Polly Toynbee Quotes

Working lives are for the state to influence. Unemployment makes people unhappy. So does instability.

Thresholds of pain, indignity and incapacity are entirely personal.

This is indeed a clash of civilisations, not between Islam and Christendom but between reason and superstition.

There is all the difference in the world between teaching children about religion and handing them over to be taught by the religious.

The strongest predictor of unhappiness is anyone who has had a mental illness in the last 10 years. It is an even stronger predictor of unhappiness than poverty – which also ranks highly.