When I'm out of politics I'm going to run a business, it'll be called rent-a-spine

There is no such thing as society.

The Third World is very much like the First World - just poorer: what works for the West will work for the rest as well.

Of course you have a duty to show the disfigurations of society as well as its more agreeable aspects. But if TV in the western world uses its freedom continually to show all that is worst in our society, while the centrally controlled television of the Communist world and the dictatorships show only what is judged advantageous to them and suppress everything else, how are the uncommitted to judge between us? How can they fail to misjudge if they view matters only through a distorted mirror?

From my experience let me say this: in today's world it is no bad thing for a politician to have had the benefit of a scientific background. And not only politicians. Those who work in industry, in commerce, in investment. Indeed, so important has it become that I believe we are right to make science a compulsory subject for all schoolchildren.

The acid test of politics is not what you say at the hustings, but what you actually do in government.

To accuse me of being too inflexible is poppycock.