I believe the more difficult the circumstances, the more people will be inclined to trust those in charge at the moment.

If you file your waste-paper basket for fifty years, you have a public library.

I met somebody once who said, "I'm a lapsed-atheist" by what he meant was, "I don't believe in God but the older I get the more I realise there is a spirituality in everybody that has to be cherished and nourished." That made a lot of sense to me.

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

It is wholly wrong to blame Marx for what was done in his name, as it is to blame Jesus for what was done in his

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.

If you're going to make sense of politics you have to have a historical perspective and also recognise that you have to work with people you don't agree with.