Alastair Campbell Quotes
-
To me, marriage is partly a religious thing and I'm not religious.
→ -
Tony's [Blair] convinced I'm going to find God. I do have spiritual moments, but I don't think it's God.
→ -
Jeremy, are we going to play your games?
→ -
So here is one of my theories on happiness: we cannot know if we have lived a truly happy life until the very end. This view of life and death was reinforced by my close witnessing of the buildup to the death of Philip Gould. Philip was without doubt my closest friend in politics. When he died, I felt like I had lost a limb.
→ -
I used to be very routine-based and the new thing in my life is not having a clear, full-time existence.
→ -
By asking the question 'Am I happy?,' and via the answer setting out what I mean by happiness, there is a political route that can be taken, by asking another question - 'Can politics deliver happiness, and should it try?'
→ -
I'm certainly driven, I hate losing, I can be ruthless and short-tempered and terribly competitive.
→ -
Paul Keating told us before we were elected that you can do deals with [Rupert] Murdoch without saying you were doing a deal. Did we do that kind of thing? Maybe. But from around about the turn of the century, I felt strongly that we had to do something about media ownership and self-regulation. Tony [Blair] disagreed.
→ -
The royal family's existence is a constant reminder of the hollowness of John Major's rhetoric, and idiotic statements by its leading members a constant boost to the republican cause. They're fine opening hospitals. It's when they open their mouths they get into trouble.
→ -
There are many reasons for the decline in royal esteem. One is that so many of the royals are thick.
→ -
One day, we will look back and wonder how on earth we used to believe that depression was a lifestyle choice, only to be debated and taken seriously when an A List film star took his life, and the world filled with people saying how shocked and saddened they were.
→ -
This may sound arrogant, but I believe that if we'd done teamship better, we'd still be there. Where we fell down was the inability to hold together. We should have learnt from the great football teams. The players may not like each other. They have egos, they have their own ambitions, they have different personalities, but they are still bloody good teams.
→ -
There is something in me that makes me see things through.
→ -
As Tony [Blair] said in his book, Gordon [Brown] was brilliant and impossible. If he'd just been one of those things, the options are obvious.
→ -
One in four of us will have a mental illness at some point. That is a lot of people.
→ -
If you look at the other people around at the time - Charles Clarke, Alistair Darling, Jack Straw - they've all gone. And they're not old. What's happened is that someone who is quite old - Jeremy Corbyn - is now leader. We have to take some responsibility for that.
→ -
I feel like thanking Paul Dacre every time, because the reason they ask me is because they think I've come through the other end with a pretty good reputation. Loads of people get a bad press but have a good reputation. [David] Beckham - think what he went through. [Bill] Clinton, likewise. You just have to be true to yourself.
→ -
The junk food of political journalism...all reshuffle stories are crap.
→ -
Failure, it is thought, is what sells, and what people want to hear and read about. I am not so sure.
→ -
One of the more fatuous remarks I've heard in recent days is that 'My Life,' Clinton's autobiography, is too long and, at almost 1,000 pages, short it is not. But this man was for eight years the President of the most powerful country on earth.
→ -
May I share with you my earliest memory of a political row? It was with my mother, about the Queen - classic Freudian stuff, shrinks would say. I was eight, and refusing to watch the Queen's Christmas Day broadcast.
→ -
My aunty says I'm the double of my father. He was a workaholic, which I've definitely inherited. And like me, he could be the life and soul of the party, but also quite withdrawn.
→ -
We should confine booing in sports arenas to sport. I love a good boo as much as the next football fan.
→ -
Like most meaningful activities, campaigns are team games.
→ -
For all that the papers would say I was a liar, I took the words I was saying at briefings as seriously as Tony Blair took what he would say at the Despatch Box. I find it very difficult not to tell the truth. I felt I was accountable for what I said.
→ -
I hold no candle for George Osborne whatsoever. He has no strategic skills, is a hopeless chancellor, has no idea how most people have to live and his policies are failing and hurting millions.
→ -
The day of the daredevil reporter who refuses to see obstacles to getting the truth, and seeing it with his or her own eyes, seems to have died.
→ -
Friends have suggested that I am the least qualified person to talk about happiness, because I am often down, and sometimes profoundly depressed. But I think that's where my qualification comes from. Because to know happiness, it helps to know unhappiness.
→ -
I will continue to help the political causes I believe in in any way I can.
→ -
I remember talking to Alex Ferguson about Tony [Blair] and Gordon [Brown], and he said: "Why doesn't Tony just get rid of him?" But if you sack someone in football, they can't turn up to training the next day. In politics they're still on the pitch. Gordon would still have been a big player.
→
Related Authors
-
Alan Johnson Secretary of State for Health -
Tony Blair Former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom -
Andrew Marr Journalist -
David Cameron Prime Minister of the United Kingdom -
Cherie Blair Barrister -
Alistair Darling British Politician -
Peter Mandelson British Politician -
Ed Miliband British Politician -
Margaret Thatcher Former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom -
George W. Bush 43rd U.S. President -
Gordon Brown Former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom -
John Prescott British Politician -
Nick Clegg Deputy Prime Minister of the United Kingdom -
John Major Former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom -
William J. Clinton 42nd U.S. President -
Nigel Farage British Politician -
David Miliband British Politician -
Armando Iannucci Satirist -
Charles Kennedy British Politician -
Queen Elizabeth II Monarch