Alan Clark Quotations

There are no true friends in politics. We are all sharks circling, and waiting, for traces of blood to appear in the water.

There's nothing so improves the mood of the Party as the imminent execution of a senior colleague.

In the end we are all sacked and it's always awful. It is as inevitable as death following life. If you are elevated there comes a day when you are demoted. Even Prime Ministers.

They're just actors. I much prefer the real thing!

The more you know about a species, the more you understand about how better to help protect them.

We are looking to expand in Russia but it will probably be through greenfield expansion.

The only solution is to kill 600 people in one night. Let the UN and Bill Clinton and everyone else make a scene - and it is over for 20 years.

Give a civil servant a good case and he'll wreck it with clichés, bad punctuation, double negatives, and convoluted apology.

Since mid-2005 there have been concrete signs that the consumer is bouncing back and there is evidence from individual retailers as well as the key surveys that the critical Christmas period saw very robust retail spending.

Given that oil production has reversed somewhat in the past few months and the hurricane insurance pay-outs will not recur, we expect the deficit to narrow sharply again in (the fourth quarter of) 2005.

We're disappointed that our proposal didn't go through, but we're ecstatic in the fact that they did choose rail because it brings rail back to Cape Breton.

Zoning is a local government issue, and we're looking at the regional picture,

Clearly the departure of the most hawkish member of the committee suggests a risk of a marginally more dovish balance.