“I love horses. I spent seven years as a racing commissioner on a horse-racing board.”

That’s what I’m about — getting engaged. Too many people don’t wade in the mud with the politicians.

Mixing pop and politics he asks me what the use is / I offer him embarrassment and my usual excuses.

I want to like my music before you like it. I don’t want to sell anything that I don’t really like.

So, in some ways, the political songs tend to be a bit more like reportage, whereas the love songs tend to be like novels, you can pick them up off the shelf and go into them any time.

Christianity is the only true and perfect religion; and… in proportion as mankind adopt its principles and obey its precepts, they will be wise and happy.

[A]s long as you’re comfortable it feels like freedom.

Part of the problem with some elements of the European debate is that they hanker for the days when we were a great power. Those days are gone, and they went a long time ago.

Whether we like it or not, we live in a post-ideological world. That’s how a Donald Trump can get through. He has no ideology at all: in that sense, he’s a bit like Mussolini.

War what is it good for? It’s good for business.

Just because you’re gay, I won’t turn you away. If you stick around, I’m sure we can find some common ground.

Don’t saddle me with your ideals, and spare me all your guilt. For a poet with all the answers, has never yet been built.

Freedom is merely privilege extended, unless enjoyed by one and all.

I’m still batting away on my politics for the Labour Party. I’m much further to the left of them than I used to be, but that’s because they’ve moved, not me.

I came into this whole business by going to see Rock Against Racism gigs with the Clash.

All the things about ‘the ugly American’ that we worry about and which the Americans see in themselves, it’s all of that. This is a politics of egotistical display.

At some point in your life you have to engage with the fact that you are part of a society.

In racing, I wanted to be a winner and to be a winner, you have to be willing to roll the dice.

You can’t make a racehorse out of a pig. But if you work hard enough at it you can make a mighty fast pig.

My No. 1 goal in racing was never to be the most popular driver.

Nobody remembers the guy who finished second but the guy who finished second.

The lower classes are such fools. They waste their money on the pools.

I thought: This is not racing, it’s a suicide mission.

If the Indy Racing League didn’t have the Indianapolis 500, do you think it would have lasted more than six months? No chance.

Racing is the only time I feel whole.