"[One of the women] Claims that she woke up to him having sex with her again. This is something which can happen, you know. I mean not everybody needs to be asked prior to each insertion."

"Let me tell you, I think that Julian Assange's personal sexual behaviour is something sordid, disgusting, and I condemn it. But ... Even taken at its worst, if the allegations made by these two women were true, 100 per cent true, and even if a camera in the room captured them, they don’t constitute rape. At least not rape as anyone with any sense can possibly recognise it."

"Because I don't believe that the government of Iran is a dictatorship I have no problem about working for Press TV in London which is a British owned television station. I'm not responsible for the government of Ahmedinijad. I'm not responsible for the leadership of Press TV."

"Hamas won the only democratic election ever held in the Arab world so how they can be tyrants I really don't know [...] I am not in favour of Hamas but I am in favour of democracy."

"The roots of this problem definitely are in the fact that not enough groups, trends, parties or individual personalities came into Respect [...] Therefore the perception was created that it was an organisation dominated by the SWP, who have form, or dominated by me, or, later, dominated by Muslims."

"Christianity doesn't come into it. George Bush and Tony Blair are not Christians. Religious people believe in the prophets, peace be upon them. Bush believes in the profits and how to get a piece of them. So don't ever confuse this with a war of civilizations."

"These extremist Islamists locked me in a room and threatened to hang me because we are the democratic alternative to them. We say to young Muslims: we know that you’re angry, you’re right to be angry. But the best way to be angry is to hit the government where it hurts, through politics, through the ballot box, through elections, through engaging with non-Muslims to build a broad front to bring about a change in policies at home and abroad."

"Well, I don’t agree that it’s genocide, but I definitely agree that there’s suffering going on there."

"You don’t give a damn! You don’t give a damn, you don’t even know about the Palestinian families! You don’t even know that they exist! Tell me the name of one member of the seven members of the same family slaughtered on the beach in Gaza by an Israeli warship. You don’t even know their names! But you know the name of every Israeli soldier who has been taken prisoner in this conflict. Because you believe whether you know it or not that Israeli blood is more valuable than the blood of Lebanese or Palestinians. That’s the truth, and the discerning of your viewers already know it."

"What a silly question! What a silly person you are! Hezbollah is winning the war; you can see on the other half of the screen. Hezbollah is more popular today in Lebanon amongst Christians, amongst Sunnis, amongst Shiite, amongst all Arabs, amongst all Muslims that it has ever been. It’s Israel who’s lost the war, and Bush and Blair for politically organizing the war, who’ve lost politically. This is a defeat of Bush and Blair and Israel. Everybody but you can see it!"

"One man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter. You are totally wrong in saying that in most people’s eyes Hezbollah are terrorists. In most people’s eyes Israel is a terrorist state. It’s the fact that you cannot comprehend that fact that leads to bias that runs through all of your reporting and every question that you’ve asked me in this interview!"

"Israel is invading Lebanon and has killed thirty times more Lebanese civilians than have died in Israel, so it’s you who should be justifying the evident bias which is written on every line on your face, and is in every nuance of your voice, and is loaded in every question that you ask."

"I would not support anyone seeking to assassinate the prime minister. That's why I said in the interview I would report to the authorities any such plot that I knew of. What I did make abundantly clear to Piers Morgan in the GQ interview is that I would like to see Tony Blair in front of a war crimes tribunal for sending this country to war illegally and for the appalling human consequences which resulted. That's what I will continue to press for."

"[Q:] Would the assassination of, say, Tony Blair by a suicide bomber - if there were no other casualties - be justified as revenge for the war on Iraq? [...] [A:] Yes, it would be morally justified. I am not calling for it - but if it happened it would be of a wholly different moral order to the events of 7/7. It would be entirely logical and explicable. And morally equivalent to ordering the deaths of thousands of innocent people in Iraq - as Blair did."

"As for Gordon Brown - I've described him and Blair as two cheeks of the same arse."

"Only a fool has no regrets and I'm not a fool."

"I had three goals and all of them were met."

"Pipe down Mr Indignation. We'll see what the viewers thought of your double standards, your indignation about me and the aplomb with which you become a lying plutocrat in your gentleman's club."

"Now, would you like me to be the cat?"

"This murder of Hariri was deliberately planned and executed precisely to implicate Syria and to set in train the events which have unfolded."

"I travelled and spent lots of time with people in Greece, many of whom were women—some of whom were known carnally to me. I actually had sexual intercourse with some of the people in Greece. And if the British public and BBC Scotland think that's of interest they are welcome to broadcast it."

"All faiths must be prepared to be as rigorously tested as each other and none can expect a special hiding place behind the law."

"Conservative Back Bench Members have an unseemly and shabby desire to rubbish and eventually smash a section of the British work force that has served this country well. ... There are few less pleasant sights than to see well-upholstered, sleek and wealthy Conservative Members insulting a body of men who work hard for a living and who have done so for many centuries."

"You traduced my name around the world without ever having asked me a single question, without ever having contacted me, without ever written to me or telephoned me, without any attempt to contact me whatsoever. And you call that justice."

"Why don't you go and take some more drugs, you druggie?"

"Oona King voted to kill a lot of women in the last few years. Many of them had much darker skins than her."

"If I had lost I would have been homeless, I would have had everything I possess taken from me and would have been bankrupted and forced out of public office. In those circumstances I don't feel in any way happy about the award of £150,000."

"The people who invaded and destroyed Iraq and have murdered more than a million Iraqi people by sanctions and war will burn in Hell in the hell-fires, and their name in history will be branded as killers and war criminals for all time. Fallujah is a Guernica, Falluajah is a Stalingrad, and Iraq is in flames as a result of the actions of these criminals."

"How can you have a real election with hundreds of thousands of Crusader soldiers occupying the country, drawing up the electoral law, deciding who is allowed to take part in the elections, and utterly dominating the political life of the country?"

"I'm strongly against abortion. I believe life begins at conception, and therefore unborn babies have rights. I think abortion is immoral."

"[Referring to the The Christian Science Monitor] This newspaper published on its front page in every country in the world that I had taken $10m from Saddam Hussein. That was a grave and serious libel...Of course the documents were a forgery and a newspaper of that importance ought to have made the effort, both morally and legally, to establish the authenticity of those documents before they published them."

"[On David Blunkett] By a mile, it is the most illiberal, vindictive, biliously foaming Home Secretary of modern times. He has done more to destroy the concept of Labour being a party of equality and fairness than any other person... I hope his guide dog savages his ankles."

"The wolves are Bush and Blair, not the soldiers. The soldiers are lions led by donkeys, sent to kill and be killed."

"[On Tony Blair and George W. Bush] They have lied to the British air force and navy when they said the battle of Iraq would be very quick and easy. They attacked Iraq like wolves. They attacked civilians. It is better for Blair and Bush to stop this crime and this catastrophe. It is time for them to return to the UN security council and give diplomacy a chance."

"If you are asking did I support the Soviet Union, yes I did. Yes, I did support the Soviet Union, and I think the disappearance of the Soviet Union is the biggest catastrophe of my life."

"I am on the anti-imperialist left."

"We are being asked to sell the banner which has flown in Scotland with great success, a banner which is showing no sign of becoming unpopular."

"Sir, I salute your courage, your strength, your indefatigability, and I want you to know that we are with you, hatta al-nasr, hatta al-nasr, hatta al-Quds until victory, until victory, until Jerusalem."

"The Tories and their friends are laughing all the way to the bank at the disunity in Scotland. We must extend the hand of friendship to the SNP."

"I'm arguing this should not be published, not because of the threats but because of the offence that it has caused to the majority of Muslims. They have a right to expect some genuflection towards what they feel. To publish a paperback would cause an unnecessary distress to a large and significant and vulnerable section of our society."

"Our history will be what we make it. And if there are any historians about fifty or a hundred years from now, and there should be preserved the kinescopes for one week of all three networks, they will there find recorded in black and white, or perhaps color, evidence of decadence, escapism and insulation from the realities of the world in which we live."

"He was a resolute and uncompromising man of truth."

"He set standards of excellence that remain unsurpassed."

"What separated Murrow from the pack was courage."

"It was astonishing how often his name and work came up. To somebody outside CBS it is probably hard to believe...Time and again I heard someone say, "Ed wouldn't have done it that way.""

"Ed Murrow told his generation of journalists bias is okay as long as you don't try to hide it. So here, one more time, is mine: plutocracy and democracy don't mix."

"One of those rare legendary figures who was as good as his myth."

"Last week may be remembered as the week that broadcasting recaptured its soul."