The exhaustion of old age is something people who are younger don't fully appreciate.

Experience is the only real teacher and if you keep a diary you get three bites at educating yourself - when it happens, when you write it down, and when you reread it and realise you were wrong. Making mistakes is part of life. The only things I would feel ashamed of would be if I had said things I hadn't believed in order to get on. Some politicians do do that.

It is obvious I shall have to abandon my hopes of getting the Queen's head off the stamps.

Through talk, we tamed kings, restrained tyrants, averted revolution

We are paying a heavy political price for 20 years in which, as a party, we have played down our criticism of capitalism and soft-peddled our advocacy of socialism

My alternative to American superpower is the UN and I might add when China becomes the worlds greatest superpower you will need it too.

When somebody comes up with a progressive idea, to begin with, you're mad, bonkers. Then if you go on, you're dangerous. Then there's a pause. Then you can't find anyone who can say they thought of it in the first place. That's how progress is made. This is why I do believe in the vote. In the end, all these people who've been tempted to the right realise the warning lights in their constituency are brighter than the bright lights from No. 10 offering them things.