Tony Benn

Normally, people give up parliament because they want to do more business or spend more time with family. My wife said 'why don't you say you're giving up to devote more time to politics?'. And it is what I have done.

All war represents a failure of diplomacy.

The uncut diaries are 16 million words. It's very tiring to do your diary every night before you go to bed.

My day rotates around my family. I am very lucky.

The House of Lords is the British Outer Mongolia for retired politicians.

It's the same each time with progress. First they ignore you, then they say you're mad, then dangerous, then there's a pause and then you can't find anyone who disagrees with you.

Age does take it out of you, and I haven't the energy I had before. Sometimes I have breakfast and sit in this chair, and I wake up and it is lunchtime. In the past, the idea of sleeping through a morning would have horrified me, but you have to accept the limitations that old age imposes on you.

I've had a very full life, and I've enjoyed it very much. I've learned a great deal and feel indebted to all the people who have worked so hard.

I believe the more difficult the circumstances, the more people will be inclined to trust those in charge at the moment.

Making mistakes is part of life. The only things I would feel ashamed of would be if I had said things I hadn't believed in order to get on. Some politicians do do that.

My filing system is messy but orderly.

I've made every mistake - but mistakes are how you learn.

I see myself as an old man and an unqualified teacher to the nation. I think being a teacher is probably the most important thing you can be in politics.

I am on the right wing of the middle of the road and with a strong radical bias.

Britain today is suffering from galloping obsolescence.

The Marxist analysis has got nothing to do with what happened in Stalin's Russia: it's like blaming Jesus Christ for the Inquisition in Spain.

Marxism is now a world faith and must be allowed to enter into a continuous dialogue with other world faiths, including religios faiths.

Broadcasting is really too important to be left to the broadcasters.

Most things in life are moments of pleasure and a lifetime of embarrassment photography is a moment of embarrassment and a lifetime of pleasure.

Most things in life are moments of pleasure and a lifetime of embarrassment; photography is a moment of embarrassment and a lifetime of pleasure.

Encouragement is the most important thing in the world for young people rather than league tables which demoralise everyone.

If you file your waste-paper basket for fifty years, you have a public library.

We are not just here to manage capitalism but to change society and to define its finer values.

A faith is something you die for, a doctrine is something you kill for. There is all the difference in the world.

I've been a member of the Labour Party sixty five years, and I remain in it, but I think it's all about campaigning for justice and peace, and if you do that, you get a lot of support.

The exhaustion of old age is something people who are younger don't fully appreciate.

I'm not frightened about death. I don't know why, but I just feel that at a certain moment your switch is switched off, and that's it. And you can't do anything about it.

I've got four lovely children, ten lovely grandchildren, and I left parliament to devote more time to politics, and I think that what is really going on in Britain is a growing sense of alienation. People don't feel anyone listens to them.

Someone comes every morning at nine o'clock to see if I am still alive. I do get lonely, yes, but I have the children who come and see me. I see all my children every week, and there are the grandchildren, too.