Aneurin Bevan Quotes, Thoughts and images

The NHS will last as long as there are folk left with faith to fight for it

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

The purpose of getting power is to be able to give it away.

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

If freedom is to be saved and enlarged, poverty must be ended. There is no other solution.

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

Damn it all you can't have the crown of thorns and the thirty pieces of silver.

This is my truth, tell me yours.

There is only one hope for mankind and that is democratic Socialism.

Politics is a blood sport.

Freedom is the by-product of economic surplus.

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

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 welcome this opportunity of pricking the bloated bladder of lies with the poniard of truth

You don't have to gaze into a crystal ball when you can read an open book.

I have never regarded politics as the arena of morals. It is the arena of interest.

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

Discontent arises from a knowledge of the possible, as contrasted with the actual.

The language of priorities is the religion of socialism.

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

In Germany democracy died by the headman's axe. In Britain it can be by pernicious anaemia.

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

There are two ways of getting into the Cabinet - you can crawl in or kick your way in.

Virtue is its own punishment.

A Society in which the people's wants do not exceed their possessions is not a Socialist society.

You call that statesmanship. I call it an emotional spasm.

Listening to a speech by [Neville] Chamberlain is like paying a visit to Woolworth's, everything in its place and nothing above sixpence.

The hero's need of the people outlasts their need of him.

There can be no immaculate conception of socialism.

Why should I question the monkey when I can question the organ grinder.

He has the lucidity which is the by-product of a fundamentally sterile mind.

Trade unions are islands of anarchy in a sea of chaos.

We should not be pushing out figured when the facts are in the opposite direction.

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