Platitudes? Yes, there are platitudes. Platitudes are there because they are true.

What is success? I think it is a mixture of having a flair for the thing that you are doing; knowing that it is not enough, that you have got to have hard work and a certain sense of purpose.

I don’t mind how much my Ministers talk, so long as they do what I say.

Being powerful is like being a lady. If you have to tell people you are, you aren’t.

No one would remember the Good Samaritan if he’d only had good intentions; he had money as well.

There are still people in my party who believe in consensus politics. I regard them as Quislings, as traitors… I mean it.

If you want to cut your own throat, don’t come to me for a bandage.

I love argument, I love debate. I don’t expect anyone just to sit there and agree with me, that’s not their job.

One of the things being in politics has taught me is that men are not a reasoned or reasonable sex.

Democratic nations must try to find ways to starve the terrorist and the hijacker of the oxygen of publicity on which they depend.