Ed Miliband Quotes

We do not have to accept the world as we find it. And we have a responsibility to leave our world a better place and never walk by on the other side of injustice.

I don’t believe in God personally but I have great respect for those people who do and different people have different religious views in this country.

I think the Labour government did good and important things, and it’s really important not to undervalue them. I see in my constituency how it helped with education and all those things.

The new generation of Labour is different. Different attitudes, different ideas, different ways of doing politics.

Let the message go out – a new generation has taken charge of Labour which is optimistic about our country, optimistic about our world, optimistic about the power of politics. We are optimistic and together we will change Britain.

Scepticism and cynicism about politics is so great that one of the best counters to it is what you can do at a local level.

While there’s capitalism, there’ll be socialism, because there is always a response to injustice.

I want to move to a world of no nuclear weapons but I want to do that through multilateral disarmament so that we all disarm together.

No one is going to persuade me that eight people arriving in South Shields is going to overwhelm the local system. I think that 25,000 refugees would be more in line with the U.N. That would be a substantive contribution.

There just isn’t a version of ‘socialism in one country‘ around in the 21st century. I think it’s really important that we don’t fall for this nirvana of ‘Let’s just get out, and we can create a socialist Britain.’

Let’s start to have a grown up debate in this country about who we are and where we want to go and what kind of country we want to build.

Dominant narrative is so overwhelming in politics. The smallest gaffe when the momentum is against you is a disaster. But when it is with you, everyone just ignores it.

The most important lesson of New Labour is this: Every time we made progress we did it by challenging the conventional wisdom.

The way that you are when you’re allowed to be yourself is very different from when you’re, say, being interviewed by Jeremy Paxman. You’re never given the breathing space.

There was an event called the World Transformed, which was set up by Momentum, and people from across the political spectrum have had to tip their hat to it. It’s vibrant, with interesting discussions and ideas. That’s why it’s such an interesting political moment.

Look, there is a sort of old view about class which is a very simplistic view that we have got the working class, the middle class and the upper class, I think it is more complicated than that.

I come from a generation that suffered school lessons in portacabins and crumbling hospitals. I tell you one thing, for the eighteen years they were in power the Tories did nothing to fix the roof when the sun was shining.

You’re running to be prime minister – it’s hard to be the person who makes jokes.

This idea about cheerful thinking, a digital platform for people to present their ideas, organise events around the country – that is what I am focused on building: a digital think-tank for the modern age that can help show people things can be better; the world can be different.

Do you defend free markets, or do you reform them? It’s the same issue that Labour had in the mid-Seventies, and it’s the same issue the Tories had after 1945. How do you interact with this new ideological term?

And think of how we challenged the idea of a male dominated Parliament with All-Women shortlists and made the cause of gender equality central to our government. We were right to do so.

We began as restless and radical. Remember the spirit of 1997, but by the end of our time in office we had lost our way.

My beliefs will run through everything I do. My beliefs, my values are my anchor and when people try to drag me, as I know they will, it is to that sense of right and wrong, that sense of who I am and what I believe, to which I will always hold.

Remember, I’m the guy who didn’t want the referendum – I wouldn’t have had it if I’d been prime minister. But you have to respect how people voted because this was partly about political alienation, so if the response to political alienation is to ignore it, that’s a recipe for more political alienation.

A company is not accountable just to its owners, but to its workers and its customers.

People want bigger, bolder answers to the problems that exist. I felt, as leader, ‘My analysis is big; are the answers big enough?’

Well you can be the son of a Marxist and not necessarily be a Marxist in all your views.

Think of how we challenged the impression that we taxed for its own sake and that we were hostile to business. We were right to change.

I felt I could still make a contribution with ideas. I didn’t know how, and it has taken me some time to work that out. There were things that mattered to me about the future of the country: inequality, what the post-financial crisis settlement would be. I still felt strongly about all that.

I suppose not everyone has a dad who wrote a book saying he didn’t believe in the Parliamentary road to socialism.