British Prime Minister (1953- )
I think we are dealing with what is essentially the inevitable political challenges of globalization. In other words, as the world transforms, moves closer together, jobs are displaced, and the world of work completely changes the way we live, the way we think. As that revolution goes on around us, it is going to pose political challenges of which immigration is one very obvious one, which are going to be extremely difficult to deal with. But it's like free trade. You know, in the end, if we go protectionist, we'll make a mistake.
TONY BLAIR
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interview, Politico, August 24, 2016
The British are special. The world knows it. In our innermost thoughts we know it. This is the greatest nation on earth. So it has been an honour to serve it. I give my thanks to you, the British people, for the times that I have succeeded, and my apologies to you for the times I have fallen short. But good luck.
TONY BLAIR
announcing his impending resignation, Trimdon Labour Club, 10 May 2007
Moderates are not moderate through weakness but through strength.
TONY BLAIR
speech to the Labour Party National Policy Forum, 16 July 2005
You cannot teach people hate and then ask them to practice peace. But neither can you teach people peace except by according them dignity and granting them hope.
TONY BLAIR
speech to joint session of the U.S. Congress, July 17, 2003
What amazes me is how many people are happy for Saddam to stay. They ask why we don't get rid of Mugabe, why not the Burmese lot. Yes, let's get rid of them all. I don't because I can't, but when you can you should.
TONY BLAIR
New York Times, 5 September 2003
We became complacent; we became the managers of the status quo, not the change makers, and we've got to renew the center.
TONY BLAIR
interview, Politico, September 25, 2017
The Labour Party is presently marooned on fantasy island. I understand would-be leaders will want to go there and speak the native language in the hope of persuading enough eventually to migrate to the mainland of reality.
TONY BLAIR
New Statesman, December 18, 2019
I think the worry all the time, I think in, not just in Europe but outside, is where does the US stand in this slightly difficult space between America first and America alone.
TONY BLAIR
interview, CNBC, November 5, 2019
Okay, so one thing I've learned over a long period time in politics is not to get mixed up in someone else's politics. I've got enough problems back here at home, so we'll leave all these questions around Ukraine and impeachment to American politics.
TONY BLAIR
interview, CNBC, November 5, 2019
I think the same feelings that gave rise to Brexit gave rise to the election of Donald Trump. In my view, the important thing for those of us from the progressive side of politics is not just to go in head-on opposition to all that, but to try and work out why it happened, and how we meet the anxieties of people without getting into the politics of fear.
TONY BLAIR
interview, Politico, September 25, 2017
You know, nowadays, if you step out at all into any area of public controversy, you're going to get a bucket of something unpleasant poured over you, so you just get used to that.
TONY BLAIR
interview, Politico, September 25, 2017
There was no way of uniting the country over Brexit. Britain is deeply divided over it. Now that Brexit will happen, we must make the best of it and the country must come together.
TONY BLAIR
New Statesman, December 18, 2019
Technology is changing the way we live and we work and we think. It's going to transform the world, and yet I think there is an alarming sort of disconnect between the world of public policy-making, and the world of technology.
TONY BLAIR
interview, Politico, September 25, 2017
It is important that those engaged in terrorism realise that our determination to defend our values and our way of life is greater than their determination to cause death and destruction to innocent people in a desire to impose extremism on the world.
TONY BLAIR
statement in response to the terrorist attack on the London Underground, 7 July 2005
The threat comes because in another part of our globe there is shadow and darkness, where not all the world is free, where many millions suffer under brutal dictatorship, where a third of our planet lives in a poverty beyond anything even the poorest in our societies can imagine, and where a fanatical strain of religious extremism has arisen, that is a mutation of the true and peaceful faith of Islam. And because in the combination of these afflictions a new and deadly virus has emerged. The virus is terrorism whose intent to inflict destruction is unconstrained by human feeling and whose capacity to inflict it is enlarged by technology.
TONY BLAIR
speech to joint session of the U.S. Congress, July 17, 2003
Do I know I'm right? Judgements aren't the same as facts. Instinct is not science. I'm like any other human being, as fallible and as capable of being wrong. I only know what I believe.
TONY BLAIR
speech to the Labour Party Conference referring to the fact that no WMDs had been found in Iraq, 28 September 2004
Sometimes it is better to lose and do the right thing than to win and do the wrong thing.
TONY BLAIR
speech in House of Commons, 9 November 2005
She was the people's princess and that is how she will stay, how she will remain in our hearts and our memories for ever.
TONY BLAIR
statement on the death of Diana, Princess of Wales, 31 August 1997
The spirit of our age is one in which the prejudices of the past are put behind us, where our diversity is our strength.
TONY BLAIR
speech to the Labour Party National Policy Forum, 16 July 2005
The extraordinary thing is the Labour Party's desire to rewrite its only period of majority government in half a century in negative terms.
TONY BLAIR
New Statesman, December 18, 2019