Broadcasting is really too important to be left to the broadcasters.

All war represents a failure of diplomacy.

The House of Lords is the British Outer Mongolia for retired politicians.

It's the same each time with progress. First they ignore you, then they say you're mad, then dangerous, then there's a pause and then you can't find anyone who disagrees with you.

I am on the right wing of the middle of the road and with a strong radical bias.

Britain today is suffering from galloping obsolescence.

The Marxist analysis has got nothing to do with what happened in Stalin's Russia: it's like blaming Jesus Christ for the Inquisition in Spain.

Broadcasting is really too important to be left to the broadcasters.

Most things in life are moments of pleasure and a lifetime of embarrassment; photography is a moment of embarrassment and a lifetime of pleasure.

If you file your waste-paper basket for fifty years, you have a public library.

We are not just here to manage capitalism but to change society and to define its finer values.

A faith is something you die for, a doctrine is something you kill for. There is all the difference in the world.

Age does take it out of you, and I haven't the energy I had before. Sometimes I have breakfast and sit in this chair, and I wake up and it is lunchtime. In the past, the idea of sleeping through a morning would have horrified me, but you have to accept the limitations that old age imposes on you.

I believe the more difficult the circumstances, the more people will be inclined to trust those in charge at the moment.

I see myself as an old man and an unqualified teacher to the nation. I think being a teacher is probably the most important thing you can be in politics.

I'm not frightened about death. I don't know why, but I just feel that at a certain moment your switch is switched off, and that's it. And you can't do anything about it.

I've been a member of the Labour Party sixty five years, and I remain in it, but I think it's all about campaigning for justice and peace, and if you do that, you get a lot of support.

I've got four lovely children, ten lovely grandchildren, and I left parliament to devote more time to politics, and I think that what is really going on in Britain is a growing sense of alienation. People don't feel anyone listens to them.

I've had a very full life, and I've enjoyed it very much. I've learned a great deal and feel indebted to all the people who have worked so hard.

I've made every mistake - but mistakes are how you learn.

Making mistakes is part of life. The only things I would feel ashamed of would be if I had said things I hadn't believed in order to get on. Some politicians do do that.

My day rotates around my family. I am very lucky.

My filing system is messy but orderly.

Normally, people give up parliament because they want to do more business or spend more time with family. My wife said 'why don't you say you're giving up to devote more time to politics?'. And it is what I have done.

Someone comes every morning at nine o'clock to see if I am still alive. I do get lonely, yes, but I have the children who come and see me. I see all my children every week, and there are the grandchildren, too.

The exhaustion of old age is something people who are younger don't fully appreciate.

The uncut diaries are 16 million words. It's very tiring to do your diary every night before you go to bed.

Most things in life are moments of pleasure and a lifetime of embarrassment photography is a moment of embarrassment and a lifetime of pleasure.

Encouragement is the most important thing in the world for young people rather than league tables which demoralise everyone.

Marxism is now a world faith and must be allowed to enter into a continuous dialogue with other world faiths, including religios faiths.

There is no force so democratic as the force of an ideal.

Art and science have so much in common - the process of trial and error, finding something new and innovative, and to experiment and succeed in a breakthrough.

Wit lies in recognizing the resemblance among things which differ and the difference between things which are alike.

I'd always felt very strongly in the power of vocation.

I went to church as a kid, but it was as much a social thing as anything going to the youth group with the other kids and whatnot. It wasn't until I got out of college that I got on my own religious trip and started finding other things out there as well as philosophies. I've kinda been on my own spiritual path since then.

And understand: class differences will not save you.

Whenever I realize I'm being a goofball, I write it down. When I release the joke onstage, I love watching the effect it has on the audience. No one wants to see someone talk who takes themselves too seriously.

It's a fantastic review. Sixty percent of the American reviews are sensational, 20% are mixed, not so good.

Our wings are small but the ripples of the heart are infinite.

Those who are in a position of strength have a responsibility to protect the weak.

As a young person growing up in Washington, D.C., summers were hot, humid and relentless. My friends and I grew more restless and adventurous with every passing year.

My four years in Russia end, then, in dramatic fashion: with a textbook Soviet-style expulsion. I am the first western staff correspondent to suffer this fate since the end of the Cold War. I'm stunned. But my expulsion is not, I reflect, a surprise. It's something I have always accepted as a real, if far-fetched, possibility.

When I went out or met people at parties, I fielded questions like ‘You seem normal...why are you still single?’ which made me feel like I had to defend myself just for showing up.

When politicians say, 'Oh, parents should supervise their kids' Internet use,' it drives me crazy.

Two things scare me. The first is getting hurt. But that's not nearly as scary as the second, which is losing.

Recreate life's strings to weave your own path.

I think the days of putting your feet up when you're pregnant are long gone. Women who are nine months pregnant now have to work till the bitter end - they don't get to be on TV.

I'm a compassionate conservative.

I love 'Annie Hall,' but then I adore 'Hannah and Her Sisters.' Dianne Wiest is amazing in 'Bullets Over Broadway,' but her in 'Hannah and Her Sisters,' I absolutely loved it.