Object to merit and distinction, and you're setting your face against quality, independence, originality, genius against all the richness and variety of life. When you hold back the successful, you penalize those who need help.

There's no such thing as entitlement, unless someone has first met an obligation.

What we should grasp, however, from the lessons of European history is that, first, there is nothing necessarily benevolent about programmes of European integration; second, the desire to achieve grand utopian plans often poses a grave threat to freedom; and third, European unity has been tried before, and the outcome was far from happy.

Countries trade with each other - or to be more precise people buy and sell from each other across frontiers - because that is the way to advance their interests. We do not need to beg people to trade with us - as long as we have something that people want, of a quality they expect and at a price they are prepared to pay.

The Kosovo campaign was a just and necessary war. And I believe that Blair - of whom I have many criticisms - in this case showed real determination in conducting it.

If you are guided by opinion polls, you are not practicing leadership -- you are practicing followership.

I never hugged him, I bombed him.