“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.”

“Democracy is morose, and runs to anarchy.”

“The Chinese said of themselves several thousand years ago: China is a sea that salts all the waters that flow into it. Theres another Chinese saying about their country which is much more modernit dates only from the fourth century. This is the saying: The tail of China is large and will not be wagged. I like that one. The British democracy approves the principles of movable party heads and unwaggable national tails. It is due to the working of these important forces that I have the honour to be addressing you at this moment.”

“Democracy means that when there's a knock in the door at 3 am, it's probably the milkman.”

“The weakest kind of fruit drops earliest to the ground.”

“Some falls the means are happier to rise.”

“Men succeed when they realize that their failures are the preparation for their victories.”

“Even through the hollow eyes of deathI spy life peering.”

“Be merry; you have cause, so have we all, of joy; for our escape is much beyond our loss . . . . then wisely weigh our sorrow with our comfort.”

“Things at the worst will cease or else climb upward To what they were before.”

“Let still woman take An elder than herself: so wears she to him, So sways she level in her husband's heart, For, boy, however we do praise ourselves, Our fancies are more giddy and unfirm, More longing, wavering, sooner to be lost and warn, Than women's are.”

“The height of the pinnacle is determined by the breadth of the base.”

“Blest are those Whose blood and judgment are so well commingled, That they are not a pipe for fortune's finger To sound what stop she please.”

“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.”

“In this era of non-judgmental mush, too many Americans have become incapable of facing the brutal reality of unprovoked hatred, based on envy, resentment and ultimately on a vicious urge to lash out against others for the pain of ones own insignificance. That has been a common thread in things as disparate as ghetto riots, two world wars, and now Islamic terrorism.”

“In the string of amazing decisions made during the first year of the Obama administration, nothing seems more like sheer insanity than the decision to try foreign terrorists, who have committed acts of war against the United States, in federal court, as if they were American citizens accused of crimes.”