An eclectic collection that made us pause for thought.
I know little about art, and I don’t even know what I like.
War is organised murder, and nothing else.
When your wife is quiet, don’t interrupt!
It is very fascistic. You take out the weak and the strong remain. It’s like ethnic cleansing.
Birthdays are good for you – the more you have, the longer you live!
Never under-estimate the power of a large gold frame.
The Constitution does not just protect those whose views we share; it also protects those with whose views we disagree.
When you want to drain a marsh, you don’t consult the frogs…
You have to decide even to hesitate.
In the English system you’re innocent until proved Irish.
Churchill never doubted his own genius, though subordinates sometimes wished he would.
Man is the only animal that blushes. Or needs to.
Politics is perhaps the only profession for which no preparation is thought necessary.
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.
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.
Millionaires are often millionaires because they had no other option.
I don’t believe in genius. I believe in freedom. I think anyone can do it – anyone can be like Rembrandt.
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.
Once the rhetoric has settled and the delegates have drifted away, the indignation cools and the world carries on business as usual.
Too much of reality television puts inflated egos in empty spaces and pumps them up further to see who explodes first.
Hypochondria is the one disease I have not got.
The duty of a Christian is not to succeed, but to fail cheerfully.
If you resolve to give up smoking, drinking and loving, you don’t actually live longer; it just seems like it.
The country is going down the drain and they are squabbling about the size of the plughole.
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.
At his best, man is the noblest of all animals; separated from law and justice he is the worst.
The mediocrity of his thinking is concealed by the majesty of his language.
Men of power have no time to read; yet the men who do not read are unfit for power.
Always be sure to go to other people’s funerals, otherwise they won’t come to yours.
A husband is not like a table cloth. You don’t want to change him every fortnight.
I like to run just often enough to make me feel smug.
“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
It is very difficult not to live up to your income.
I’m from the government and I’m here to help.
The United States does not have a security system: it has a system for bothering people.
More people would live to a ripe old age if they weren’t too busy providing for it.
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.
All political careers end in failure.
Wrinkles are hereditary: parents get them from their children.
I’ve never seen so many dead people smoking.
Culture – of course there is culture in Dubai – we had Tom Jones here a couple of weeks ago.
A good decision is based on knowledge and not on numbers.
Money doesn’t grow on trees – unless you are an olive farmer.
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.
The only dream worth having is to dream that you will live while you are alive and die only when you’re dead.
Language is the skin on my thought.
When I want to read a novel, I write one.
Immature poets imitate. Mature poets steal.
Age is a high price to pay for maturity.
The main essentials of a prime minister are sleep and a sense of history.