On being Prime Minister:

"You may do it badly, you may do it well, some people like you, some people hate you, all the rest of it – but you have got a real motivating life purpose."

"You’re not living a real life in this job. There’s no point pretending."

"The art of leadership is saying no, not yes. It is very easy to say yes."

Blair casts himself as EU president candidate

Speaking on French TV, Tony Blair sang the praises of the EU and sketched his agenda for its future, all in fluent French

Multimedia

• The Blair years: video, pictures and analysis

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Background

• The past decade a disaster?

• All about Iraq? Don’t you believe it

• I’ll give Blair six and a half out of ten

Multimedia

• Blair fashion gallery

• Cherie Blair picture gallery

• Brookes on Blair

"Sometimes it is better to lose and do the right thing than to win and do the wrong thing."

"The truth is, you can’t go on forever."

On himself:

"I can only go one way. I’ve not got a reverse gear."

"I think most people who have dealt with me, think I'm a pretty straight sort of guy, and I am."

On Cherie:

"Once she goes to sleep it takes a minor nuclear explosion to wake her."

"I’ve never sent her flowers. If I sent her flowers, she would get worried. "

"At least I know she is not going to run away with the bloke next door."

On war:

"Mine is the first generation able to contemplate the possibility that we may live our entire lives without going to war or sending our children to war."

On Iraq:

"I do not seek unpopularity as a badge of honour. But sometimes it is the price of leadership and the cost of conviction."

"I think if you have faith about these things, you realise that judgment is made by other people ... and if you believe in God, it's made by God as well."

"If we are wrong, we will have destroyed a threat that, at its least is responsible for inhuman carnage and suffering. That is something I am confident history will forgive. "

On Gordon Brown:

"I’m not saying there haven’t been tensions. It passes."

On the Labour Party:

"They say I hate the party, and its traditions. I don't. I love this party. There's only one tradition I hated: losing."

"My project will be complete when the Labour Party learns to love Peter Mandelson."

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