Aneurin Bevan

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

“Politics is a blood sport.”

“I have never regarded politics as the arena of morals. It is the arena of interests.”

“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.”

“I read the newspapers avidly. It is my one form of continuous fiction.”

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

“Freedom is the by-product of economic surplus.”

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

“Reading is not a duty, and has consequently no business to be made disagreeable.”

“No attempt 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.”

“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 verm...”

“Poor fellow, he suffers from files.”

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

“This is my truth, tell me yours.”

“Fascism is not in itself a new order of society. It is the future refusing to be born.”

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

“Stand not too near the rich man lest he destroy thee - and not too far away lest he forget thee.”

“This island is made mainly of coal and surrounded by fish. Only an organizing genius could produce a shortage of coal and fish at the same time.”

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

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