I am an optimist, unrepentant and militant. After all, in order not to be a fool an optimist must know how sad a place the world can be. It is only the pessimist who finds this out anew every day.

I had started by imitating a parrot, which is unusual, in that a parrot is supposed to imitate you. By taking the initiative you allow the parrot no alternative but to be itself, which proves again that attack is often the best defence.

I'm Rally of Unionist Separist Extremes, sometimes known as the R.U.S.E. … It's the party at present in power.

Critics search for ages for the wrong word, which, to give them credit, they eventually find.

I believe that the Jews have made a contribution to the human condition out of all proportion to their numbers: I believe them to be an immense people. Not only have they supplied the world with two leaders of the stature of Jesus Christ and Karl Marx, but they have even indulged in the luxury of following neither one nor the other.

Intelligent or not, we all make mistakes and perhaps the intelligent mistakes are the worst, because so much careful thought has gone into them.

The stupidity of a stupid man is mercifully intimate and reticient, while the stupidity of an intellectual is cried from the rooftops.