Neil Kinnock quotes - page 2

In my right hon. Friend's reply to the right hon. Lady the Leader of the Opposition, was he not rather unsympathetic, especially now that she appears to be the last pro-Marketeer in Britain? Is not this disturbance manifested by her use of the word "abrasiveness"? For the right hon. Lady to protest a dislike of abrasiveness is rather like Count Dracula professing a distaste for blood. Will my right hon. Friend give an undertaking to increase his abrasiveness until he rubs out altogether the common agricultural policy? (Neil Kinnock)
I don't believe that the policies on which we fought the [1983] election ought to be ejected like some sort of spent cartridge. View quote
Neil Kinnock
The army of brokers, jobbers and other quaintly named parasites. View quote
Neil Kinnock
We believe there should be reforms in the EEC which would benefit all the members. If these were not achieved, our policy is to preserve the ultimate option of withdrawing Britain. That option would not, this time, need a referendum, as it did before. View quote
Neil Kinnock
What has happened is that there are people who, for reasons best known to themselves, have voted for maintaining division in our country. View quote
Neil Kinnock
We support the efforts to keep the pits open until exhausted. View quote
Neil Kinnock
By emphatically pressing the view that it is only possible to support radical Labour policies by supporting Tony Benn, Tony's associates have turned the contest into a gamble with policies, [yet any] disagreement with those claims has been slandered as 'opportunism', 'careerism' and evidence of every kind of departure from socialist conviction and purpose. That is the truly dangerous product of these months of contest. View quote
Neil Kinnock
The enemy of idealism is zealotry. View quote
Neil Kinnock
No prime minister in Britain will ever be able to go to war without the endorsement of a majority of the House of Commons. View quote
Neil Kinnock
[Labour has] always believed that the community as a whole should have a greater control over these "commanding heights of the economy.”. View quote
Neil Kinnock
I'll tell you what happens with impossible promises. You start with far fetched resolutions. They are then pickled into a rigid dogma, a code, and you go through the years sticking to that, out-dated, misplaced, irrelevant to the real needs, and you end in the grotesque chaos of a Labour council-a Labour council-hiring taxis to scuttle round a city handing out redundancy notices to its own workers. I'm telling you - and you'll listen - you can't play politics with people's jobs and with people's services. The people will not abide posturing. (Neil Kinnock)
Why am I the first Kinnock in a thousand generations to be able to get to university? Why is Glenys the first woman in her family in a thousand generations to be able to get to university?Was it because our predecessors were thick? Does anybody really think that they didn't get what we had because they didn't have the talent or the strength or the endurance or the commitment? Of course not. It was because there was no platform upon which they could stand. View quote
Neil Kinnock
Compassion is not a sloppy sentimental feeling for people who are underprivileged or sick... it is an absolutely practical belief that regardless of a person's background, ability or ability to pay, he should be provided with the best that society has to offer. View quote
Neil Kinnock
I would die for my country, but I could never let my country die for me. View quote
Neil Kinnock
I'm prepared to take advice on leisure from Prince Philip. He's a world expert on leisure. He's been practicing it for most of his adult life. View quote
Neil Kinnock
People who are in politics to be right all the time would be better off taking up fly-fishing. It's less dangerous. Politics that is not applied in the real world and doesn't address the real challenges and paradoxes and agonies is a hobby. View quote
Neil Kinnock
Is Tony Blair of the Labour party? The answer to that is profoundly 'yes', but that is not how, sentimentally, he is regarded in the Labour movement generally. View quote
Neil Kinnock
Do something that makes a difference - because, by God, there's a lot to make you angry. View quote
Neil Kinnock
If we are going to have a bicameral parliament, I think there should always be a reserved place for people whose background and experience are critical to the welfare of the nation. View quote
Neil Kinnock
My first real experience of ambition was as party leader. It was my ambition for Labour to win, in which event I would be prime minister. View quote
Neil Kinnock
People, even independently minded people, do to an extent draw their impressions from what they are told, especially if they are told it incessantly by newspapers. (Neil Kinnock)
I'm the guy everybody wanted to live next door. They just didn't want me to be prime minister. View quote
Neil Kinnock
I'd like to be remembered as somebody who tried to promote justice. View quote
Neil Kinnock
I didn't call for a ballot at the start of the miners' strike in 1984. I'll regret that until my dying day. View quote
Neil Kinnock
There are politicians who seethe with ambition all the time, and there are a lot of other politicians who don't. I'm in the second category, that's all. View quote
Neil Kinnock