I'm doing a book, 'Chasing Science,' about the pleasures of science as a spectator sport.

Close your bodily eye, that you may see your picture first with the eye of the spirit. Then bring to light what you have seen in the darkness, that its effect may work back, from without to within.

Caspar David Friedrich

I mean enormous pressure was brought to bear - Valerie Amos, Lady Amos, went round Africa with people from our intelligence services trying to press them. I had to make sure that we didn't promise a misuse of aid in a way that would be illegal.

Clare Short

Ultimately the bond of all companionship, whether in marriage or in friendship, is conversation, and conversation must have a common basis, and between two people of widely different culture the only common basis possible is the lowest level.

Oscar Wilde

There is no surer sign of decay in a country than to see the rites of religion held in contempt.

Niccolo Machiavelli

Government's first first duty is to protect the people, not run thier lives.

Ronald Reagan

One strength of the communist system of the East is that it has some of the character of a religion and inspires the emotions of a religion. Unless the concept of peace based on law gathers behind it the force and zeal of a religion, it can hardly hope to succeed.

Albert Einstein

I gave up lots of things I love doing: writing, and business, and playing the piano and so on.

William Hague

He had learned that, as there is no situation in the world in which a man can be happy and perfectly free, so there is no situation in which he can be perfectly unhappy and unfree.

Leo Tolstoy

There are no great men, only great challenges that ordinary men are forced by circumstances to meet.

William F. Halsey

In gambling the many must lose in order that the few may win

George Bernard Shaw

Oh, I'm terrible at travel.

Johnny Vegas

I love meeting people and helping them.

Princess of Wales Diana