“Had I faltered we would have neither the success nor the international reputation we have. Yet when a woman is strong she is strident. If a man is strong, he's a good guy.”

“Nothing is more obstinate than a fashionable consensus.”

“Both the President and Mr Gorbachev have said that they want to see a world without nuclear weapons. I cannot see a world without nuclear weapons. Let me be practical about it. The knowledge is there to make them. So do not go too hard for that pie in the sky because, while everyone would like to see it, I do not believe it is going to come about.”

“I might have preferred iron - but bronze will do. It won't rust. This time I hope, the head will stay on.”

“There are still people in my party who believe in consensus politics. I regard them as Quislings, as traitors... I mean it.”

“If you want to know when a war might be coming, you just watch the U.S. and see when it starts cutting down on its defenses. It's the surest barometer in the world.”

“It is Mortifying to suppose it possible that a people able and zealous to contend with the Enemy should be reduced to fold their Arms for want of the means of defence; yet no resources that we know of, ensure us against this event.”

“Even the Soviet Union, with its huge nuclear arsenal, was a threat that could be deterred by the prospect of retaliation. But suicide bombers cannot be deterred. They can only be annihilated - preemptively and unilaterally, if necessary.”

“It is not always possible to have everything go as one likes. In working with allies, it sometimes happens that they develop opinions of their own”

“Commerce with all nations, alliance with none, should be our motto.”

“Our goal is peace. We can gain that peace by strengthening our alliances, by speaking candidly about the dangers before us, by assuring potential adversaries of our seriousness, by actively pursuing every chance of honest and fruitful negotiation.”

“The smallest worm will turn being trodden on,And doves will peck in safeguard of their brood.”

“Personally I think that private property has a right to be defended. Our civilisation is built up on property, and can only be defended by private property.”

“We shall defend every village, every town and every city. The vast mass of London itself, fought street by street, could easily devour an entire hostile army; and we would rather see London laid in ruins and ashes than that it should be tamely and abjectly enslaved.”

“I do not understand this squeamishness about the use of gas. We have definitely adopted the position at the Peace Conference of arguing in favour of the retention of gas as a permanent method of warfare. It is sheer affectation to lacerate a man with the poisonous fragment of a bursting shell and to boggle at making his eyes water by means of lachrymatory gas.”

“I am both pleased but astonished by the fact that mankind has not yet begun to use all the means and devices that are available for destruction. I hope that such weapons are never manufactured in quantity.”

“The United States, and other advanced nations, will someday be able to produce instruments of death so terrible the world will be in abject terror of itself and its ability to end civilization.... Such war-making weapons should be developed - but only for purposes of discovery and experimentation”