Ken Livingstone Quotes

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

I would like to sound like James Mason. I reckon if I’d had a better voice I could have been prime minister. It is the most irritating voice in public life.

This life is messy.

I do explicitly see Jewish people as a people – not either a religion or an ethnicity but a people.

I have opened newspapers and read incredible lies.

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.

There isn’t much about my life that’s been particularly conventional.

I do the gardening.

I go all around London advocating lesbian and gay rights.

I’ve always been a workaholic. I reckon, on average, I’ve had less than one day a year off in my working career.

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

Politics is not a healthy lifestyle.

I Kenneth Robert Livingstone, having been elected to the office of mayor of London, declare that I take that office upon myself, and will duly and faithfully fulfil the duties of it to the best of my judgement and ability.

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

I grew up in a house with very few books.

Psephology isn’t a hate crime.

I was a weedy kid, not like one of those working-class men who can accommodate not being academically clever by physical strength and prowess.

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

I have no interest in managing my financial affairs.

I loathe and detest all this trivialisation of politics.

I am not against Israel, I am against Zionists.

My main income is from speaking.

I can’t understand why anyone would want to live the life of a politician if you can’t say pretty much what you think. You are not in it for the money: there’s unremitting pressure on your life, you give up so much of your privacy. It can only be because of the things you want to do and the things you want to say.

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

Every budget I have ever prepared has been balanced.

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?

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

Jewish voters are not one homogenous block.

I would like all newspapers to become workers’ co-operatives.

The civil service are risk averse.

Give me the whole world to run and then I’ll be happy. If tomorrow I was told I had to sort out the whole world’s problems I’d sleep like a baby.

I can easily lose myself emotionally in absolute Hollywood garbage.

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

Thatcher was prepared to destroy the world rather than give in on something she believed in.

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

Well, I get on with people who believe in something.

When I was leader of the GLC, by the time I had been in control for three years, the difference in pay between the cleaner and the director general was a four-to-one ratio. I find that attractive.

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

I have only ever borrowed money for investment. I have been sound money all my life.

The market is a brilliant system for the exchange of goods and services, but it doesn’t protect the environment unless it’s regulated, it doesn’t train your workforce unless it’s regulated, and it doesn’t give you the long-term investment you want.

When I’m sifting the compost seed or pruning, I argue over issues in my head; I talk to myself.

If voting changed anything, they’d abolish it.

I came into politics because I wished to change things. You can’t do that by lying to people; you have to educate, and persuade, and carry them with you – and it’s often a long haul.

Most people wouldn’t want to marry a politician.