Green politics at its worst amounts to a sort of Zen fascism; less extreme, it denounces growth and seeks to stop the world so that we can all get off.

There is a sort of exotic preposterousness about a lot of elections, the way arguments are made even cruder.

But the ability to articulate what you are doing, to be clear about it, and to stick to it is, I think, the essence of political leadership.

I think that what most surprises anybody who goes into politics from even a modestly cerebral background is the vulgarity of much of the cut and thrust of politics.

It is almost always wrong that the time isn't ripe to decide something. That is always said of difficult problems.

Hong Kong's people will get what they want, despite China's objections. Freedom invariably wins in the end.

It behaves more like a tribe than a democratic institution...responding to custom rather than reason and using its own liturgy and language for the conduct of its domestic affairs.