The volunteering spirit of Londoners is part of what makes this the best big city on earth.

I have as much chance of becoming Prime Minister as of being decapitated by a frisbee or of finding Elvis.

It is just flipping unbelievable. He is a mixture of Harry Houdini and a greased piglet. He is barely human in his elusiveness. Nailing Blair is like trying to pin jelly to a wall.

My speaking style was criticised by no less an authority than Arnold Schwarzenegger. It was a low moment, my friends, to have my rhetorical skills denounced by a monosyllabic Austrian cyborg.

It is possible to have a pretty good life and career being a leech and a parasite in the media world, gadding about from TV studio to TV studio, writing inconsequential pieces and having a good time.

My policy on cake is pro having it and pro eating it.

The only reason I wouldn't go to some parts of New York is the real risk of meeting Donald Trump.

My ideal world is, we're there, we're in the EU, trying to make it better.

There is absolutely no one, apart from yourself, who can prevent you, in the middle of the night, from sneaking down to tidy up the edges of that hunk of cheese at the back of the fridge.

In 1904, 20 per cent of journeys were made by bicycle in London. I want to see a figure like that again. If you can't turn the clock back to 1904, what's the point of being a Conservative?

I am supporting David Cameron purely out of cynical self-interest.

I'd never believed in luck. Never had any cause to. Never relied on it, because I never could.

Mathematics is the music of reason.

Teaching brings out innate powers, and proper training braces the intellect.

Sometimes the best people to be around are not exactly like you - because if they were, what is the point? If they contribute something different than you can, that is when they are valuable.

Confession of sin shows us more clearly our need of mercy-and endears God's mercy more to us

In an expanding universe, time is on the side of the outcast. Those who once inhabited the suburbs of human contempt find that without changing their address they eventually live in the metropolis.

I have to keep going to find out ultimately what is the matter with it in the end.

The wide world is all before us - but a world without a friend.

No man is so great as mankind.

Government restrictions are attractive to people who want to impose their pet notions without having to count the costs.