"You won't find a new country, won't find another shore. This city will always pursue you. You'll walk the same streets, grow old in the same neighbourhoods, turn grey in these same houses. You'll always end up in this city. Don't hope for things elsewhere: there's no ship for you, there's no road. Now that you've wasted your life here, in this small corner, you've destroyed it everywhere in the world."

"The Welfare Reform Act comes up this year for renewal. Is the President supporting efforts to insert meaningful work requirements into the bill, for today there is none? — February 18, 2004"

"Since there've been so many questions about what the President was doing over 30 years ago, what is it he did after his honorable discharge from the National Guard? Did he make speeches alongside Jane Fonda denouncing America's racist war in Vietnam? Did he testify before Congress that American troops committed war crimes in Vietnam? And did he throw somebody else's medals at the White House to protest a war America was still fighting? What was he doing after his honorable discharge? — February 10, 2004"

"Senate Democratic leaders have painted a very bleak picture of the U.S. economy. [Senate Minority Leader] Harry Reid was talking about soup lines. And [Senator] Hillary Clinton was talking about the economy being on the verge of collapse. Yet in the same breath they say that Social Security is rock solid and there's no crisis there. How are you going to work – you've said you are going to reach out to these people – how are you going to work with people who seem to have divorced themselves from reality? — January 26, 2005"

"With all the reaching out that's going around here, the President said Thursday in his press conference that he was reaching out to the press corp. What did he mean by that and why would he feel the need to reach out to a group of supposedly non-partisan people? — November 8, 2004"

"Why hasn't the administration made more of the U.N. Inspector's report that says Saddam Hussein was dismantling his missile and W.M.D. sites before and during the war? — June 15, 2004"

"In your denunciations of the Abu Ghraib photos, you've used words like sickening, disgusting, and reprehensible. Will you have any words left to adequately describe the pictures from Saddam's rape rooms and torture chambers? Will Americans ever see those images? — May 10, 2004"

"I'd like you to comment on the angry mob that surrounded Karl Rove's house on Sunday. — April 1, 2004"

"Doesn't Joe Wilson owe the President and American an apology for his deception and his own intelligence failure? — March 15, 2004"

"I wish that, in this age so enamoured of statistical information, when we must needs know how many loads of manure go to every acre of turnip-field, and how many jail-birds are thrust into the black hole per mensem for fracturing their pannikins, or tearing their convict jacket, that some or would tabulate for me the amount of provisions, solid and liquid, consumed at the breakfasts of London every morning. I want to know how many thousand eggs are daily chipped, how many of those embryo chickens are poached, and how many fried; how many tons of quartern loaves are cut up to make bread-and-butter, thick and thin; how many porkers have been sacrificed to provide the bacon rashers, fat and streaky; what rivers have been drained, what fuel consumed, what mounds of salt employed, what volumes of smoke emitted, to catch and cure the finny s and the s, that grace our morning repast."

"England is surrounded by enemies—by real enemies who hate her. Why? Because she tries to be honest; and she tries to be free."

"While travelling in America never cease to bear this cardinal fact in mind, that this is a wholesale and not a retail country."

"The staples, indeed, of the diet of the common people in Greece comprise bread, somewhat coarse in texture and dark in color, grapes, and black olives. They will also eat as much of a milky kind of cheese (turi) as they can get; and they are greatly addicted to sousing nearly all their dishes with . A common repast for a Greek peasant is a hunch of bread, scored backwards and forwards in parallel lines with a knife to a criss-cross pattern; this is seasoned with pepper and salt, and drenched with oil; and is then heartily partaken of, not only by the agricultural classes, but by monks, sailors, and artisans."

"Great times call for great men. There are unknown heroes who are modest, with none of the historical glamour of a Napoleon. If you analysed their character you would find that it eclipsed even the glory of Alexander the Great. Today you can meet in the streets of Prague a shabbily dressed man who is not even himself aware of his significance in the history of the great new era. He goes modestly on his way, without bothering anyone. Nor is he bothered by journalists asking for an interview. If you asked him his name he would answer you simply and unassumingly: 'I am Švejk….'"

"'And so they've killed our Ferdinand,' said the charwoman to Mr Švejk, who had left military service years before, after having been finally certified by an army medical board as an imbecile, and now lived by selling dogs — ugly, mongrel monstrosities whose pedigrees he forged. Apart from this occupation he suffered from rheumatism and was at this very moment rubbing his knees with Elliman's embrocation. 'Which Ferdinand, Mrs Müller?' he asked, going on with the massaging. 'I know two Ferdinands. One is a messenger at Průša's, the chemist's, and once by mistake he drank a bottle of hair oil there. And the other is Ferdinand Kokoška who collects dog manure. Neither of them is any loss.' 'Oh no, sir, it's his Imperial highness, the Archduke Ferdinand, from Konopiště, the fat churchy one.'"

"Do you have any trouble sleeping at night? [Reply] No, sir. I sleep very well."

"Yesterday people were going past my window in t shirts and dresses. But that's the men at the BBC for you."

"Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the President of Iran … in one shot on his website he appears to be dressed only in flowers. Oh - here's the page, you'll see what I mean."

"… the judge in the Saddam trial appears to be wearing comedy specs and moustache."

"Commentors to the Blog suggested Nick should take the Independent for every penny..."

"Our editor came to work today in a vibrant pink shirt. Vibrant. Several members of staff have had to go home sick."

".... well with me now is Geoffrey Robinson. He was once voted 'After-dinner Speaker of the Year', so if you've had your tea, you're in for a treat"

"Sinn Fein say, "The British government are buggers"."

"I'm sorry for croaking at you this evening. This is PM, I'm Eddie Mair: the walrus of news."

""...and if you want to see a picture of Nils"

"The population of the United Kingdom has, for the first time, reached sixty million. If they stood on each other's shoulders they would reach perhaps twenty feet in the air before toppling over."

"So those of you listeners who don't want to hear what the weather will be like in six months time... look away now."

"David Cameron there, just a short walking distance away from our microphone."

"...so do wrap up!"

"I've been waiting to be arrested all day. I'm disappointed!" [Mair replies] "We're all with you on that one."

"Mair: "That'll be the police for you now...""

"...makes my TV work look professional."

"We asked a minister for an interview - you know the rest."

"Moments later he punched her unconscious. [Pause] No, he didn't, don't send us letters"

"… and if you want to hear more of that interview, fly to America and watch TV on Sunday night."

"Remember, PM is not here to give financial advice. Your interest in the programme may go down as well as up."

""As a Doctor, I'm often asked: why can't we see more pictures of Albania?"

"When we are collecting books, we are collecting happiness."

"What else would be as impressive as a status symbol than when you are visiting a billionaire for lunch and you and dozens of other refined guests are offered a glass of fresh milk to toast everybody’s health, instead of a glass of Chateau Rotschild Lafitte?"

"As a nation of servants, you (Filipinos) don’t flex your muscles at your master, from whom you earn most of your bread and butter. ...They may have Barack Obama and the hawkish American military behind them, but we have a hostage in each of our homes in the Mid-Levels or higher."

"I have experienced as violence the emergence of the culture of compulsory industrialised joy, which is the companion of consumerism."

"We have all shared the treat of your lovely Lyrics, your tuneful compositions, your friendly presentation and your spontaneous sense of sharing with your followers, your treasury of talent. Keep going, keep growing, keep glowing."

"I want the program to be very open and develop in style as time goes on. But I am also interested in the positive aspects of Asian family life and other Asian qualities, although overall, my style is very informal."

"Earlier on today, apparently, a woman rung the BBC and said she heard there was a hurricane on the way... well, if you're watching, don't worry, there isn't!"

"More proof that trusting the Feds to protect our information is like hiring Homer Simpson to guard the donuts."

"If the automobile had followed the same development as the computer, a Rolls Royce would today cost $100 and get a million miles per gallon, and explode once a year killing everyone inside."

"What you have to watch out for are the theories that claim to be infallible. Because the only way their believers can win is to stomp out everyone who disagrees with them."

"If you ask someone whether our Constitutional rights are being flushed down the porcelain oubliette, and their response is, "If I answer that honestly they'll arrest me," then you already have your answer."

"I fear that by gaining a limit, we'll lose an excuse."

"The hope of courage lies in every heart, together with the fear that we will fail. When the test came, you did not fail."