Gordon Brown Quotes

Famously, I’m somewhat impatient.

America knows it has got to deal with its deficit problems so that it, too, can promise it is making its proper and best contributions to the world economy.

Our ability to connect as a nation with other nations around the world is enhanced dramatically by the Internet.

The NHS cannot be privatised if that’s not the will of the Scottish people, and the Scottish health service will have the funding that’s necessary if that’s also the will of the Scottish people.

It will not be a surprise to you to learn I’m more interested in the future of the Arctic Circle than the future of the Arctic Monkeys.

The motto of the old order in the City of London was, ‘My word is my bond,’ but the financial crisis revealed a culture quite alien to that heritage. The stewards of people’s money were revealed to have been speculators with it.

I believe there is a moral sense and a global ethic that commands attention from people of every religion and every faith, and people of no faith. But I think what’s new is that we now have the capacity to communicate instantaneously across frontiers right across the world.

I am not going to the House of Lords. Never. That’s not who I am. That’s not where I am.

Meet the challenges of the time.

Britain must lead in Europe to intensify the fight against global terrorism and make our country safer.

When things are difficult, you have to be sure of who you are and what you want to achieve.

I’m all for greater co-operation between Europe and America because I think that sometimes we’ve missed out on the benefits that transatlantic trade could give both continents, and I’ve been pressing this since 1997.

People have now got the ability to speak to each other across continents: to join with each other in communities that are not based simply on territory, streets, but networks; and you’ve got the possibility of people building alliances right across the world.

It is thanks to men and women who were totally committed to fighting fascism, people like Alan Turing, that the horrors of the Holocaust and of total war are part of Europe’s history and not Europe’s present.

A woman said to me, ‘You’re better than your successor.’ She then said she‘s lived under 10 prime ministers, and each was worse than the last. That put me in my place.

Nigel Farage wanted to privatise the health service. Nigel Farage does not believe in the values we believe in for our public services.

When I lost the sight of my eye and faced the prospect of going blind, my sight was saved by the NHS.

Other prime ministers leave office and stay in London. I have come back with my whole family to Fife. This is where they are being brought up. It is better for them and better for me. It’s great to see more of the kids.

We’ve managed to find a way of making decisions that prevents conflict arising – there has been no war between European members at any point in the last 70 years.

Getting married has certainly made a massive difference to my own life. So I am committed to giving support for family finances and having the right policies for work-life balance that make it easier for couples to have a rich family life.

We cannot compromise with the earth; we cannot compromise with the catastrophe of unchecked climate change, so we must compromise with one another.

Climate change is a consequence of the build up of greenhouse gases over the past 200 years in the atmosphere, and virtually all these emissions came from the rich countries.

Let us think of ourselves not as ‘yes‘ and ‘no’ Scots but simply as Scots, and let us be a nation, united again.

There is nothing that you could say to me now that I could ever believe.

I welcome the role that people of faith play in building Britain’s future – and the Catholic communion in particular is to be congratulated for so often being the conscience of our country, for helping ‘the least of these’ even when bearing witness to the truth is hard or unpopular.

Collective European Union action could mean no hiding places for evaders, no safe haven for tax avoiders, and no treasure islands for money launderers.

We must understand that the British public’s relationship with Europe is – and always has been, the sporting arena aside – about the benefits we can achieve in jobs, security, and quality of life from membership and how these benefits outweigh any disadvantages.

Markets need morals.

For centuries, individuals have been learning how to live with their next-door neighbours.

When something really matters, you should never give up or give in.

Turing was a quite brilliant mathematician, most famous for his work on breaking the German Enigma codes. It is no exaggeration to say that, without his outstanding contribution, the history of the Second World War could have been very different.

Those who write off our European heritage are, at least in part, writing off their own heritage.

I love Scotland; I love the NHS. I was born into the NHS; I grew up in the NHS. My family grew up in the NHS.

You have to live in the future, not the past.

I think fathers, mothers, grandfathers, grandmothers – we should look at what young people are saying to us.

When you’ve got a society that is diverse, what happens is for a time, the issue is integrating your minorities into that society.

Globalisation feels like a runaway train, out of control.

Our equality bill is specifically designed to protect religion and belief on exactly the same terms as race or gender or sexuality.

I’m a father; that’s what matters most. Nothing matters more.

The Britain I know is the Britain of Jo Cox. The Britain where people are tolerant and not prejudiced, and where people hate hate.

Take, therefore, what modern technology is capable of: the power of our moral sense allied to the power of communications and our ability to organize internationally. That, in my view, gives us the first opportunity as a community to fundamentally change the world.

If you look at the question of expenditure in Iraq, you have got to start from the one fundamental truth: that every request that the military commanders made to us for equipment was answered. No request was ever turned down.

I’ve got a job to do.

So another challenge for our generation is to create global institutions that reflect our ideas of fairness and responsibility, not the ideas that were the basis of the last stage of financial development over these recent years.

The best way of realising our high ideals is to show that we have an alternative in government that is credible, that is radical, and is electable – is neither a pale imitation of what the Tories offer nor is it the route to being a party of permanent protest rather than a party of government.

The extraordinary summer heatwave of 2003 in Europe resulted in over 35,000 extra deaths.

If people are persuaded of the need for education and the need to invest in education, they’re also persuaded of the need not to waste that investment by having low-quality education but to have high-quality education.

When people criticise you, you’ve got to listen to that criticism, and to learn from it, which I’ve tried to do.

While you cannot deliver policies without principles, you cannot deliver principles without having power. You have quickly to move to a stage where, emphasising your principles, you build a programme, then call for popular support.

We must then build a proper relationship between the richest and the poorest countries based on our desire that they are able to fend for themselves with the investment that is necessary in their agriculture, so that Africa is not a net importer of food, but an exporter of food.

Higher energy prices are requiring industry and commerce to examine the costs and efficiency of energy use.

Foreign policy can no longer be the province of just a few elites.

Our common realm is not and cannot be stripped of values – I absolutely reject the idea that religion should somehow be tolerated but not encouraged in public life.

I want to do something for Kirkcaldy and Fife. I am a full-time MP, not a businessman.

In Britain, we are not a secular state as France is, or some other countries.