Ken Livingstone Quotes

I swim three times a week.

The world is run by monsters and you have to deal with them. Some of them run countries, some of them run banks, some of them run news corporations.

If Voting Changed Anything They'd Abolish It

I feel a degree of regret that Marshall did not push on and say 'abolish the GLC' because I think it would have been a major saving and would have released massive resources for productive use.

Working with the Jewish community is essential to me and what I stand for. I do explicitly see Jewish people as a people - not either a religion or an ethnicity but a people. The Tories take Jewish London for granted. I will not.

I grew up in Lambeth, I went to normal schools and I've grown up in a city where people say what they think.

Boris [Johnson] and Dave [Cameron] gnawed each other's testicles [during the Tory civil war which blighted the EU referendum].

I think I have gone through my entire public career never telling a lie. I have made mistakes but I never knowingly lied.

What do we do about climate change bearing down upon us?

If women had never been given the right to vote, then Labour would have won every election after the war.

Global warming could be solved by shifting three to four per cent of global GDP to pay for it.

I never came into life with any favours or privileges.

If you are running a city you must focus on day-to-day problems.

The truth is, no one pays more tax than they have to.

I employed my wife for three years to sit in the attic and type up my autobiography, 700 pages, organise everywhere I go. I'm paying the normal rate of tax on the money I take out for myself.

To tackle climate change you don't have to reduce your quality of life, but you do have to change the way you live

The idea that the GLC should be abolished at a stroke is ill though out, undemocratic and will cost the people of London dear.

Most kids dont get to go their parents wedding.

If I blew my nose the Daily Express and the Daily Mail would say that I am trying to spread germ warfare.

Every budget I have ever prepared has been balanced.

I became a councillor back in 1971, so if by this stage in politics I'm making lots of big mistakes, then I shouldn't be here.

I've got people handling the media. I employ at the moment two people. No-one is paying income tax on the money they use to employ people.

Yes, there are lots of individual exceptions. But no one has ever done a study about voting intention without ascertaining that the biggest determining factor is your income and your wealth.

I can easily lose myself emotionally in absolute Hollywood garbage.

Anybody who enjoys being in the House of Commons probably needs psychiatric help.

Polling in a general election is pretty accurate, because turnout is usually high.

All the politics of the post-war period was about the clash between the Soviet Union and America, and virtually all issues ended up being subordinated to that. Now, the question is, what is the most a socialist can achieve in a global economy?

I am not against Israel, I am against Zionists.

You lose power in Britain and you are just Joe Public again.

I think it's much more important to keep people in work than have pay rises.

I have no interest in managing my financial affairs.

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 councillor back in 1971, so if by this stage in politics I'm making lots of big mistakes, then I shouldn't be here.

The people I really most admire are Robert Kennedy and Franklin Roosevelt. If you know someone, it is very hard to revere them.

I spent the 1960s and 1970s seeking myself - the working-class tradition of self-education.

I have met the people who run the world, and I am not in awe of them.

If transport, housing and Olympic projects do not work, I will crawl away under a stone.

I fear that within 10 years gays, trade union activists and left wing politicians will be led off to the gas chambers.

I can only admire people who I have never met and are dead - because you know so much about anyone who is alive.

I am a socialist, a believer in rational thought and the rule of law.

I'm never going to take the view that I should say whatever I need to say in order to achieve something. Because that implies a level of dishonesty.

I loathe and detest all this trivialisation of politics.

There needs to be radical development in equality law to create the environment to allow women to stay in work.

I think George Bush is the most corrupt American president since Harding in the Twenties. He is not the 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.

I've always told the truth. I've often been wrong - but I've never knowingly lied. Not in public life. Because I don't see the need to.

Everyone is bisexual. Almost everyone has the sexual potential for anything.

I grew up in a house with very few books.

Everyone changes all the time.

I think democracy's undermined when those who own newspapers fill them with trivia rather than real issues.