35 Quotes by Polly Toynbee

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.

My Lords temporal, today is the day to rise up against the regiment of Lords spiritual and proclaim the values of enlightenment, compassion and common sense.

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

But how odd that in this heathen nation of empty pews, where churches' bare, ruined choirs are converted into luxury loft living, a Labour government - yes, a Labour government - is deliberately creating a huge expansion of faith schools.

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

Crime is only the worst example, but it is a paradigm for other Labour policy disasters. No one tells the voters that crime is falling: let them stay scared senseless.

Happiness is a real, objective phenomenon, scientifically verifiable. That means people and whole societies can now be measured over time and compared accurately with one another. Causes and cures for unhappiness can be quantified.

But instead of standing up for reason, our government is handing education over to the world of faith.

Most people come to fear not death itself, but the many terrible ways of dying.