Aneurin Bevan Quotes

• Virtue is its own punishment.

  Aneurin Bevan

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

  Aneurin Bevan

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• If you carry this resolution, you will send a Foreign Secretary—whoever he may be—naked into the conference chamber. You call that statesmanship. I call it an emotional spasm.

  Aneurin Bevan

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• I am not going to spend any time whatsoever attacking the Foreign Secretary. Quite honestly, I am beginning to feel extremely sorry for him. If we complain about the tune, there is no reason to attack the monkey when the organ grinder is present.

  Aneurin Bevan

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• A man suffering from petrified adolescence.

  Aneurin Bevan

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• No amount of cajolery, and no attempts at ethical or social seduction, can eradicate from my heart a deep and burning hatred for the Tory Party that inflicted those experiences on me. So far as I am concerned, they are lower than vermin.

  Aneurin Bevan

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• We have been the dreamers. We have been the sufferers. Now we are the builders. We want the complete political extinction of the Tory Party—and 25 years of Labour Government, for we cannot do in five years what requires to be done.

  Aneurin Bevan

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• The worst thing I can say about democracy is that it has tolerated the right honourable gentleman [Neville Chamberlain] for four and a half years.

  Aneurin Bevan

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• This island is made mainly of coal and surrounded by fish. Only an organizing genius could produce a shortage of coal and fish at the same time.

  Aneurin Bevan

• This is my truth, tell me yours.

  Aneurin Bevan

• The Tories, every election, must have a bogy man. If you haven’t got a programme, a bogy man will do.

  Aneurin Bevan

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

  Aneurin Bevan

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

  Aneurin Bevan

• Reading is not a duty, and has consequently no business to be made disagreeable.

  Aneurin Bevan

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

  Aneurin Bevan

• Poor fellow, he suffers from files.

  Aneurin Bevan

• Politics is a blood sport.

  Aneurin Bevan

• No amount of cajolery, and no attempts at ethical or social seduction, can eradicate from my heart a deep burning hatred for the Tory Party. So far as I am concerned they are lower than vermin.

  Aneurin Bevan

• It is not possible to create peace in the Middle East by jeopardizing the peace of the world.

  Aneurin Bevan

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

  Aneurin Bevan

Aneurin Bevan (27)

Birth:	15th November, 1897
Death:	6th July, 1960
Nationality:	Welsh
Profession:	Politician

About

Aneurin Bevan was born in Tredegar, Monmouthshire. He was a Welsh Labour Party politician who was the Minister for Health in the post-war Attlee government from 1945 to 1951. He was a long-time Member of Parliament, representing Ebbw Vale in southern Wales for 31 years. He was one of the chief spokesmen for the Labour party’s left wing, and of left-wing British thought generally. His most famous accomplishment came when, as Minister of Health, he spearheaded the establishment of the National Health Service, which was to provide medical care free at point-of-need to all Britons. He resigned when the Attlee government decided to transfer funds from the National Insurance fund to pay for rearmament.

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