Politician Quotes

Scholars and historians have dubbed the last 100 years the American Century, and I think there can be little doubt that the Council on Foreign Relations helped to make it so.

Putting the budget ahead of the policy is the wrong way to do it. It's too often the way it's done in Washington.

If you had a national grid with one operator, you had twenty or even a hundred operators, if you don't have the ability to compel people to observe high standards of conduct, then you run a greater risk.

I always wondered what hearing one's own obituary might sound like, and I sort of feel like I may have just heard part of it at least.

You're talking serious money already in the bank, and millions of dollars coming in every year.

Western concepts of ownership and privatization came in and clashed with that. So land began to be exchanged.

There was a queen that was overthrown here. So I was affected by all of that and felt profoundly grateful for the opportunity to live in Hawaii, and I set out at once to try to fit in.

So there's always been this clash between what is the public good - that which belongs to all of us in common - and what can be exploited for a private interest.

So as soon as the land was worth something and there was money in the bank, all of a sudden everybody got interested in non-discrimination, in who's really going to administer this stuff.

Land in Hawaii is money. What I'm talking about here is ceded land - land that belonged to the kingdom and was ceded to the republic and then to the state when we achieved statehood.

Land began to be seen as something to be owned privately and exploited for private interests, and never was entirely reconciled with the old ideas that land should be utilized in common for the good of all.

I remember saying to the chairman after serving the first year, 'Why are we doing this? Why don't the Hawaiians have control?' 'Well, we have no mechanism to do it,' I was told.

A good portion of the airport is on ceded lands, and lease money was paid for that. So the state's collecting lease money because all of a sudden 'worthless' land now has an airport on it.

When there wasn't any money involved, for all intents and purposes, nobody gave a damn. But now the land, supposedly worthless, is seen for what it really is: an incredibly valuable asset.

My London constituency in Hackney has one of the highest levels of gun crime in the country. But the problem is no longer confined to inner city areas. Gun crime has spread to communities all over Britain.

My forebears refused to cut the sugar cane for plantation owners, and I am recognisably a product of that background.

My father was a manual worker.

My family were from Jamaica.

It's very lonely bringing up a child on your own.

In politics, the people I most despise are those who have no values.

In Parliament we debate on and we decide the laws that are going to govern the country.

I'm not the only Labour MP who sent their child to public school but I'm the only one who's questioned about it.

I'm a West Indian mum and West Indian mums will go to the wall for their children.

I was a postman one Christmas and I developed a morbid fear of dogs.

I wanted my marriage to work, but it didn't.

I want to write a best-selling book.

I spend a lot of time visiting local organisations.

I knew what could happen to my son if he was sent to the wrong school and got in with the wrong crowd.

I believe every abortion is a tragedy.

Gun crime is a major cause of fear and distress throughout the UK. The problem is deeply entrenched in a wide range of social and cultural factors and therefore not an isolated issue.