“The thought of two thousand people crunching celery at the same time horrified me.”

If you take too long in deciding what to do with your life, you’ll find you’ve done it.

Patriotism is, fundamentally, a conviction that a particular country is the best in the world because you were born in it.

Independence? That’s middle class blasphemy. We are all dependent on one another, every soul of us on earth.

I’m an atheist and I thank God for it.

You see things; you say, ‘Why?’ But I dream things that never were; and I say ‘Why not?

Only in books has mankind known perfect truth, love and beauty.

Choose silence of all virtues, for by it you hear other men’s imperfections, and conceal your own.

You have learnt something. That always feels at first as if you have lost something.

Your friends are all the dullest dogs.

Happy is the man who can make a living by his hobby.

Why should we take advice on sex from the pope? If he knows anything about it, he shouldn’t!

In heaven an angel is no one in particular.

Power does not corrupt men; fools, however, if they get into a position of power, corrupt power.

Youth is wasted on the young.

The play was a great success, but audience was a dismal failure.

We are made wise not by the recollection of our past, but by the responsibility for our future.