Blackmail is more effective than bribery.

I once heard someone say morality was method. Do you hold with that? I suppose you wouldn't. You would say that morality was vested in the aim, I expect. Difficult to know what one's aims are, that's the trouble, specially if you're British.

There was nothing dishonourable in not being blown about by every little modern wind. Better to have worth, to entrench, to be an oak of one's own generation.

The one thing you can bet is that spying is never over. Spying is like the wiring in this building: It's just a question of who takes it over and switches on the lights. It will go on and on and on.

A committee is an animal with four back legs.

There is a big difference between fighting the cold war and fighting radical Islam. The rules have changed and we haven't.

Let's all pretend to be someone else, and then perhaps we'll find out who we are.