Paisley has been and remains a greater threat to the Union than the Foreign Office and the Provisional IRA rolled into one.

Independence, the freedom of a self-governing nation, is in my estimation the highest political good, for which any disadvantage, if need be, and any sacrifice are a cheap price.

Of all political sacred-cows, education is the most sacred and the most cow-like.

If my ship sails from sight, it doesn't mean my journey ends, it simply means the river bends.

All political lives, unless they are cut off in midstream at a happy juncture, end in failure, because that is the nature of politics and of human affairs.

It is like watching a nation busily engaged in heaping up its own funeral pyre. So insane are we that we actually permit unmarried persons to immigrate for the purpose of founding a family with spouses and fiancées whom they have never seen.

The supreme function of statesmanship is to provide against preventable evils.