"The intensity of animal and human contact is becoming much greater as the world develops. This makes it more likely new diseases will emerge but also modern travel and trade make it much more likely they will spread. [...] We have these outbreaks and the international community flies in but in the case of Ebola the disease went under the radar for four months. It’s really crucial we start to change that and make sure local health care infrastructure is better developed. People on the ground are vital. They are our first line of defence."

"Whether it will be contained or not, this outbreak is rapidly becoming the first true pandemic challenge that fits the disease X category."

"I will not change my opinion, dear people, it is 5 minutes before twelve. Not just here in Holland. but in the whole of Europe. And is that what you want? I take my stand for this country, that which has been build up in the last five or six centuries. Damn it, we have a fifth column... Okay, let me tell you now straight the way it is! A fifth column of people who want to destroy this country! I will not go for that, and I say, "you can stay here, but you must adapt." I must hear "Allah is great", that I am a "dirty pig"… you are a "Christian dog". That is what they say, and you think that is okay... And I have so far been very reserved. I have never repeated that... but you accept being walked over, and I will not let that happen anymore. And that's where I get all those seats from (in the polls). Because this country is fed up! … C'est ça! That is what I stand for. And if I must express that otherwise, well, fine... but it is about your children, your grandchildren. For what else is this about? Must I explain more here? I can not do it any other way, and will not do it any other way. Then I would rather be finished off. Okay, fine... but the problem sir, will remain. That will remain. People have had more than enough of it. Damn it, in my city, Moroccan boys, Turkish boys... who do not rob the Turks, the Moroccans, but rob you and me and little old ladies. And the police? What they do? Damn it... nothing. They tell you: "If you say that, you discriminate". And that is what I express from the Dutch people. And I stand for it, I stand for it. Is that not allowed? Okay, I respect that. C'est ça [That’s all]."

"If you could see what I get in my mailbox every now and then, regarding threats, and so on, well that doesn't exactly cheer you up, and the Dutch government – and I think it's a 'bloody shame' – helps create a climate demonizing me personally. And if something were to happen to me – and I'm glad that you're giving me the chance (to say this) – if something were to happen to me, then they will be partly responsible, and they can't just walk away saying "I'm not the one who committed the attack." They helped to create this climate (this atmosphere), and it needs to stop."

"Ik ben een driftkop, wat is daar mis mee?"

"Muslims have a very bad attitude to homosexuality, they're very intolerant … And women. For them women are second class citizens. What we are witnessing now is a clash of civilisations, not just between states but within them."

"If you try to discuss multiculturalism in the UK you're labelled a racist. But here we're still free to talk, and I say multicultural society doesn't work. We're not living closer, we're living apart."

"I'm not anti-Muslim, I'm not anti-immigration; I'm saying we've got big problems in our cities. It's not very smart to make the problem bigger by letting in millions more immigrants from rural Muslim cultures that don't assimilate."

"Someone who wants to go back to the good old days, but with that also wants to go back to the times when he himself would not have been possible. He wanted to return to the old standards of decency and neatness, but at the same time he was the most flamboyant poof, with his two lapdogs. He yelled for Moroccans to behave, but meanwhile he wanted to be blown by those same Moroccans. Back to the fifties, but in those same fifties he himself would never have been able to come out for his flamboyant homosexuality. It's just a huge paradox and in a very different, I hope less perverse way, I do recognize it in myself. Rules have to be there, for others."

"I don't hate Islam. I consider it a retarded culture. I have travelled much in the world. And wherever Islam rules, it's just terrible. All the hypocrisy. It's a bit like those old reformed protestants. The Reformed lie all the time. And why is that? Because they have standards and values that are so high that you can't humanly maintain them. You also see that in that Muslim culture. Then look at the Netherlands. In what country could an electoral leader of such a large movement as mine be openly homosexual? How wonderful that that's possible. That's something that one can be proud of. And I'd like to keep it that way, thank you very much."

"The question, then, for Western companies, as much as for Western governments, is to decide whose side they are on: the Chinese officials who like to define their culture in a paternalistic, authoritarian way, or the large number of Chinese who have their own ideas about freedom."

"But, in the late twentieth century, it became more important to many leftists to save “Third World” culture, no matter how barbaric, from “neo-colonialism,” than to support equality and democracy. People on the left would defend brutal dictators (Castro, Mao, Pol Pot, Khomeini, et al.) simply because they opposed “Western imperialism.” As a result, all politics that were derived, no matter how loosely, from Marxism, lost credibility, and finally died in 1989. This was naturally a disaster for communists and socialists, but also for social democrats, for they had lost an ideological basis for their idealism. And, without idealism, politics becomes a form of accounting, a management of purely material interests."

"Obama is neither a socialist, nor a mere political accountant. He has some modest ideals, and may yet be an excellent president. But what is needed to revive liberal idealism is a set of new ideas on how to promote justice, equality and freedom in the world. Reagan, Thatcher, and Gorbachev, assisted in the end of an ideology, which once offered hope, and inspired real progress, but resulted in slavery and mass murder. We are still waiting for a new vision, which will lead to progress, but this time, we hope, without tyranny."

"It was, as we know, not so much eradicated as replaced by a Communist orthodoxy after 1949. And when this orthodoxy began to lose its grip on the Chinese public after the death of Chairman Mao in 1976, Chinese officials struggled to find a new set of beliefs to justify their monopoly on power. The ideological hybrid that followed Maoism was "Socialism with Chinese Characteristics," a mixture of state capitalism with political authoritarianism."

"You can forget facts but you cannot forget understanding."

"In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice. But, in practice, there is."