My headmaster chastised me with a diabolical instrument a leather strap tacked to a piece of wood but he taught me with such villainous success that I am now Prime Minister.

One thing about bureaucrats is that they never swallow their young. Leave them alone and you'll find them increasing every year.

The great vice of democracy is that for a generation we have been busy getting ourselves on to the list of beneficiaries and removing ourselves from the list of contributors, as if somewhere there was somebody else's effort on which we could thrive.

When people meet my wife they think better of me. They say: "With a wife like that, he can't be as bad as we thought".

We took the name 'Liberal' because we were determined to be a progressive party, willing to make experiments, in no sense reactionary but believing in the individual, his rights, and his enterprise, and rejecting the socialist panacea.

"I pay my taxes," says somebody, as if that were an act of virtue instead of one of compulsion.

One speaks with great respect of economists, if only because they represent such a variety of opinions.