“I think if I hadn't been born in a pit village I'd have been part of a...” — Dennis Skinner Quote

“I think if I hadn't been born in a pit village I'd have been part of a dramatic society.”

“You don't enter politics when you come to parliament. I was getting politics for breakfast, dinner and tea when I was a little kid.”

“I've never sent an email to anybody. I believe in keeping the postman in work.”

“I am a stubborn optimist: I was born an optimist and will remain an optimist.”

“I was born and raised in the oldest settled part of the nation and in an environment in which racism was officially mooted.”

“My father was a sea captain, so was his father, and his father before him, and all my uncles. My mother's people all followed the sea. I suppose that if I had been born a few years earlier, I would have had my own ship.”