Ken Livingstone Quotes

33 Sourced Quotes

To avoid manufactured misunderstandings, the policies of Israeli governments are not analogous to Nazism. They do not aim at the systematic extermination of the Palestinian people, in the way Nazism sought the annihilation of the Jews.

Ken Livingstone
I want finally to thank Londoners for their solidarity. There are some places in the world where such an incident would have unleashed internal strife and physical violence. London has stood together, we haven't had any problems of the sort you might see in other parts of the world and I think it says everything about what is right about this city.

Ken Livingstone
Some US journalist came up to me and said: 'How can you say this about President Bush?' Well, I think what I said then was quite mild. 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
When you see someone trying to manoeuvre it round the school gates you have to think, you are a complete idiot.

Ken Livingstone
Anybody who enjoys being in the House of Commons probably needs psychiatric care.

Ken Livingstone
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
The American agenda is sweeping everything before it, and although it's not perfect, the EU is better on environmental issues. It's a less rapacious form of capitalism.

Ken Livingstone
I just long for the day I wake up and find that the Saudi royal family are swinging from lampposts and that they've got a proper government that represents the people of Saudi Arabia.

Ken Livingstone
He asked to see me again. I think he wants me for my body.

Ken Livingstone
You cannot just have a socialist revolution in Norwood and nowhere else.

Ken Livingstone
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
The problem is that many MPs never see the London that exists beyond the wine bars and brothels of Westminster.

Ken Livingstone
I think Londoners find it bizarre that ten weeks after the allegations in the Evening Standard, you haven't questioned Lee [Jasper]. All these questions about Lee — he can come down from his office now and answer them, and you sanctimonious hypocrites are dragging this out so the lies can carry on in the Standard, you're not talking about Lee coming here 'till March. Bring him here today. Ask him your questions. Let Londoners see the answers. You're dragging this out for electoral purposes. Sanctimonious hypocrites, every one of you.

Ken Livingstone
Racism is a uniquely reactionary ideology, used to justify the greatest crimes in history — the slave trade, the extermination of all original inhabitants of the Caribbean, the elimination of every native inhabitant of Tasmania, apartheid. The Holocaust was the ultimate, "industrialised" expression of racist barbarity.
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. That is why I detest racism.

Ken Livingstone
I can't think of a more appalling contrast between this wedding beanfeast and what is happening in Ireland.

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

Ken Livingstone
The British judiciary is one of the most corrupt in the world because of politically active judges.

Ken Livingstone
Every year the international finance system kills more people than the Second World War. But at least Hitler was mad, you know.

Ken Livingstone
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
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
I want to say one thing specifically to the world today. This was not a terrorist attack against the mighty and the powerful. It was not aimed at presidents or prime ministers. It was aimed at ordinary, working-class Londoners — black and white, Muslim and Christian, Hindu and Jew, young and old — indiscriminate attempt to slaughter, irrespective of any considerations for age, for caste, for religion or whatever.
That isn't an ideology, it isn't even a perverted faith, it is just indiscriminate attempt at mass murder — and we know what the objective is. They seek to divide Londoners. They seek to turn Londoners against each other.

Ken Livingstone
It would actually be quite nice if the American ambassador in Britain could pay the charge that everybody else is paying and not actually try and skive out of it like some chiselling little crook.

Ken Livingstone
I take a much more pragmatic view than many people on the Left about working with Neil Kinnock. Kinnock represents the best vehicle possible for achieving socialism now.

Ken Livingstone
The next election will bring an influx of over 120 new MPs who will be overwhelmingly on the Left.

Ken Livingstone
The H-block protest is part of the struggle to bring about a free, united Ireland. They have my support, and they have the support of the majority of the Labour Party rank and file. I have been consistently in favour of withdrawal from Ireland and to get away from the idea that it is some sort of campaign against terrorism. It is in fact the last colonial war.

Ken Livingstone
Today the Israeli government continues seizures of Palestinian land for settlements, military incursions into surrounding countries and denial of the right of Palestinians expelled by terror to return. Ariel Sharon, Israel's prime minister, is a war criminal who should be in prison, not in office. Israel's own Kahan commission found that Sharon shared responsibility for the Sabra and Shatila massacres.

Ken Livingstone
You can judge politicians by how they treat refugees; they do to them what they would like to do to everyone else if they could get away with it.

Ken Livingstone
There is now a desperate need for a London-wide left caucus of those interested in the GLC and local councils so that we can compare and discuss what is happening in each borough.

Ken Livingstone