Aneurin Bevan Quotes

The language of priorities is the religion of socialism.

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

No amount of cajolery, and no attempts at ethical or social seduction, can eradicate from my heart a deep burning hatred for the Tory Party. So far as I am concerned they are lower than vermin.

Why should I question the monkey when I can question the organ grinder.

Listening to a speech by [Neville] Chamberlain is like paying a visit to Woolworth's, everything in its place and nothing above sixpence.

A Society in which the people's wants do not exceed their possessions is not a Socialist society.

He [Winston Churchill] is a man suffering from petrified adolescence.

We know what happens to people who stay in the middle of the road. They get run over!

I know that the right kind of leader for the Labour Party is a desiccated calculating machine who must not in any way permit himself to be swayed by indignation. If he sees suffering, privation or injustice he must not allow it to move him, for that would be evidence of the lack of proper education or of absence of self-control. He must speak in calm and objective accents and talk about a dying child in the same way as he would about the pieces inside an internal combustion engine.

The Tories, every election, must have a bogy man. If you haven't got a programme, a bogy man will do.

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

That is why no amount of cajolery, and no attempts at ethical or social seduction, can eradicate from my heart a deep burning hatred for the Tory Party that inflicted those bitter experiences on me. So far as I am concerned they are lower than vermin. They condemned millions of first-class people to semi-starvation. Now the Tories are pouring out money in propaganda of all sorts and are hoping by this organised sustained mass suggestion to eradicate from our minds all memory of what we went through. But, I warn you young men and women, do not listen to what they are saying now. Do not listen to the seductions of Lord Woolton. He is a very good salesman. If you are selling shoddy stuff you have to be a good salesman. But I warn you they have not changed, or if they have they are slightly worse than they were.

The Prime Minister has an absolute genius for putting flamboyant labels on empty luggage.

He seems determined to make a trumpet sound like a tin whistle.

Poor fellow, he suffers from files.

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

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

Advertising is 'an evil service'.

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.

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

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

There can be no immaculate conception of socialism.

I know that the right kind of political leader for the Labour Party is a desiccated calculating machine.

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

It is not possible to create peace in the Middle East by jeopardizing the peace of the world.

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

Freedom is the by-product of economic surplus.

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

You don't have to gaze into a crystal ball when you can read an open book.

There are two ways of getting into the Cabinet - you can crawl in or kick your way in.

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.

Reactionary: a man walking backwards with his face to the future.

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

I would rather be kept alive in the efficient if cold altruism of a large hospital than expire in a gush of warm sympathy in a small one.