Neil Kinnock quotes

Neil Kinnock is a British politician who led the Labour Party from 1983 to 1992. His leadership focused on modernizing the party and responding to changing political challenges in the UK. He later served as a European Commissioner and has remained an influential figure in British and European politics. Here are 63 of his quotes:

If Margaret Thatcher wins on Thursday, I warn you not to be ordinary. I warn you not to be young. I warn you not to fall ill. And I warn you not to grow old. (Neil Kinnock)
In the U.K. the far Right is a stain on society and there is a cultural resistance to it. View quote
Neil Kinnock
Those who have the immense dishonesty to fight with a ballot box in one hand and a rifle in the other have no place in democratic politics. View quote
Neil Kinnock
We must not look for some kind of Messiah. View quote
Neil Kinnock
That sort of fundamentalism which treats possession of private property not as a desirable economic and personal asset but as a condition of liberty is a form of primitive religion. View quote
Neil Kinnock
Someone up there likes me. View quote
Neil Kinnock
The roots of defeat which were put down by some of the elements of our party in the two or three years after 1980 made victory difficult to achieve. View quote
Neil Kinnock
Margaret Thatcher was not a malicious person. She was a person who couldn't see, or didn't want to see, the unfairness and disadvantaging consequences of the application of what she thought to be a renewing ideology. View quote
Neil Kinnock
The House of Lords must go - not be reformed, not be replaced, not be reborn in some nominated life-after-death patronage paradise, just closed down, abolished, finished. View quote
Neil Kinnock
[A]lterations in policy had to be made with continual reference to the need to be elected in order to be able to put principles into power. I repeatedly had to reinforce the message that the real penalty for our defeat was paid by the unemployed, the poor, the sick, the young and the old that the Labour Party existed to help. View quote
Neil Kinnock
Devolutionary reform will not provide a factory, a machine or jobs, build a school, train a doctor or put a pound on pensions. (Neil Kinnock)
The Parthenon without the marbles is like a smile with a tooth missing. View quote
Neil Kinnock
I take notice of those who have argued consistently for the modernisation of the E.U., but so many of the skeptics in Britain are just hostile to the whole European idea. View quote
Neil Kinnock
[Marx's theories] gave me a political and intellectual justification for what I believed in a way that nothing else did. View quote
Neil Kinnock
New!Loyalty is a fine quality, but in excess it fills political graveyards. View quote
Neil Kinnock
If anyone wants to know why we must conduct ourselves [with commonsense and realism], just remember at all times, with all temptations, how you, each and every one of you sitting in this hall, each and every Labour worker watching this conference, each and every Labour voter, yes, and some others as well, remember how you felt on that dreadful morning of the tenth of June. Just remember how you felt then, and think to yourselves: 'June the ninth, 1983, never ever again will we experience that. View quote
Neil Kinnock
Oh I detest him. I did then, I do now, and it's mutual. He hates me as well. And I'd much prefer to have his savage hatred than even the merest hint of friendship from that man. View quote
Neil Kinnock
Heckler: At least Mrs Thatcher has got guts. Neil Kinnock: It's a pity that other people had to leave theirs on the ground at Goose Green to prove it. View quote
Neil Kinnock
You cannot fashion a wit out of two half-wits. View quote
Neil Kinnock
Wankers and whingers. View quote
Neil Kinnock
I manifest no paranoia when I say that there has been in the Labour Party an element which has treated realism as treachery, regarded appeals to party unity as an excuse for suppression of liberties and scorned any emphasis on the importance of winning elections as a contaminating bacillus called 'electoralism.' (Neil Kinnock)
When I started to encounter Marxism at 16, the elementary truths of the surplus value theory and more than anything else, the logical argument that he produced that labour was the source of all wealth, gave me a political and intellectual justification for what I believed in a way that nothing else did. View quote
Neil Kinnock
We live in a country afflicted by a senile and selfish capitalist system...where families are homeless, sick people unattended, children untaught whilst building workers, nurses and teachers are unemployed. View quote
Neil Kinnock
Never mistake the enthusiasm of the minority for the support of the majority. View quote
Neil Kinnock
David Frost: If you haven't got nuclear weapons, the choice in that situation would be to subject your forces to an unfair battle. Neil Kinnock: Yes, what you're suggesting is that the alternatives are between the gesture, the threat, or the use of nuclear weapons, and surrender. In these circumstances the choice is posed, and this is a classical choice, between exterminating everything you stand for and the flower of your youth, or using all the resources you have to make any occupation totally untenable. View quote
Neil Kinnock