My definition of an intellectual is someone who can listen to the William Tell Overture without thinking of the Lone Ranger.

The only time I would like to see was the 20s and 30s in America because I love the music and the style and the optimism, I wanted to see New York being built. I wanted to see all that, you know.

The great thing about Glasgow is that if there's a nuclear attack it'll look exactly the same afterwards.

I love Los Angeles. It reinvents itself every two days.

I think my securities far outweigh my insecurities. I am not nearly as afraid of myself and my imagination as I used to be.

I've always wanted to go to Switzerland to see what the army does with those wee red knives.

If Jesus was a Jew, how come he has a Mexican first name?

Marriage is a wonderful invention: then again, so is a bicycle repair kit.

I loved Japan. I used to read a lot about it when I was a child. And I always wanted to go. And it was delightful. I absolutely loved it. What a smashing place.

I have been made redundant before and it is a terrible blow; redundant is a rotten word because it makes you think you are useless.

My definition of an intellectual is someone who can listen to the William Tell Overture without thinking of the Lone Ranger.

My parents used to take me to the pet department and tell me it was a zoo.

I don't know why I should have to learn Algebra... I'm never likely to go there.

Never trust a man, who when left alone with a tea cosey... Doesn't try it on.

It seems to me that Islam and Christianity and Judaism all have the same god, and he's telling them all different things.

I don't believe in angels and I have trouble with the whole God thing. I don't want to say I don't believe in God, but I don't think I do. But I believe in people who do.

There are two seasons in Scotland: June and Winter.

I'm a citizen of the world. I like it that way. The world's a wonderful. I just think that some people are pretty badly represented. But when you speak to the people themselves they're delightful. They all want so little.

Ally MacLeod thinks that tactics are a new kind of mint.

I don't have wild dogs chasing people with scripts away from my door. I get my share. I've done okay. But I usually do independent stuff because that's mostly what I'm offered.

I don't believe in angels, no. But I do have a wee parking angel. It's on my dashboard and you wind it up. The wings flap and it's supposed to give you a parking space. It's worked so far.

Fame is being asked to sign your autograph on the back of a cigarette packet.

Did your mother never tell you not to drink on an empty head?

Don't tell me how to do my job. I don't come to your workplace and tell you how to sweep up.

I started to draw desert islands. They were just rough, shapes in the middle of the page. Then I began drawing shapes within those shapes and I was amazed how quickly the islands got better. It took off from there.

I've always been fascinated by the difference between the jokes you can tell your friends but you can't tell to an audience. There's a fine line you have to tread because you don't know who is out there in the auditorium. A lot of people are too easily offended.

Once you become successful, people know where you live, the type of house you live in, the kind of car you drive, the clothes you wear, and so it would be patronising to go and talk like a welder. Welding's a mystery to me now. You can't go back, your life changes every day.

Before you judge a man, walk a mile in his shoes. After that who cares?... He's a mile away and you've got his shoes!

So have you heard about the oyster who went to a disco and pulled a mussel

Before you judge a man walk a mile in his shoes. After that who cares Hes a mile away and youve got his shoes

Marriage is a wonderful invention then again so is the bicycle repair kit.

The religion in Scotland is one of the most patronising things... after the weather.

I'd always been scared of people with tertiary education and high intellects in case they found me wanting. I thought they viewed me as just a welder who knew a few jokes.

We're all like children. We may think we grow up, but to me, being grown up is death, stopping thinking, trying to find out things, going on learning.

Kind thoughts are rarer than either kind words or deeds. They imply a great deal of thinking about others. This in itself is rare. But they also imply a great deal of thinking about others without the thoughts being criticisms. This is rarer still.

I'm thinking of going to programming school. Learn how to sit down at any computer and learn to do anything on it. That's all I have left and have interest in.

I am aware of changes gradually taking place in my own designs as part of my thinking on this matter.

I'm against fashionable thinking.

I started thinking about my relationship with my students; I'm this guy who comes in from book - and movie - land and descends on angel wings into their classroom.

Americans seem sometimes to believe that if you are a thinker you must be a frowning bore, because thinking is so damn serious.

I don't know, I think, in times where I'm really nervous, and I'm really under the pressure the worst possible outcome is for me to start thinking about it.

For me, writing is a concentrated form of thinking.

I always voted at my party's call, and I never thought of thinking for myself at all.

In thinking about nanotechnology today, what's most important is understanding where it leads, what nanotechnology will look like after we reach the assembler breakthrough.

Conservatism has had from its inception vigorously positive, intellectually rigorous agenda and thinking. That agenda should have in my three pillars: strengthen the economy, strengthen our security, and strengthen our families.

I am a camera with its shutter open, quite passive, recording, not thinking.

All of this got me thinking about the history of the westward expansion, and got me to wondering how the exploration of the Solar System would be changed if there were an indigenous presence out there.

Romance, like the rabbit at the dog track, is the elusive, fake, and never attained reward which, for the benefit and amusement of our masters, keeps us running and thinking in safe circles.

We don't focus as much in schools on educational knowledge which requires thinking and application, as we do on acquiring facts.