Quotes by Alastair Campbell

In an ideal world, it would not take a film star to get the media focused on mental illness.

— Alastair Campbell

Life

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.

— Alastair Campbell

Friendship

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.

— Alastair Campbell

Friendship

My public caricature - that of a self-confident alpha male - is only partly accurate.

— Alastair Campbell

Wisdom

My closest friend, who died not long ago, is buried near Marx's grave in Highgate cemetery, so I see the gaggle of admirers laying roses at the foot of his tombstone regularly. I have never been tempted to leave flowers there myself. Great theories, shame about the practice. Marx did many things. But inventing class was not one of them.

— Alastair Campbell

Friendship

My dad, Donald, was a vet and had a practice in Yorkshire. Cats and dogs were his bread and butter, but his greatest love was large animals.

— Alastair Campbell

Love

The bad news for journalists today is that the media, however seriously people who are in the public eye take it, is not taken as seriously as it once was - by the public.

— Alastair Campbell

Wisdom

I'm certainly driven, I hate losing, I can be ruthless and short-tempered and terribly competitive.

— Alastair Campbell

Wisdom

Like most meaningful activities, campaigns are team games.

— Alastair Campbell

Wisdom

One in four of us will have a mental illness at some point. That is a lot of people.

— Alastair Campbell

Wisdom

We should confine booing in sports arenas to sport. I love a good boo as much as the next football fan.

— Alastair Campbell

Love

Don't accept that you are in crisis just because everyone says you are.

— Alastair Campbell

Wisdom

I have always been driven. I have always believed in what I believe very deeply.

— Alastair Campbell

Wisdom

I used to be very routine-based and the new thing in my life is not having a clear, full-time existence.

— Alastair Campbell

Life

I will continue to help the political causes I believe in in any way I can.

— Alastair Campbell

Wisdom

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.

— Alastair Campbell

Truth

The media are obsessed with spin doctors and with portraying them as a bad thing, yet seem addicted to our medicine.

— Alastair Campbell

Wisdom

There are many reasons for the decline in royal esteem. One is that so many of the royals are thick.

— Alastair Campbell

Wisdom

There has been a shift to what may be defined as a culture of negativity which goes well beyond coverage of politics.

— Alastair Campbell

Wisdom

Clinton is a big personality who has led a big life, and for some of the media conventional wisdom to boil it down to a view that 'all people are really interested in' are a few moments of madness in the Oval Office gets him, the importance of the presidency, and the significance of his life, all wrong.

— Alastair Campbell

Life

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.

— Alastair Campbell

Success

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.

— Alastair Campbell

Wisdom

There is something in me that makes me see things through.

— Alastair Campbell

Wisdom

To me, marriage is partly a religious thing and I'm not religious.

— Alastair Campbell

Love