The right hon. Gentleman will be known for ever as the only Chancellor in the post-war period who brought this country to the brink of bankruptcy.

The difference between tax avoidance and tax evasion is the thickness of a prison wall.

World events do not occur by accident. They are made to happen, whether it is to do with national issues or commerce; and most of them are staged and managed by those who hold the purse strings.

I often compare Margaret Thatcher with Florence Nightingale. She stalks through the wards of our hospitals as a lady with a lamp. Unfortunately, it's a blowlamp.

It is a good thing to follow the First Law of Holes: if you are in one, stop digging.

Unless you understand the history of a situation, you can't ever hope to solve problems.

Being attacked by him is like being savaged by a dead sheep.

Squeeze property speculators until the pips squeak.

Nothing is more dangerous that the politician who uses politics as a surrogate for an unsatisfactory personal life.

If you’re in a hole, stop digging.

Mrs Thatcher tells us she has given the French President a piece of her mind... not a gift I would receive with alacrity.

Every possession and every happiness is but lent by chance for an uncertain time and may therefore be demanded back the next hour.

I bring people on stage with me. It's a good time, and people love to join in on the party. Show me a smile, and I'll show you one back.

A lot of people say the sitcom is dead. I think they're right to some extent, in that the shows they're putting out are all the same.

But then, my entire life is bullshit. The best things in it have vanished, ghosts. Ghosts I'll admit I created.

We're living in such a fantasy world where nothing makes sense anymore.

Come from your knees to the sermon, and come from the sermon to your knees

The films I find boring are the ones that have no space for the audience's misconceptions.

It was both exciting and frustrating to work with an orchestral group.

Govern your tongue before all other things, following the gods.

There's something fundamentally wrong with a system where there's been 17 years of a Tory Government and the people of Scotland have voted Socialist for 17 years. That hardly seems democratic.