A little nonsense now and then is not a bad thing - where would we politicians be if we were not allowed to talk it sometimes.

Lift the curtain and 'the State' reveals itself as a little group of fallible men in Whitehall, making guesses about the future, influenced by political prejudices and partisan prejudices, and working on projections drawn from the past by a staff of economists.

A little nonsense now and then is not a bad thing - where would we politicians be if we were not allowed to talk it sometimes.

When we look at the astonishing material achievements of the West. we see these things as the result, not of compulsion or government action or the superior wisdom of a few, but of that system of competition and free enterprise, rewarding success and penalising failure, which enables every individual to participate by his private decisions in shaping the future of his society.

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.

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

I am the last person whom it would be reasonable to expect to leave the Conservative Party.