Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
Never judge something by whether it is popular or not. You don't have to follow trends. No one thought William Wilberforce was right at first.
I am not an enthusiast when it comes to cities, preferring rolling scenery, wildlife and stars to museums, monuments, architecture and traffic.
For years I had been disillusioned by the Church of England's compromising on everything. The Catholic Church doesn't care if something is unpopular.
I have always believed prison can be very, very good for you but not by the act of deprivation of liberty alone. There has to be more to life inside than that.
My detractors, who delight in using my name as a byword for unattractiveness, will find it hard to believe, but looking in the mirror is a pleasant experience.
I think a sense of family, of commitment to family, and of helping each other and standing by each other, are essential. I pity anyone who doesn't grow up with that.
The postcode lottery means that the level of care you get differs hugely around the country, and the health service simply cannot meet every demand that is put upon it.
The instant you say All Quiet On The Western Front people remember that great 20th century classic book on war, a book about a school boy turned into a soldier overnight.
In 1999 my father died and my mother was coming to live with me. So I left my Kennington flat and bought a house with a garden because my mother loved watching the birds.
Marriage isn't about two people; it is the basis for the family. That's why it's unique, and therefore I think society can say we're keeping marriage for a man and a woman.
Insult is in the ear of the listener. Statements of fact cannot be insulting unless you feel that the label applied indicates some failing, moral or otherwise, in yourself.
There is nothing like a long, breezy walk on Dartmoor to make me feel I have arrived in heaven. The beauty of creation is all around and I feel closer to the creator Himself.
Having served as a member of parliament for more than two decades, I'm well aware that there can be genuine constraints that affect the speed at which certain issues progress.
I think the rest of the world will think we're made, and indeed we are. We've turned out the greatest Prime Minister in the post war years simply because of short term nerves.
The Home Office is a vast department where business as usual means that something is going wrong and, given the nature of the business, the disasters rarely lack a high profile.
I was walking across King's Cross station when a drunken Irishman came stumbling up and flung his arms around me. He wanted to thank me for the peace process in Northern Ireland.
After 23 years closeted at Westminster, where often all you can see out of the windows are other parliamentary buildings, I appreciate space, and I retired to Dartmoor to find it.
Secularism has no central goal, it's just promoting endless relativism. That's why there is a huge moral drift in the country. Everybody is infallible except the Pope, if you like.
Of course Meghan Markle wasn't driven out of this country by racism. It is a ludicrous claim and symptomatic of how ridiculous the must-be-offended-at-all-costs brigade has become.
The political classes are despised when they deal in sound bites, embrace tokenistic campaigns and feather their own nests while trying to please all of the people all of the time.
In the 1990s, while the Maastricht debate was raging, I was a minister in the Major government. Every single piece of legislation we proposed had to be scrutinised for compatibility with E.U. law.
It would be nonsense to try to suggest that somebody who tried to rouse 2,000 people to their feet - which is what I used to do at conference - doesn't have any element of exhibitionism about them.
Some books are like an hors d'oeuvre - light, tasty and leaving you longing for the main course which is never going to come - and some are like Christmas lunch immediately after a cooked breakfast.
Usually my Easter reading consists of 'Who Moved the Stone?,' which gets dusted off annually and read, often in one sitting, to remind me of the miracle of redemption, resurrection and life after death.
It's not a question of being out of touch or traditional. It's a question of wanting to preserve marriage as uniquely between a man and a woman. Gays get full civil rights with civil partnerships anyway.
In my schooldays, I was Titch, Skinny and Freckles. These days, I answer to Karloff, Fatty or even Twiggy from my more sarcastic friends. If they called me Ann I should wonder what I had done to offend them.
I am a passionate opponent of fox hunting because the fox runs in fear of its life over a prolonged period, hearing the hounds getting closer and closer. Barbarous does not even begin to describe such a sport.
If I were queen for a day, every city would have to spend one hour in utter silence: no music in shops and restaurants, no honking of horns, no conversations on mobile phones. Only birds would be allowed to sing.
For most of my political life I was not ecstatic but I was happy because I had huge confidence in the causes I espoused and the work I was doing. Even under extreme pressure I was satisfied that I was fighting a good fight.
I was still in parliament when the Labour government passed the Freedom of Information Act. As the then shadow home secretary I queried whether in some areas it did enough to open up the work of government to public scrutiny.
Unfortunately, if the man who leaves the prison gates is just as likely or - as is sometimes grievously the case - more likely to offend as he was when he entered them, then we fail not only the individual but public safety as well.
Our knowledge of animals and their behaviour has come a long way. We can no longer justify imprisoning them, robbing them of everything that is natural and important to them and turning them into objects of ridicule for our amusement.
Professionals use 'Strictly' as a relaunch of flagging careers. In my year Kara Tointon won. She had been talking about giving up acting in favour of interior design, but the glitter ball led to a role as Eliza Doolittle in the West End.
Happiness is best defined by its antonym, which is less 'unhappiness' than 'anxiety.' Anyone who is not oppressed by intolerable worry or grievous pain is almost certainly happy, whether rich or poor, well or ill, successful or frustrated.
The child in the womb has no voice but Parliament's. Many MPs who voted for the 1967 Act did not think they were abandoning the unborn because they were fooled by the supposed safeguards. Now we know just how ineffective those safeguards are.
I do not mind if a PM or leader of the opposition is single but if he or she chooses to dispense with marriage despite living with someone and having children, then I think that shows a contempt for marriage which sends an unfortunate message.
The Arctic has huge glaciers, frozen waterfalls and floating ice. This is scenery on which man has left no mark, which has stayed unchanged for centuries, wild, bleak, hauntingly beautiful; it is a part of God's creation we have made no effort to tame.
We have no blasphemy laws these days but with that freedom comes the responsibility which should always attend the exercise of free speech: truth, courtesy and an awareness of impact. It is the last of these which is so neglected by so much modern comedy.
History is not merely a procession of people in fancy dress fighting wars. It is crucially the story of man's evolution from grunting cave dweller to serious thinker, from cruelly retributive law to merciful law, from casual barbarism to care and compassion.
It is a huge asset to law and order that serious or persistent criminals should be taken out of the society on which they prey. It makes life safer for the law-abiding and on the whole prisons are pretty good at containing those who have been committed to them.
Our state ceremonies have a religious foundation. We have compulsory religious education. And the Church should be a moral guardian. We have in this country a long Christian heritage and Christian culture and we shouldn't be in too much of a hurry to give that up.
Everybody who talks about 'Strictly' talks psychobabble. They say they're going on a journey, or trying to build their confidence, or getting over a divorce or something. People say there must be a deep reason to do these things. But there isn't! I'm just having fun.
I suspect my own journey to Brexit has closely followed that of Britain's. I had doubts, then I decided we should stay in, then I had very serious doubts as our island began to sink under a tide of regulations and our government lost control of the immigration system.
Example and general milieu, once considered so important in the nurture of children, are sacrificed on the altars of the false god we call free choice but which imprisons us all in a collective moral paralysis and delivers an anarchy that the State itself shrinks from challenging.
Cats are ideal for politicians. I had two when I arrived at Westminster, Sooty and Sweep, who had come with a flat I had bought six years earlier in Fulham from someone who was about to go abroad. There was a better offer ahead of me but she took mine because I would take the cats.
Strictly's strength is its appeal to all the family. The greatest compliment I was paid during my stint was from a lady at Paddington station who told me that every time the programme came on her four-year-old son would demand: 'Where's that granny, Mummy? I want the granny to win.'
My mother always said bringing me up was a tiring business, which I 'believe. For instance, when we lived in Singapore, the Chinese staff used to leave their slippers at the bottom of the steps. Every night, I used to go and remove their slippers. I stopped being tiresome at about 14.
I shall not miss the hectoring and backbiting and the lack of generosity towards fallen foes, but I will miss the sheer clubability of parliament. If one fancies a coffee or a meal or a drink then it is always possible to find at least one person out of 646 whose company is congenial.
The regime in too many prisons is one of idleness, and locking up someone from such a background in idleness virtually guarantees re-offending. Instead there needs to be a full day's work every weekday in either the workshops or the education department or preferably a mixture of both.
Some of the finest comedies have chosen the Church as its subject and would indeed make most Christians laugh, give or take the occasional wince as a barb goes home. I have very fond memories of 'Our Man at St Marks' and long for the day when it is released on DVD but I won't hold my breath.