"Of all liars the most arrogant are biographers: those who would have us believe, having surveyed a few boxes full of letters, diaries, bank statements and photographs, that they can play at the recording angel and tell the whole truth about another human life."

"If you read about Mussolini or Stalin or some of these other great monsters of history, they were at it all the time, that they were getting up in the morning very early. They were physically very active. They didn't eat lunch."

"I should prefer to have a politician who regularly went to a massage parlour than one who promised a laptop computer for every teacher."

"Brain power improves by brain use, just as our bodily strength grows with exercise. And there is no doubt that a large proportion of the female population, from school days to late middle age, now have very complicated lives indeed."

"Humility is not weakness in leadership; it is the cornerstone of unassailable respect. In this truth lies the bedrock of all virtue — an essential principle for the reflective life."

"The sea speaks a language polite people never repeat. It is a colossal scavenger slang and has no respect."

"Humility is not weakness in leadership; it is the cornerstone of unassailable respect. Reflect upon this whenever doubt clouds your horizon."

"The man who builds a factory builds a temple, that the man who works there worships there, and to each is due, not scorn and blame, but reverence and praise."