An eclectic collection that made us pause for thought.
| 27 August 2010 | "I sometimes think that God in creating man somewhat overestimated his ability."
Oscar Wilde |
| 20 August 2010 | "The main essentials of a prime minister are sleep and a sense of history"
Harold Wilson
(With thanks to Robert Rogers in his book Order! Order!) |
| 13 August 2010 | "Age is a high price to pay for maturity."
Tom Stoppard |
| 30 July 2010 | "Immature poets imitate. Mature poets steal."
T.S. Eliot |
| 23 July 2010 | "When I want to read a novel, I write one."
Benjamin Disraeli.
(With thanks to the London Library.) |
| 16 July 2010 | "Language is the skin on my thought."
Arundhati Roy, The Algebra of Infinite Justice |
| 9 July 2010 | "The only dream worth having is to dream that you will live while you are alive and die only when you're dead."
Arundhati Roy, The Algebra of Infinite Justice |
| 2 July 2010 | "To be a good writer you first have to love words,then you'll find you have something to say. If you start out with something to say you end up with journalism or propaganda."
Peter Porter, the poet, who died in April 2010 in a 2003 interview with Duncan Fallowell published in Prospect, June 2010. |
| 25 June 2010 | "Money doesn't grow on trees - unless you are an olive farmer."
Cypriot proverb? |
| 18 June 2010 | "A good decision is based on knowledge and not on numbers."
Plato |
| 10 June 2010 | "Culture - of course there is culture in Dubai - we had Tom Jones here a couple of weeks ago."
An expat wife interviewed by the BBC for a programme on life in Dubai. |
| 1 June 2010 | "I've never seen so many dead people smoking."
Ronnie Scott to his (not very enthusiastic) expatriate audience in Abu Dhabi some years ago. |
| 21 May 2010 | "Wrinkles are hereditary: parents get them from their children."
Doris Day |
| 14 May 2010 | "All political careers end in failure."
Enoch Powell |
| 4 May 2010 | Definitions
"A gaffe is when a politician tells the truth. Not necessarily the objective truth but the truth about what he or she actually thinks."
Michael Kinsley.
(With thanks to Alexander Chancellor) |
| 30 April 2010 | "More people would live to a ripe old age if they weren't too busy providing for it."
Anon |
| 23 April 2010 | "The United States does not have a security system: it has a system for bothering people."
Schlomo Dror, Israeli air security expert.
(With thanks to Michael Lind and the Financial Times)
|
| 16 April 2010 | 'I'm from the government and I'm here to help.'
The most terrifying words in the English language, according to Ronald Reagan. |
| 9 April 2010 | "It is very difficult not to live up to your income."
Angela Dixon |
| 2 April 2010 | "The customer is always right."
H.G.Selfridge, the founder of Selfridges store in London
"The customer's usually wrong."
Michael O'Leary, chief of Ryanair
(With thanks to Michael Skapinker, Financial Times) |
| 26 March 2010 | "I like to run just often enough to make me feel smug."
Jack Dee, on the News Quiz, BBC Radio |
| 19 March 2010 | "A husband is not like a table cloth. You don't want to change him every fortnight."
Shazia Mirza's mother. With acknowledgements to Shazia Mirza and the Guardian |
| 12 March 2010 | "Always be sure to go to other people's funerals, otherwise they won't come to yours"
Yogi Berra |
| 4 March 2010 | "Men of power have no time to read; yet the men who do not read are unfit for power”
Michael Foot, who died on 3rd March aged 96 |
| 5 February 2010 | "The mediocrity of his thinking is concealed by the majesty of his language."
Aneurin Bevan on a speech by Churchill.*
With thanks to 'Order! Order!' by Robert Rogers
*Sadly mediocrity rules in both the language and thinking of today's politicians. |
| 29 January 2010 | "At his best, man is the noblest of all animals; separated from law and justice he is the worst."
Aristotle |
| 22 January 2010 | "The government, which proclaims a target of 50 per cent of young people going to university, and at the same time ensures that forty per cent are uneducated when they leave secondary school, lives in a fantasy world."
PD James - from a character in her latest novel, The Private Patient. |
| 15 January 2010 | "The country is going down the drain and they are squabbling about the size of the plughole."
Jeremy Thorpe - one time leader of the Liberal Party. |
| 3 January 2010 | "If you resolve to give up smoking, drinking and loving, you don't actually live longer; it just seems like it."
Clement Freud |
| 27 December 2009 | "The duty of a Christian is not to succeed, but to fail cheerfully."
Robert Louis Stevenson |
| 20 December 2009 | "Hypochondria is the one disease I have not got."
Graffiti - from Patrick Hughes' brilliant book, More on Oxymoron |
| 13 December 2009 | "Too much of reality television puts inflated egos in empty spaces and pumps them up further to see who explodes first."
John Lloyd, Financial Times |
| 6 December 2009 | "Once the rhetoric has settled and the delegates have drifted away, the indignation cools and the world carries on business as usual."
Mohamed Nasheed, President of the Maldives, speaking at a climate change summit in September 2009 |
| 29 November 2009 | "The brain is a wonderful organ. It starts working the moment you get up in the morning and does not stop until you get into the office."
Robert Frost |
| 22 November 2009 | "I don't believe in genius. I believe in freedom. I think anyone can do it - anyone can be like Rembrandt."
Damian Hirst, interviewed in the Guardian |
| 15 November 2009 | "Millionaires are often millionaires because they had no other option."
Theo Paphitis, interviewed in Building magazine 13.11.09 |
| 8 November 2009 | "It would be as wise to set up an accomplished lawyer to saw wood as a business as to condemn an educated and sensible woman to spend all her time boiling potatoes and patching old garments."
Sarah Grimke |
| 1 November 2009 | "I have nothing to complain about when I get home from a hard day's work, because I do not work hard, and I am already home."
Tim Dowling, Guardian Weekend (24 Oct. 09) |
| 25 October 2009 | "Politics is perhaps the only profession for which no preparation is thought necessary."
Robert Louis Stevenson |
| 18 October 2009 | "Man is the only animal that blushes. Or needs to."
Mark Twain |
| 9 October 2009 | "Churchill never doubted his own genius, though subordinates sometimes wished he would."
Max Hastings, from his new book 'Finest Years: Churchill as Warlord 1940-45' |
| 25 September 2009 | "In the English system you're innocent until proved Irish."
Michael Mansfield QC (interviewed in The Guardian by Aida Edemariam) |
| 18 September 2009 | "You have to decide even to hesitate."
Stanislaw Lec
(From More on Oxymoron by Patrick Hughes) |
| 11 September 2009 | "When you want to drain a marsh, you don't consult the frogs..."
President Mitterand on large infrastructure projects (with thanks to Rowan Moore, Evening Standard) |
| 4 September 2009 | "The Constitution does not just protect those whose views we share; it also protects those with whose views we disagree."
Senator Edward Kennedy who died on 26th August 2009. |
| 28 August 2009 | "Never under-estimate the power of a large gold frame"
Banksy -from one of his works (in a large gold frame) on show at the Bristol Museum |
| 21 August 2009 | "Birthdays are good for you - the more you have, the longer you live!"
Anon |
| 14 August 2009 | Lars von Trier, on vegetable gardening:
"It is very fascistic. You take out the weak and the strong remain. It's like ethnic cleansing."
From an interview with the Danish film director by Peter Aspden for the Financial Times |
| 7 August 2009 | "When your wife is quiet, don't interrupt!"
Paul Bailey on BBC Radio 4. |
| 31 July 2009 | "War is organised murder, and nothing else."
Harry Patch, the last surviving soldier from of the First World War, who died at the age of 111 on 25 July 2009. |
| 24 July 2009 | "I know little about art, and I don't even know what I like."
Simon Hoggart, The Guardian |
| 17 July 2009 | "How much evil must we do in order to do good?"
Robert McNamara, former US Secretary of State for Defence, who died on 6th July, in a comment during the Vietnam war. |
| 10 July 2009 | "I'm truly sorry man's dominion,
Has broken Nature's social union"
Robert Burns, in a poem to a mouse
(With thanks to John Lloyd, Financial Times) |
| 3 July 2009 | Felix qui potuit cognoscere causas rerum
Virgil
(With thanks to Tim Broome)
For those who do not know Latin, it means Happy is the man who could know the causes of things. |
| 27 June 2009 | "It would be a great reform in politics if wisdom could be made to spread as easily and as rapidly as folly."
Winston Churchill |
| 20 June 2009 | The abuse of their privileges by MP's is not new. Oliver Cromwell, addressing the House of Commons on 20th April 1653 said:
"It is high time for me to put an end to your sitting in this place, which you have dishonoured by your contempt of all virtue, and defiled by your practice of every vice; ye are a factious crew, and enemies to all good government; ye are a pack of mercenary wretches, and would like Esau sell your country for a mess of pottage, and like Judas betray your God for a few pieces of money."
|
| 13 June 2009 | "A superintelligent machine could be the last invention humans ever make."
Martin Rees in his book, Our Final Century |
| 1 June 2009 | "We know no spectacle so ridiculous as the British public in one of its fits of morality."
Lord Macaulay writing in 1831 |
| 18 May 2009 | Defintion of Derivatives:
"Financial weapons of mass destruction"
Warren Buffet |
| 11 May 2009 | "If I want your opinion, I'll give it to you."
Attributed to Sam Goldwyn |
| 4 May 2009 | "There are two ways of doing everything, and the wrong one always comes first."
Anon |
| 27 April 2009 | "I take full responsibility. That's why the person who was responsible went immediately ... "
Gordon Brown, interviewed on the Damien McBride affair. |
| 17 April 2009 | "Does anyone ever know what he needs to know until he has the opportunity to know it?"
Brian Sewell on art in the Evening Standard |
| 10 April 2009 | "Never let a good crisis go to waste."
Rahm Emmanuel, Pres. Obama's Chief of Staff. (with thanks to Richard Reeves, Prospect magazine) |
| 3 April 2009 | "My fear is we are substituting public debt for private debt."
Henry Kissinger (24 March 2009) |
| 27 March 2009 | "Stores don't like customers, they like credit cards!"
Richard Gere in Pretty Woman |
| 20 March 2009 | "It was far better than being psycho-analysed. It gave me a completely new idea of myself."
Edith Evans, on posing nude for a sculpture by Dora Gordine in 1938 |
| 13 March 2009 | "The financial world is stumbling blindly through a cognitive fog."
Gillian Tett, assistant editor, Financial Times |
| 6 March 2009 | "The problem with socialism is that eventually you run out of other people's money."
Margaret Thatcher |
| 27 February 2009 | "I am called Spiderman, not because I am lithe and active, but because I find it difficult to get out of the bath!"
Gary Richardson, The Today Programme. |
| 20 February 2009 | "The best time to plant a tree is twenty years ago. The second best time is now."
African proverb - quoted by Dambisa Moyo in her book 'Dead Aid'. |
| 12 February 2009 | "High finance is just a game of noughts and crosses. The market adds a lot of noughts to your fortune, then it comes back and crosses them off!"
Sir James Goldsmith, with thanks to Paul Johnson, The Spectator. |
| 5 February 2009 | " I am convinced it will almost always be in our strategic interest to act multilaterally, not unilaterally, when using force around the world. By this, I don’t mean that.... the UN Security Council should have a veto on our actions. Nor do I mean that we round up the United Kingdom and Togo and then do as we please."
Barack Obama - from his book "The Audacity of Hope"
Is this the new President's view of the 'special relationship' between Britain and the US? |
| 29 January 2009 | Energy saving at the Treasury:
It is rumoured that Treasury officals are considering a new scheme: until further notice the light at the end of the tunnel will be switched off.
With thanks to Sue Cameron, Financial Times |
| 20 January 2009 | "The art of cross-examination is not to examine crossly."
Sir John Mortimer QC, who died last week |
| 2 January 2009 | "The best way to destroy the capitalist system is to debauch the currency."
John Maynard Keynes.
With thanks to ThinkExist.com Quotations Online
{Presumably this is a bit of Keynesian thinking that Gordon Brown has chosen to ignore.) |
| 26 December 2008 | When presented with a miniature jar of honey at a guest house where he was staying, Jimmy Shand asked the landlady:
"Do you keep a bee?"
With thanks to Brian Groom, FT. |
| 19 December 2008 | "Christmas is when kids tell Santa what they want and adults pay for it. Deficits are when governments tell adults what they want, and their kids pay for it."
Mark Boland (in the Financial Times) |
| 12 December 2008 | "If you sweep Mother Nature out of the door with a broom, she will come back through the window with a pitchfork."
Old Russian proverb |
| 5 December 2008 | "In theory there is no difference between theory and practice. In practice there is."
Attributed to Yogi Berra - with thanks to Robert Arnott, FT. |
| 28 November 2008 | "Some silver linings will come out of this cloud."
Sir John Parker, chairman of National Grid and of the Court of the Bank of England, speaking of the current crisis in an interview with Judi Bevan for The Spectator |
| 21 November 2008 | "I have a new philosophy. I'm only going to dread one day at a time."
Charles M. Schulz |
| 14 November 2008 | "Why did nobody notice?"
Her Majesty the Queen's pithy question on the credit crunch to the director of research at the London School of Economics, on a visit last week.
His answer is not worth repeating but you can read more on the subject in Simon Jenkins' excellent article in The Guardian of 12th November. |
| 6 November 2008 | "Yes we can."
Barack Obama, US President Elect |
| 31 October 2008 | An example of ambiguous drafting or mis-spelling? -
"The management does not except responsibility for loss of contents or damage to vehicles whilst left in this car park. Vehicles are left entirely at the owners risk."
The Horse & Groom, Charlton |
| 24 October 2008 | From a trader on a BBC website:
"This is worse than a divorce.
I've lost half my net worth and I still have a wife.”
|
| 17 October 2008 | A Churchillian comment on the financial crisis:
"Never has so much been owed by so few to so many!"
Anon |
| 10 October 2008 | "For more than two centuries, the US and Europe have exercised an effortless economic, political and cultural hegemony. That era is coming to an end."
Philip Stephens, Financial Times |
| 3 October 2008 | "As profits grow incrementally, do losses accumulate excrementally?"
Tim Moss, letter in the Financial Times. |
| 28 September 2008 | "If you get arrogant, you lose your way and start making mistakes."
Richard Fuld, CEO of Lehman Brothers, in a 2005 interview with Euromoney |
| 18 September 2008 | "Better a genius without faith than a believer without talent."
Father Alain Couturier, the Dominican monk, commenting on the selection of artists and architects for French church buildings in an article in Harpers Bazaar.
(With thanks to Jackie Wullschlager, FT, reviewing work by Georges Rouault) |
| 11 September 2008 | "Where the wind of the argument goes, there we must follow."
Plato's Republic. (With thanks to Katherine Whitehorn) |
| 4 September 2008 | "The gestation period for an elephant is about the same as a Financial Services Authority consultation."
Ian Morley, chairman of Carazon Capital, writing in the Financial Times |
| 26 August 2008 | Description of the Pyramids at Giza by 19th century artist William Holman Hunt:
"Extremely ugly blocks..arranged with most unpicturesque taste."
(With thanks to Tate Britain where some of his paintings of Egypt are currently on show) |
| 19 August 2008 | "I like working on holiday because it makes me feel important."
Tim Dowling, writing in The Guardian Weekend |
| 12 August 2008 | "I want America to know that I'm, like, ready to lead."
Paris Hilton, commenting on the McCain advert in which she featured. |
| 8 August 2008 | "There are three sides to every argument: my side, your side and the truth."
Anon |
| 1 August 2008 | "A good book is a guilty pleasure to be enjoyed in secret."
Angela Dixon |
| 25 July 2008 | Definition of an economist:
"An economist is a fellow who knows 101 ways of making love and doesn't have a girl."
Dr. William C.Freund, former chief economist for the New York Stock Exchange (as recounted by P.J.O'Rourke in his book On the Wealth of Nations). |
| 18 July 2008 | When told by his host that it was a great honour to have accepted his invitation to lunch on his 90th birthday, Sir John Gielgud replied: "Oh, I'm delighted to have been asked. All my real friends are dead, you know."
Gyles Brandreth (who was the host) |
