No minister ever stood, or could stand, against public opinion.

The police are the public and the public are the police; the police being only members of the public who are paid to give full time attention to duties which are incumbent on every citizen in the interests of community welfare and existence.

But after this natural burst of indignation, no man of sense, courage, or prudence will waste his time or his strength in retrospective reproaches or repinings.

Public opinion is a compound of folly, weakness, prejudice, wrong feeling, right feeling, obstinacy, and newspaper paragraphs.

When you decide to get involved in a military operation in a place like Syria, you've got to be prepared, as we learned from Iraq and Afghanistan, to become the government, and I'm not sure any country, either the United States or I don't hear of anyone else, who's willing to take on that responsibility.

Politics is the enemy of the imagination.

I think the Americans have it right. The idea of having guns is essentially to protect yourself from a totalitarian government.

We haven't done such a great job, so I don't know why God couldn't have started over somewhere else. I don't necessarily believe in aliens coming to the States, and I don't buy into the government cover-up.