KEN LIVINGSTONE QUOTES
English politician (1945- )
When reporters say to me I'm only doing this because it's my job... that's the same abdication of moral responsibility at the thin end of the wedge that in its most extreme and horrific version ends up with others being prepared to stand as a concentration camp guard.
KEN LIVINGSTONE
"Livingstone isolated after refusal to back down in Nazi jibe row", The Guardian, February 16, 2005
You can't expect to work for the Daily Mail group and have the rest of society treat with you respect as a useful member of society, because you are not.
KEN LIVINGSTONE
remarks concerning Evening Standard journalist Oliver Finegold, Guardian Unlimited, December 13, 2005
Well, on lots of small things we could have done better, but on all the big things we called it right. You should make less mistakes as you get older, and I became a councilor back in 1971, so if by this stage in politics I'm making lots of big mistakes, then I shouldn't be here.
KEN LIVINGSTONE
You Can't Say That: Memoirs
The British judiciary is one of the most corrupt in the world because of politically active judges.
KEN LIVINGSTONE
The Daily Telegraph, May 17, 1986
You cannot just have a socialist revolution in Norwood and nowhere else.
KEN LIVINGSTONE
statement to the South London Press in 1977, Citizen Ken
George Bush is just about everything that is repellent in politics... You have got this super-patriotic hawk who was a coward when his country was actually involved in a war and has the most venal and corrupt administration since President Harding in the 20s. He is not a legitimate president... This really is a completely unsupportable government and I look forward to it being overthrown as much as I looked forward to Saddam Hussein being overthrown.
KEN LIVINGSTONE
"Mayor's Amazing Attack on Bush", Evening Standard, May 8, 2003
Racism serves as the cutting edge of the most reactionary movements. An ideology that starts by declaring one human being inferior to another is the slope whose end is at Auschwitz.
KEN LIVINGSTONE
commentary, The Guardian, March 4, 2005
In this city 300 languages are spoken and the people that speak them live side by side in harmony. This city typifies what I believe is the future of the human race and a future where we grow together and we share and we learn from each other.
KEN LIVINGSTONE
press conference, July 8, 2005
One thing that Chairman Mao did was to end the appalling foot binding of women. That alone justifies the Mao Tse-tung era.
KEN LIVINGSTONE
"Now Livingstone is standing up for Mao's mass murder", Daily Mail, May 19, 2006
My view is rather than just rage at your impotence you find the best way of achieving as much as you can within whatever constraints there are. It's not the world I would have created but you do what you can within it.
KEN LIVINGSTONE
interview, The Quietus, September 23, 2010
Nothing could have been greater than the pride of serving this city. I do not believe -- I am sure I speak for my colleagues on all sides -- nothing else that happens to us in our lives will be as rewarding and fulfilling as the years that we have spent in this building.
KEN LIVINGSTONE
speech at the last meeting of the Greater London Council, March 27, 1986
If voting changed anything they'd abolish it.
KEN LIVINGSTONE
If Voting Changed Anything They'd Abolish It
I'd love to write about my growing sexual awareness, but the press would turn it into something squalid.
KEN LIVINGSTONE
"Ken Livingstone: 'It's an autobiography, not porn'", The Guardian, October 21, 2011
What defines someone's music taste is their teens and early 20s. It's that combination of your sexual awakening and the music of the time, it fixes you forever.
KEN LIVINGSTONE
interview, The Quietus, September 23, 2010
I actually think that Bush is the greatest threat to life on this planet that we've most probably ever seen. The policies he is initiating will doom us to extinction.
KEN LIVINGSTONE
"Livingstone says Bush is 'greatest threat to life on planet'", The Independent, November 18, 2003
The Tories had the legal right to demand extra meetings of the council but I could decide when they would be held and always called them for Friday afternoons, knowing that three or four of the richer Tories went to the country early and were not prepared to stay in the city beyond lunchtime. I realised that nothing in politics is new when I read in Suetonius's The Twelve Caesars that Julius Caesar pulled the same trick when reactionaries in the senate were making his life difficult.
KEN LIVINGSTONE
You Can't Say That: Memoirs
Everyone is bisexual. Almost everyone has the sexual potential for anything.
KEN LIVINGSTONE
speech to Harrow Gay Unity Group, August 18, 1981
Politics is not a game. Thousands of people's jobs and services depended on what the GLC did, and they expected us to do the best we could.
KEN LIVINGSTONE
If Voting Changed Anything They'd Abolish It