Great Throughts Treasury

"A challenge so far-reaching in its impact and irreversible in its destructive power, that it alters radically human existence... There is no doubt that the time to act is now."

"A day like today is not a day for, sort of, soundbites, really - we can leave those at home - but I feel the hand of history upon our shoulders, I really do."

"A lot of the politics that is going on left and right at the moment is more about a protest, which we should respond to. It's not often about a policy. And that's why what you get is this strange coalition of different views of what the future should be, coming together in alliance to protest against the status quo."

"A simple way to take measure of a country is to look at how many want in. And how many want out."

"After the terrible events of last week, there is still the shock and disbelief; there is anger; there is fear; but there is also, throughout the world, a profound sense of solidarity; there is courage; there is a surging of the human spirit."

"A new dawn has broken, has it not?"

"A New Britain where the extraordinary talent of the British people is liberated from the forces of conservatism that so long have held them back, to create a model 21st century nation, based not on privilege, class or background, but on the equal worth of all."

"All new schools...should be models for sustainable development: showing every child in the classroom and the playground how smart building and energy use can help tackle global warming...Sustainable development will not just be a subject in the classroom: it will be in its bricks and mortar and the way the school uses and even generates its own power."

"A young country that wants to be a strong country cannot be morally neutral about the family."

"Ah yes, liberal democrats unified as ever in opportunism and in error."

"All the evidence here, for example, in Britain, is that migrants, particularly from the rest of Europe, who come here contribute far more in taxes."

"As has been very obvious from the comments of other ministers and indeed my own official spokesman, the manner of the execution of Saddam was completely wrong."

"As I have said throughout, I have no doubt that they will find the clearest possible evidence of Saddam's weapons of mass destruction."

"All the way through, we have been willing to take risks, provided at the end of it we can get a decent lasting settlement in Northern Ireland"

"Analogies with the past are never properly accurate and analogies especially with the rising fascism can be easily misleading, but in pure chronology I sometimes wonder if we're not in the 1920s or 1930s again... This ideology now has a state, Iran, that is prepared to back and finance terror in the pursuit of destabilising countries whose people wish to live in peace."

"And the problem is, I can apologise for the information that turned out to be wrong, but I can't, sincerely at least, apologise for removing Saddam."

"Any parent wants the best for their children. I am not going to make a choice for my child on the basis of what is the politically correct thing to do."

"Any action taken will be against the terrorist network of Bin Laden.... As for the Taleban, they can surrender the terrorists or face the consequences - and again in any action the aim will be to eliminate their military hardware, cut off their finances, disrupt their supplies, target their troops, not civilians."

"And just as the terrorist seeks to divide humanity in hate, so we have to unify it around an idea. And that idea is liberty."

"As for those that carried out these attacks there are no adequate words of condemnation. Their barbarism will stand as their shame for all eternity."

"Anywhere, anytime ordinary people are given the chance to choose, the choice is the same: freedom, not tyranny; democracy, not dictatorship; the rule of law, not the rule of the secret police."

"At least I know she isn't going to run off with the guy next door."

"As the world transforms, moves closer together, jobs are displaced, and the world of work completely changes the way we live, the way we think. As that revolution goes on around us, it is going to pose political challenges of which immigration is one very obvious one, which are going to be extremely difficult to deal with. But it's like free trade. You know, in the end, if we go protectionist, we'll make a mistake."

"As so often before on the courage and determination of British men and women serving our country the fate of many nations rest."

"Ask me my three main priorities for government, and I tell you: education, education and education. We are 35th in the world league of education standards ? 35th. At every level, radical improvement and reform."

"At the heart of my politics has always been the value of community, the belief that we are not merely individuals struggling in isolation from each other, but members of a community who depend on each other, who benefit from each other's help, who owe obligations to each other. From that everything stems: solidarity, social justice, equality, freedom."

"Be a doer and not a critic."

"At least I don't have to worry about her running off with the bloke next door."

"At that moment, I felt eerily calm despite being naturally horrified at the devastation, and aware this was not an ordinary event but a world-changing one. It was not America alone who was the target, but all of us who shared the same values. We had to stand together."

"At the time of the election, there will just be 1,000 days to the new millennium - 1,000 days to prepare for 1,000 years, a moment of destiny for us."

"Before people crow about the absence of Weapons of Mass Destruction, I suggest they wait a bit."

"But all progressive movements have to beware their own successes. The progress they make reinvents the society they work in, and they must in turn reinvent themselves to keep up, otherwise they become hollow echoes from a once loud, strong voice, reverberating still, but to little effect. As their consequence diminishes, so their dwindling adherents become ever more shrill and strident, more solicitous of protecting their own shrinking space rather than understanding that the voice of the times has moved on and they must listen before speaking. It happens in all organizations. It is fatal to those who are never confronted by a reckoning that forces them to face up and get wise."

"Bill Clinton has been a true leader of the Western World. He has been a friend and a counsel to me and other leaders right around the world."

"But as I always say to people I'm essentially a public service person."

"But I am an optimist about Britain; and the difference between an optimist and a pessimist is not that the optimist believes the world is wonderful and the pessimist believes it's beset by challenges; the difference is the pessimist believes we will be defeated by them; the optimist thinks the challenges can be overcome."

"But in terms of how people live together, how we minimize the prospects of conflict and maximize the prospects of peace, the place of religion in our society today is essential."

"But the world is ever more interdependent. Stock markets and economies rise and fall together. Confidence is the key to prosperity. Insecurity spreads like contagion. So people crave stability and order."

"Can we be sure that terrorism and WMD will join together? If we are wrong, we will have destroyed a threat that, at its least is responsible for inhuman carnage and suffering. That is something I am confident history will forgive. But if our critics are wrong and we do not act, then we will have hesitated in face of this menace, when we should have given leadership. That is something history will not forgive."

"Climate change is probably the greatest long-term challenge facing the human race"

"By the standards of days gone by I was not even remotely a toper, and I couldn't do lunchtime drinking except on Christmas Day, but if you took the thing everyone always lies about - units per week - I was definitely at the outer limit. Stiff whisky or G&T before dinner, couple of glasses of wine or even half a bottle with it. So not excessively excessive. I had a limit. But I was aware that it had become a prop."

"Choice dependent on wealth; those are the Tory words."

"Climate change is the world's greatest environmental challenge. It is now plain that the emission of greenhouse gases, associated with industrialization and economic growth...is causing global warming at a rate that is unsustainable."

"David Cameron was clever and people-friendly but he had not gone through the arduous but ultimately highly educative apprenticeship I had gone through in the 1980s and early 90s."

"Conflict is not inevitable, but disarmament is.... Everyone now accepts that if there is a default by Saddam the international community must act to enforce its will."

"Do I know I'm right? Judgments aren't the same as facts. Instinct is not science. I'm like any other human being, as fallible and as capable of being wrong. I only know what I believe."

"Don't say yes to that question, that would be difficult."

"Deportation is a decision taken by the home secretary under statute, The new grounds will include fostering hatred, advocating violence to further a person's beliefs, or justifying or validating such violence."

"Do they really suppose I don't care, don't feel, don't regret with every fibre of my being the loss of those who died? To be indifferent to that would be inhuman, emotionally warped."

"Education is the best economic policy there is."

"Enough of talking. It is time now to do."