn

20. “There is no moral difference between a Stealth bomber and a suicide bomber. They both kill innocent people for political reasons.”

— Tony Benn

21. “Anyone from abroad will tell you that it is the class system that really lies at the root of our problems, economic and industrial. The House of Lords symbolises that.”

— Tony Benn

22. “I don’t think people realise how the establishment became established. It simply stole the land and property off the poor, surrounded themselves with weak minded sycophants for protection, gave themselves titles and have been wielding power ever since.”

— Tony Benn

23. “Britain is the only colony in the British Empire and it is up to us now to liberate ourselves.”

— Tony Benn

24. “Choice depends on the freedom to choose and if you are shackled with debt you don’t have the freedom to choose.”

— Tony Benn

25. “The Establishment decided Thatcher’s ideas were safer with a strong Blair government than with a weak Major government. We are given all these personalities to choose between to disguise the fact that the policies are the same.”

— Tony Benn

Featured in: Strong Quotes

26. “I do not share the general view that market forces are the basis for political liberty. Every time I see a homeless person living in a cardboard box in London, I see that person as a victim of market forces. Everytime I see a pensioner who cannot manage, I know that he is a victim of market forces.”

— Tony Benn

27. “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.”

— Tony Benn

28. “I do not share the general view that market forces are the basis of personal liberty.”

— Tony Benn

29. “I’ve been a member of the Labour Party sixty five years, and I remain in it, but I think it’s all about campaigning for justice and peace, and if you do that, you get a lot of support.”

— Tony Benn

30. “We are not just here to manage capitalism but to change society and to define its finer values.”

— Tony Benn

31. “A faith is something you die for; a doctrine is something you kill for; there is all the difference in the world.”

— Tony Benn

32. “Middle class Labour leaders are recaptured by the establishment when they die.”

— Tony Benn

33. “I think very often the boat-rockers turn out to be the people who are building the craft.”

— Tony Benn

34. “Encouragement is the most important thing in the world for young people, rather than league tables, which demoralise everyone.”

— Tony Benn

35. “The crisis that we inherit when we come to power will be the occasion for fundamental change and not the excuse for postponing it.”

— Tony Benn

36. “Democracy is not just voting every 5 years and watching ‘Big Brother’ in between and wondering why nothing happens. Democracy is what we do and say where we live and work.”

— Tony Benn

37. “It is wholly wrong to blame Marx for what was done in his name, as it is to blame Jesus for what was done in his.”

— Tony Benn

38. “The Internet is only the street corner meeting on a big scale.”

— Tony Benn

39. “Broadcasting is really too important to be left to the broadcasters.”

— Tony Benn

40. “I did not enter the Labour Party 47 years ago to have our manifesto written by Dr Mori, Dr Gallup and Mr Harris.”

— Tony Benn

41. “When you think of the number of men in the world who hate each other, why, when two men love each other, does the church split?”

— Tony Benn

42. “When I think of Cool Britannia I think of old people dying of hypothermia.”

— Tony Benn

43. “She believes in something. It is an old-fashioned idea.”

— Tony Benn

44. “It is government policy to phase out subsidies to nationalised industries. In line with this, the government hopes that the coal industry will be able to operate without the need for assistance apart from social grants.”

— Tony Benn

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

— Tony Benn

46. “I now want more time to devote to politics and more freedom to do so.”

— Tony Benn

47. “If the Queen can reject the advice of a minister on a little thing like a postage stamp, what would happen if she rejected the advice of the Prime Minister on a major matter? If the Crown personally can reject advice, then, of course, the whole democratic facade turns out to be false.”

— Tony Benn

48. “In developing our industrial strategy for the period ahead, we have the benefit of much experience. Almost everything has been tried at least once.”

— Tony Benn

49. “Thanks to the tabloid campaigns I have many death threats and I was very pleased to get another one the other day.”

— Tony Benn

50. “I have had the advantage of a radical Christian upbringing.”

— Tony Benn