Ken Livingstone

“I can't understand why anyone would want to live the life of a politician if you can't say pretty much what you think. You are not in it for the money: there's unremitting pressure on your life, you give up so much of your privacy. It can only be because of the things you want to do and the things you want to say.”

“I think it's much more important to keep people in work than have pay rises.”

“I have no interest in managing my financial affairs.”

“When I was leader of the GLC, by the time I had been in control for three years, the difference in pay between the cleaner and the director general was a four-to-one ratio. I find that attractive.”

“Yes, there are lots of individual exceptions. But no one has ever done a study about voting intention without ascertaining that the biggest determining factor is your income and your wealth.”

“Politics is not a healthy lifestyle.”

“I'm an emotional person; I do occasionally shed a tear.”

“I actually think the civil service, who are the malignancy at the heart of public life, have consciously prevented, talked ministers out of, made it difficult regulatory-wise, to allow more pressure on alternative energy sources to grow.”

“I think democracy's undermined when those who own newspapers fill them with trivia rather than real issues.”

“World wide capitalism kills more people everyday then Hitler did. And he was crazy.”

“I can only admire people who I have never met and are dead - because you know so much about anyone who is alive.”

“The world is run by monsters and you have to deal with them. Some of them run countries, some of them run banks, some of them run news corporations.”

“If women had never been given the right to vote, then Labour would have won every election after the war.”

“I think I have gone through my entire public career never telling a lie. I have made mistakes but I never knowingly lied.”

“Give me the whole world to run and then I'll be happy. If tomorrow I was told I had to sort out the whole world's problems I'd sleep like a baby.”

“הקמתה של מדינת ישראל הייתה טעות קיצונית, כיוון שהייתה שם קהילה פלסטינית במשך 2,000 שנה.”

“אם אתה גיי, כמעט מובטחת לך משרת שר בכיר.”

“הוא לא ימנה אותי לשר חוץ, ואני לא אשכנע אותו לזנוח את ג'ורג' בוש. אנחנו פועלים יחד בדברים שאנחנו מסכימים, ויש דברים שאיננו מסכימים עליהם.”

“My main income is from speaking.”

“I became a councillor back in 1971, so if by this stage in politics I'm making lots of big mistakes, then I shouldn't be here.”