“Winston Churchill – fifty per cent genius, fifty per cent bloody fool.”

It’s nice to keep in touch – besides, it’s the only place in London where you can park a car.

I am a diffident man. I find it hard to carry on a conversation.

The Peace Treaties must be scrapped … I stand for no more war and no more secret diplomacy.

The ordinary citizen is allowed to hear and think only as the rulers decree.

If you begin to consider yourself solely responsible to a political party, you’re half-way to a dictatorship.

I think the British have the distinction above all other nations of being able to put new wine into old bottles without bursting them.

It is dangerous to play politics with the Budget.

No social system will bring us happiness, health and prosperity unless it is inspired by something greater than materialism.

In a life and death struggle, we cannot afford to leave our destinies in the hands of failures.

When we are returned to power we want to put in the statute book an act which will make our people citizens of the world before they are citizens of this country.

Charity is a cold grey loveless thing.

Man’s material discoveries have outpaced his moral progress.

Fifty percent of Winston is genius, fifty percent bloody fool. He will behave like a child.

A period of silence on your part would be welcome.

Democracy means government by discussion, but it is only effective if you can stop people talking.

An empty taxi drew up outside 10 Downing Street and Clement Attlee got out of it.

Only you, Will Traynor, could tell a woman how to wear a bloody dress.

Fifty percent of Winston is genius, fifty percent bloody fool. He will behave like a child.

Any writer of any worth at all hopes to play only a pocket-torch of light – and rarely, through genius, a sudden flambeau – into the bloody yet beautiful labyrinth of human experience, of being.

…if the beginnings of love and amorous politics are equally rosy, then the ends may be equally bloody.

The American dream? We don’t have a dream in Britain because we’re bloody awake!

The history of colonialism is long and bloody. And it continues today, in the shape of Western arrogance vis-à-vis everyone else. “Us against the rest of the world” is the formula that drives the West.