If Margaret Thatcher had been Prime Minister at the time, there would have been no Treaty of Maastricht.

There is no consensus even today on the merits of Napoleon - and certainly no agreement on the rights and wrongs of the origins of the First World War.

Men like Hitler and Stalin and their immediate lieutenants cannot plead in defence of their actions that these were justified by the accepted values of that time.

Prison is an expensive way of making bad people worse.

We, Britain and Germany, can neither of us be happy about our handling of the Iraq war.

Margaret Thatcher, growing up in a bombed and battered Britain, derived a distrust which has grown with the years not just of Germany but of all continental Europe.

It is normal for politicians in all countries to profess themselves the pupils of history, anxious to draw the right lessons from her teaching.

History provides no precise guidelines.

But Germany will always suffer, I fear, from the intensely dramatic character of the crimes of the Third Reich.

We should be wary of politicians who profess to follow history while only noticing those signposts of history that point in the direction which they themselves already favour.

We must admit that history is enjoyable to a large extent because it enables us to pass judgment on the past.

Conquer no man but thyself.

This I choose to do. If there is a price, this I choose to pay. If it is my death, then I choose to die. Where this takes me, there I choose to go. I choose. This I choose to do.

Nobody said democracies supposed to be easy. It's hard. And in a big country like America, it probably should be hard.

Most actors are very grateful for what is as opposed to what will be. You spend 98% of your time looking for a job, so when you get it, it's fantastic.

I'm actually thinking about getting back to being a bath tub. I don't think anyone's ever quite segued into that.

Standing in a two-hour line makes people worry that they're not living in a democratic nation. People stand in line for two houres and they go over the edge.

Peace as a positive condition of society, not merely as an interim between wars, is something so unknown that it casts no images on the mind's screen.

I don't blame Bill Maher for mocking religion. I can see why he took the trouble to make the movie. In one sense, it's overdue.

To know her was to love her.

Whenever two hypotheses cover the facts, use the simpler of the two.