"What argument have they to persuade the young men to fight except merely in another squalid attempt to defend themselves against a redistribution of the international swag?"

Aneurin Bevan Politics See all quotes by Aneurin Bevan →

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“Just consider, all the little nations running for shelter here and there, one running to Russia and another to the United States. In that situation before anything else would happen, the world will have been polarised between the Soviet Union and the United States. It is against that negative polarisation we have been fighting for years. We want to have the opportunity to interpose between these two giants a moderating, modifying and mitigating diplomacy.”

“The Labour Party should oppose the Government arms plan root and branch.”

“The language of priorities is the religion of socialism.”

“Speeches on the NHS at Socialist Health Association”

“If the Labour Party is not going to be a Socialist Party, I don't want to lead it.”

“If freedom is to be saved and enlarged, poverty must be ended. There is no other solution.”

Resonant Thoughts

"England looked strange to us returned soldiers. We could not understand the war madness that ran about everywhere, looking for a pseudo-military outlet. The civilians talked a foreign language; and it…"

— Robert Graves

Literature1895–1985

#war

"Defoe says, that there were a hundred thousand stout country-fellows in his time ready to fight to the death against popery, without knowing whether popery was a man or a horse."

— William Hazlitt

Literature1778–1830

#knowledge

"If there is a sin against life, it consists perhaps not so much in despairing of life as in hoping for another life and in eluding the implacable grandeur of this life."

— Albert Camus

Literature1913–1960

#life