Neil Kinnock

My first real experience of ambition was as party leader. It was my ambition for Labour to win, in which event I would be prime minister.

I'd like to be remembered as somebody who tried to promote justice.

The unforgivable political sin is vanity; the killer diet is sour grapes.

People, even independently minded people, do to an extent draw their impressions from what they are told, especially if they are told it incessantly by newspapers.

No prime minister in Britain will ever be able to go to war without the endorsement of a majority of the House of Commons.

If we are going to have a bicameral parliament, I think there should always be a reserved place for people whose background and experience are critical to the welfare of the nation.

People who are in politics to be right all the time would be better off taking up fly-fishing. It's less dangerous. Politics that is not applied in the real world and doesn't address the real challenges and paradoxes and agonies is a hobby.

You cannot fashion a wit out of two half-wits.

Newspapers are tutors as well as informers.

Loyalty is a fine quality, but in excess it fills political graveyards.

In the U.K. the far Right is a stain on society and there is a cultural resistance to it.

There are politicians who seethe with ambition all the time, and there are a lot of other politicians who don't. I'm in the second category, that's all.