People who are in politics to be right all the time would be better off taking up fly-fishing. It's less dangerous. Politics that is not applied in the real world and doesn't address the real challenges and paradoxes and agonies is a hobby.

Margaret Thatcher was not a malicious person. She was a person who couldn't see, or didn't want to see, the unfairness and disadvantaging consequences of the application of what she thought to be a renewing ideology.

Do something that makes a difference - because, by God, there's a lot to make you angry.

They travel best in gangs, hanging around like clumps of bananas, thick skinned and yellow.

I want to retire at 50. I want to play cricket in the summer and geriatric football in the winter, and sing in the choir.

That sort of fundamentalism which treats possession of private property not as a desirable economic and personal asset but as a condition of liberty is a form of primitive religion.

I warn you not to be ordinary, I warn you not to be young, I warn you not to fall ill, and I warn you not to grow old.