Tony Blair quotes:

My faith foundation works to bring about a greater respect and understanding between different faiths. We basically work with six popular religions in the world which are the three Abrahamic religions, Hinduism and Buddhism and Sikhism.

But in terms of how people live together, how we minimize the prospects of conflict and maximize the prospects of peace, the place of religion in our society today is essential.

So actually I only got a mobile phone the day after I left being Prime Minister.

In retrospect, the Millennium marked only a moment in time. It was the events of September 11 that marked a turning point in history, where we confront the dangers of the future and assess the choices facing humankind.

I didn't come into politics to change the Labour Party. I came into politics to change the country.

I mean, I went to a church school when I was younger and imbibed a certain amount of religion then but it was really in university that I got interested in religion and politics at the same time. I don't think as if it were one moment of conversion but my spiritual journey really began then.

I may find Saddam Hussein's regime abhorrent - any normal person would - but the survival of it is in his hands.

The threat today is not that of the 1930s. It's not big powers going to war with each other. The ravages which fundamentalist political ideology inflicted on the 20th century are memories. The Cold war is over. Europe is at peace, if not always diplomatically.

But the world is ever more interdependent. Stock markets and economies rise and fall together. Confidence is the key to prosperity. Insecurity spreads like contagion. So people crave stability and order.

Sometimes it is better to lose and do the right thing than to win and do the wrong thing.

Values unrelated to modern reality are not just electorally hopeless, the values themselves become devalued. They have no purchase on the real world.

Genetic modification has many different areas, for example in medicine, and Britain is at the leading edge of this new technology. I don't know, but people tell me, it could indeed by the leading science of the 21st century. All I say to people is: 'Just keep an open mind and let us proceed according to genuine scientific evidence.'

Labour is the party of law and order in Britain today. Tough on crime, tough on the causes of crime.

The art of leadership is saying no, not saying yes. It is very easy to say yes.

It is not an arrogant government that chooses priorities, it's an irresponsible government that fails to choose.

Our new world rests on order. The danger is disorder. And in today's world, it can now spread like contagion.

Power without principle is barren, but principle without power is futile. This is a party of government, and I will lead it as a party of government.

In no relationship at the top of any walk of life is it always easy, least of all in politics which matters so much and which is conducted in such a piercing spotlight.

Education is the best economic policy there is.

I think the journey for a politician goes from wanting to please all the people all the time, to a political leader that realises in the end his responsibility is to decide. And when he decides, he divides.

Anywhere, anytime ordinary people are given the chance to choose, the choice is the same: freedom, not tyranny; democracy, not dictatorship; the rule of law, not the rule of the secret police.

I learnt a lot in government, and I've learnt a lot since leaving government. The kind of journey of being in government is that you start at your most popular and least capable, and you end at your most capable and least popular.

You only require two things in life: your sanity and your wife.

In government you carry each hope; each disillusion. And in politics it's always about the next challenge.

There is no way you're going to have an event like 9/11 and expect things to remain the same. They killed 3,000 people in New York on that day, and if they could have they would've killed 300,000.

But I am an optimist about Britain; and the difference between an optimist and a pessimist is not that the optimist believes the world is wonderful and the pessimist believes it's beset by challenges; the difference is the pessimist believes we will be defeated by them; the optimist thinks the challenges can be overcome.

You know, the media and politicians are always gonna be in a bit of tension with one another and probably most of the time that's healthy and indeed even creative. But it's where - it's really when news organisations are used as kind of instruments of politics that it gets tricky.

You know, one of the things I've learnt since coming out of office is how much easier it is to give the advice than take the decision. I mean, you know, it's tough.

I cannot think of any circumstances in which a government can go to war without the support of parliament.

The first rule in politics is that there are no rules, at least not in the sense of inevitable defeats or inevitable victories. If you have the right policy and the right strategy, you always have a chance of winning. Without them, you can lose no matter how certain the victory seems."

Ever so often in the history of human endeavour, there comes a breakthrough that takes humankind across a frontier into a new era. ... today's announcement is such a breakthrough, a breakthrough that opens the way for massive advancement in the treatment of cancer and hereditary diseases. And that is only the beginning.

The biological agents we believe Iraq can produce include anthrax, botulinum, toxin, aflatoxin and ricin. All eventually result in excruciatingly painful death.

I had discovered long ago the first lesson of political courage: to think anew. I had then learned the second: to be prepared to lead and to decide. I was now studying the third: how to take the calculated risk. I was going to alienate some people, like it or not. The moment you decide, you divide.

The threat from Saddam Hussein and weapons of mass destruction - chemical, biological, potentially nuclear weapons capability - that threat is real.

The 21st century will not be about the battle between capitalism and socialism but between the forces of progress and the forces of conservatism.

I think I made the wrong career choice

The Iraq Survey Group has already found massive evidence of a huge system of clandestine laboratories, workings by scientists, plans to develop long range ballistic missiles.

A challenge so far-reaching in its impact and irreversible in its destructive power, that it alters radically human existence... There is no doubt that the time to act is now.

Human progress has never been shaped by commentators, complainers or cynics.

I happen to think it's the politics that makes you electable, but the reason for that is politicians sometimes talk about electability as if it's just a matter of conning the public. Actually, it's a matter of persuading the public, and in my experience, usually, the public gets it right.

The emphasis placed by more and more companies on corporate social responsibility symbolises the recognition that prosperity is best achieved in an inclusive society

Times are tough but they are tough because the government is trying to do the right thing, whether on public service reform, education, health, anti-social behaviour and welfare, or in counter-terrorism

As so often before on the courage and determination of British men and women serving our country the fate of many nations rest.

So much of politics is about the daily grind of political business: the people to see, the myriad different facets of government, the remorseless agenda of this part of the media or that.

There can be no freedom for Africa without justice; and no justice without declaring war on Africa's poverty, disease and famine with as much vehemence as we remove the tyrant and the terrorist.

I believe the bicentenary offers us a chance not just to say how profoundly shameful the slave trade was - how we condemn its existence utterly and praise those who fought for its abolition - but also to express our deep sorrow that it could ever have happened and rejoice at the better times we live in today

Conflict is not inevitable, but disarmament is... everyone now accepts that if there is a default by Saddam the international community must act to enforce its will.

Deportation is a decision taken by the home secretary under statute, The new grounds will include fostering hatred, advocating violence to further a person's beliefs, or justifying or validating such violence.

I feel like everyone else in this country today. I am utterly devastated.

However much I dislike the idea of abortion, you should not criminalize a woman who, in very difficult circumstances, makes that choice.

In Downing Street they called me 'Boss'. Civil servants would always call me 'Prime Minister'.

Personally, I have already turned down the Downing St thermostat by 1 degree

We, therefore, here in Britain stand shoulder to shoulder with our American friends in this hour of tragedy, and we, like them, will not rest until this evil is driven from our world.

If we are going to carry on growing, and we will, because no country is going to forfeit its right to economic growth, we have to find a way of doing it sustainably.

All new schools...should be models for sustainable development: showing every child in the classroom and the playground how smart building and energy use can help tackle global warming...Sustainable development will not just be a subject in the classroom: it will be in its bricks and mortar and the way the school uses and even generates its own power.

We have a situation where we are rich really as a world overall, and yet we have the capacity to destroy ourselves, either through nuclear weapons or through environmental degradation, and we allow the life chances of hundreds of millions of people to be destroyed because we haven't found the will to tackle it

What is true about (ex-Iraq Survey Group head) David Kay's evidence, and this is something I have to accept, and is one of the reasons why I think we now need a new inquiry - it is true David Kay is saying we have not found large stockpiles of actual weapons.

Once his wife goes to sleep it takes a minor nuclear explosion to wake her.

I can only go one way. I've not got a reverse gear.

Mine is the first generation able to contemplate the possibility that we may live our entire lives without going to war or sending our children to war.

Global warming is too serious for the world any longer to ignore its danger or split into opposing factions on it.

I would've loved to have been in a band, but sadly I just wasn't good enough.

We can debate this or that aspect of climate change, but the reality is that most people now accept our climate is indeed subject to change as a result of greenhouse gas emissions.

Some may belittle politics, but we know - who are engaged in it - that it is where people stand tall. And, although I know it has its many harsh contentions, it is still the arena that sets the heart beating a little faster. And if it is, on occasions, the place of low skulduggery, it is more often the place for the pursuit of noble causes.

There is good evidence that last year's European heat wave was influenced by global warming. It resulted in 26,000 premature deaths and cost $13.5 billion.

A simple way to take measure of a country is to look at how many want in.. And how many want out.

Whatever the dangers of the action we take, the dangers of inaction are far, far greater.

Climate change is the world's greatest environmental challenge. It is now plain that the emission of greenhouse gases, associated with industrialization and economic growth...is causing global warming at a rate that is unsustainable.

I have long believed this interdependence defines the new world we live in.

...we must support and protect individuals and companies engaged in life saving medical research

Self-interest and mutual interest are inextricably linked. National interests can best be advanced through collective action, ... Calculate not just the human misery of the poor themselves. Calculate our loss: The aid, the lost opportunity to trade, the short-term consequences of the multiple conflicts; the long-term consequences on the attitude to the wealthy world of injustice and abject deprivation amongst the poor.

There is no meeting of minds, no point of understanding with such terror. Just a choice: Defeat it or be defeated by it. And defeat it we must.

The fear of missing out means today's media, more than ever before, hunts in a pack. In these modes it is like a feral beast, just tearing people and reputations to bits. But no-one dares miss out.

Understand the causes of terror? Yes, we should try, but let there be no moral ambiguity about this: nothing could ever justify the events of September 11 and it is to turn justice on its head to pretend it could

Sovereignty rests with me as an English MP and that's the way it will stay.

I believe Mrs. Thatcher's emphasis on enterprise was right.

I want my son to grow up in a place where the people are more powerful than the government and not the other way around.

There is nothing like waking up at six in the morning and changing a baby's nappy to bring you face to face with life's reality.

All the way through, we have been willing to take risks, provided at the end of it we can get a decent lasting settlement in Northern Ireland

Ah yes, liberal democrats unified as ever in opportunism and in error.

The jolt that Tony Blair received 35,000ft above the Pacific Ocean was not normal turbulence.

The big issue of our time is trying to deal with extremism based on a perversion of religion and how you get peaceful coexistence between people of different faiths and cultures.

We've seen the reality of Saddam's regime: his thugs prepared to kill their own people, the parading of prisoners of war and now the release of those pictures of executed British soldiers.

If you are trying to take a difficult decision and you're weighing up the pros and cons, you have frank conversations. Everybody knows this in their walk of life.

King Fahd was a man of great vision and leadership who inspired his countrymen for a quarter of a century as king. He led Saudi Arabia through a period of unparalleled progress and development.

I do not want to end up with an American style of politics, with us going out there beating our chest about our faith. Politics and religion - it is not that they do not have a lot in common, but if [religion] ends up being used in the political process, I think that is a bit unhealthy.

Those who wish to cause religious conflict are small in number but often manage to dominate the headline.

My dad was a militant atheist, or is a militant atheist. My mum was sort of bought up in a religious family because she was a Protestant from Ireland but wasn't especially religious.

What we have got to do now is use this event, the resignation of the whole commission, to drive through root and branch reform.

And just as the terrorist seeks to divide humanity in hate, so we have to unify it around an idea. And that idea is liberty.

Choice dependent on wealth; those are the Tory words.

Our tolerance is part of what makes Britain Britain. So conform to it, or don't come here.

This mass terrorism is the new evil in our world today. It is perpetrated by fanatics who are utterly indifferent to the sanctity of human life, and we the democracies of this world are going to have to come together and fight it together.

Fifteen years ago, if you said business will help save the environment people would have laughed at you. Today, I believe this is a serious proposition

September 11 was, and remains, above all an immense human tragedy. But September 11 also posed a momentous and deliberate challenge not just to America but to the world at large. The target of the terrorists was not only New York and Washington but the very values of freedom, tolerance and decency which underpin our way of life.

It [the intelligence service] concludes that Iraq has chemical and biological weapons, that Saddam has continued to produce them, that he has existing and active military plans for the use of chemical and biological weapons, which could be activated within 45 minutes, including against his own Shia population; and that he is actively trying to acquire nuclear weapons capability...

I say to the Taliban: surrender the terrorists; or surrender power. It's your choice.

The purpose of terrorism lies not just in the violent act itself. It is in producing terror. It sets out to inflame, to divide, to produce consequences which they then use to justify further terror.

I think everyone's had their pound of flesh and now it's time to move on.

The intelligence is clear: (Saddam) continues to believe his WMD programme is essential both for internal repression and for external aggression.

In April 1991, after the Gulf war, Iraq was given 15 days to provide a full and final declaration of all its WMD.

My view is that you still, in order to win from the Labour perspective, have to have a strong alliance with business as well as the unions. You have got to be very much in the centre ground on things like public sector reform.

Every so often, I feel I should graduate to classical music, properly. But the truth is, I'm more likely to listen to rock music.

Leaders lead but in the end it's the people who deliver.

My office is on Twitter. I don't tweet myself - at least, not intentionally, but I probably should do.

What people should understand is that I adore the Labour party.

People know where I stand in the Labour party and what I believe in.

The great advantage of the Lib Dems is precisely that no-one knows what they stand for.

Be a doer and not a critic.

But as I always say to people I'm essentially a public service person.

When Europe and America stand together the world is a better and more prosperous place.

A lot of the politics that is going on left and right at the moment is more about a protest, which we should respond to. It's not often about a policy. And that's why what you get is this strange coalition of different views of what the future should be, coming together in alliance to protest against the status quo.

After the terrible events of last week, there is still the shock and disbelief; there is anger; there is fear; but there is also, throughout the world, a profound sense of solidarity; there is courage; there is a surging of the human spirit.

All the evidence here, for example, in Britain, is that migrants, particularly from the rest of Europe, who come here contribute far more in taxes.

And the problem is, I can apologise for the information that turned out to be wrong, but I can't, sincerely at least, apologise for removing Saddam.

Any action taken will be against the terrorist network of Bin Laden.... As for the Taleban, they can surrender the terrorists or face the consequences - and again in any action the aim will be to eliminate their military hardware, cut off their finances, disrupt their supplies, target their troops, not civilians.

Any parent wants what is best for their children. I am not going to make a choice for my child on the basis of what is the politically correct thing to do.

As for those that carried out these attacks there are no adequate words of condemnation. Their barbarism will stand as their shame for all eternity.

As I have said throughout, I have no doubt that they will find the clearest possible evidence of Saddam's weapons of mass destruction.

As the world transforms, moves closer together, jobs are displaced, and the world of work completely changes the way we live, the way we think. As that revolution goes on around us, it is going to pose political challenges of which immigration is one very obvious one, which are going to be extremely difficult to deal with. But it's like free trade. You know, in the end, if we go protectionist, we'll make a mistake.