“Any difficulties which the world faces today will be as nothing compared to the full effects which global warming will have on the world-wide economy.”

There’s nothing like a jolly good disaster to get people to start doing something.

You have to give this much to the Luftwaffe: when it knocked down our buildings it did not replace them with anything more offensive than rubble. We did that.

This was one of those special occasions when I could actually feel the inner appreciation of the beauty of the moment passing like an electric current through the brush in my hand.

One of the main reasons for the conflict in Syria, and the terrorism that it’s spawned, is climate change and drought.

I think we’re going to find, with climate change and everything else, things like global warming and goodness knows what else and the cost of fuel for a start, that things are going to become very complicated.

I think we’d be very foolish to expect that we can just import everything from somewhere else and imagine that that’s going to last for ever and ever and ever.

I sometimes wonder if two thirds of the globe is covered in red carpet.

Do you seriously expect me to be the first Prince of Wales in history not to have a mistress?

I was totally absorbed. I was in another world, or another dimension; all sense of time evaporated.

As technology advances at an alarming pace, the place of drawing remains as valid as ever in the creation of art and architecture.

The demand for organic food is growing at a remarkable rate. Consumers have made it clear that they want organic produce and every sector of the food chain is responding, with the kind of results we have just seen.

A jostling scrum of office buildings so mediocre that the only way you ever remember them is by the frustration they induce – like a basketball team standing shoulder to shoulder between you and the Mona Lisa.

The price of apparently cheap food is costing nothing less than the Earth!

There is no doubt that we live in an age of unprecedented, and sometimes terrifying, technological advance where the speed of advance so often outstrips the necessary ethical considerations.

To avert disaster, we have not only to teach men to make things but to teach them to have complete moral control over what they make.

Forests are the world’s air-conditioning system-the lungs of the planet-and we are on the verge of switching it off.

It’s a thing of no great difficulty to raise objections against another man’s oration, it is a very easy matter, but to produce a better in its place is a work extremely troublesome.

The truly pious must negotiate a difficult course between the precipice of godlessness and the marsh of superstition.

If a child has not been taught to behave properly by the age of four, it will forever be difficult for him or her to make friends.

To find fault is easy; to do better may be difficult.

It is always more difficult to fight successfully against Faith than against knowledge.

It is difficult to find happiness within oneself, but it is impossible to find it anywhere else.

It is surmounting difficulties that make heroes.

Softhearted child, there has always been a warrior inside of you. And the only way it could have been awoken was through difficult trials and momentary pain.