I would rather go while I am being urged to stay, than to stay beyond the time when I should go.

I don't think it's the role of the prime minister to court the press.

I think the biggest mistake I made was this wretched ability to see both sides of an argument.

If you look at things that really affect people's lives - sport, the arts, charities - they were always at the back of the queue for government money - health, social security, defence, pensions were all way ahead. And each of those areas - sports, the arts, the lottery - got relatively petty cash from the government.

Let's turn British inventions into British industries, British factories and British jobs. Let them make pounds for us, not dollars marks or yen for others.

In housing in the fifties in Britain and the sixties, we pulled down the terraces - destroyed whole communities and replaced them with tower blocks and we built walkways that became rat-runs for muggers. That was the fashionable opinion. But it was wrong.

Ronnie Barker will forever be remembered as one of the great comic actors.