Can there be a more lamentable picture than that of a Chancellor of the Exchequer seated on an empty chest by a pool of bottomless deficiency fishing for a budget?

Agitation is the marshalling of the conscience of a nation to mold its laws.

The police are the public and the public are the police.

Public opinion is a compound of folly, weakness, prejudice, wrong feeling, right feeling, obstinacy, and newspaper paragraphs.

In every village there will arise a miscreant to establish the most grinding tyranny by calling himself the people.

I never knew a man escape failures, in either mind or body, who worked seven days in a week.

No minister ever stood, or could stand, against public opinion.

The distinction of being without an honour is becoming a rare and valuable one and should not become extinct.

Of all the vulgar arts of government, that of solving every difficulty that might arise by thrusting the hand into the public purse is the most illusory and contemptible.

There seem to me to be very few facts, at least ascertainable facts, in politics.

But after this natural burst of indignation, no man of sense, courage, or prudence will waste his time or his strength in retrospective reproaches or repinings.

To wake up each morning is a miracle.

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.

The best stories infuse wonder.

Bad circumstances have a way of ruining things that would otherwise be pleasant.

Perhaps the most delightful friendships are those in which there is much agreement, much disputation, and yet more personal liking.

Like a crowd in my head, so loud. I wonder what it's like to be dead, I hope it's quiet. Noise in my head like a riot. Any remedy you have for me, I'll try it.

To be here and now, you have to be in meditation, beyond mind.

A critic is a man who creates nothing and thereby feels qualified to judge the work of creative men. There is logic in this; he is unbiased, he hates all creative people equally.

Collaborating with someone who doesn't understand your language nor you theirs stretches you open even wider, into a sort of very large free fall.

They don't want to feed an ISIS narrative that there is a religious war between Islam and the Christian West, plus genocide is carefully defined under international law.