Top 50 Ken Livingstone Quotes

There needs to be radical development in equality law to create the environment to allow women to stay in work.

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

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.

I go all around London advocating lesbian and gay rights.

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.

I undertake that, in the exercise of my functions of that office I will have regard to any guidance with respect to ethical standards issued by the secretary of state under Section 66 of the Greater London Authority Act 1999.

Most people are not shocked that I am occasionally rude to journalists. They are probably amazed I don’t punch one in the face.

I have no interest in managing my financial affairs.

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.

The civil service are risk averse.

Most politicians aren’t allowed to express themselves any more.

Most kids don’t get to go their parents’ wedding.

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

I spent the 1960s and 1970s seeking myself – the working-class tradition of self-education.

This life is messy.

I am not against Israel, I am against Zionists.

Yes, there are lots of individual exceptions. But no one has ever done a study about voting intention without ascertaining that the biggest determining factor is your income and your wealth.

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 don’t work hard enough. If I had worked harder I might have been prime minister.

I can easily lose myself emotionally in absolute Hollywood garbage.

The whole culture of my background was deeply Conservative.

I think I have gone through my entire public career never telling a lie. I have made mistakes but I never knowingly lied.

I’m in exactly the same position as everybody else who has a small business.

Most people wouldn’t want to marry a politician.

I have opened newspapers and read incredible lies.

I swim three times a week.

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

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

I employed my wife for three years to sit in the attic and type up my autobiography, 700 pages, organise everywhere I go. I’m paying the normal rate of tax on the money I take out for myself.

If I was courting the Muslim vote, I wouldn’t have put establishing the partnership ceremony at the forefront of my first term, would I? I go all around London advocating lesbian and gay rights.

Psephology isn’t a hate crime.

Well, I mean, I’m very much a pragmatic person.

I’m an emotional person; I do occasionally shed a tear.

I’ve never declined to do an interview.

I actually think the civil service, who are the malignancy at the heart of public life, have consciously prevented, talked ministers out of, made it difficult regulatory-wise, to allow more pressure on alternative energy sources to grow.

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

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.

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

Everyone changes all the time.

Working with the Jewish community is essential to me and what I stand for.

I grew up in a house with very few books.

Every budget I have ever prepared has been balanced.

The people I really most admire are Robert Kennedy and Franklin Roosevelt. If you know someone, it is very hard to revere them.

I think it’s much more important to keep people in work than have pay rises.

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.

My administration will tackle these issues in consultation with the black communities of London.

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

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

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

I can only admire people who I have never met and are dead – because you know so much about anyone who is alive.