Andrew Marr Quotations

Verbally, I'm quite fast on my feet. I could embarrass or anger most people if I wanted to.

My kids wouldn't dream of buying a newspaper - and we are a newspaper household.

I'm a great believer in the direct quote in quotation marks and the hard fact.

If all newspapers are losing circulation, maybe it's just worth trying to go back to some reporting, to see if that might be the reason - even if only one newspaper tried it, to see what happened.

There is a market for pictures like this. Diana sold an awful lot of newspapers one way or another. But look at the result. We all have to think again.

I think it requires leadership from editors and senior broadcasters to try and turn that around and back off the position where we are opinionated first, and come round to the facts later,

Unlike the general public, I rather like most politicians.

History is either a moral argument with lessons for the here-and-now, or it is merely an accumulation of pointless facts.

Journalism is nine-tenths being in the right places at the right time.

The great background question about the Labour governments of the sixties is whether with a stronger leader they could have gripped the country's big problems and dealt with them. How did it happen that a cabinet of such brilliant, such clever and self-confident people achieved so little? In part, it was the effect of the whirling court politics demonstrated by 'In Place of Strife'.

Androgynous fashion, long hair, the Pill, a new interest in the inner psychological life - an unabashed sloppiness, if you will - really marks the sixties. It was when Britain went girlie. And what do girls do? Girls shop.

Hard news really is hard. It sticks not in the craw but in the mind. It has an almost physical effect, causing fear, interest, laughter or shock.

The truth is, "What is a journalist?" is one of those questions for which there is no proper answer. The prehistory of modern journalism shows it has been a ragged and confusing trade all the way through.

Journalism is often simply the industrialisation of gossip.

Rude interviewers are ten a penny, and politicians have long since learned how to cope.

The British happened to the rest of the world. Now the world happens to Britain.

The only time I penetrated Tony Blair's defenses over Iraq was by keeping eye contact while telling him he never seemed to by sorry

My big toe alone is the size of Yorkshire.

One aspect of politics too little acknowledged is that besides being jolly serious and all that, it is also a hugely enjoyable game for boys.

The business of funding digging journalists is important to encourage. It cannot be replaced by bloggers who don't have access to politicians, who don't have easy access to official documents, who aren't able to buttonhole people in power.

Yet the barely-moving polls and the lack of major gaffes or policy collapses has made it duller than I, for one, hoped it would be.

This has been an extremely uncomfortable week for Mr Blair.

In the end, does it really matter if newspapers physically disappear? Probably not: the world is always changing. But does it matter if organisations independent enough and rich enough to employ journalists to do their job disappear? Yes, that matters hugely; it affects the whole of life and society.

Interviews, and hence interviewers, are there to help shed light, and to let viewers judge for themselves. We are not judges, juries, commentators or torturers - nor friends, either.

Clearly the human story is one of acceleration. There has been a Moore curve in terms of the number of people alive on the planet, our technological ability, and our ability to understand ourselves. We have had this extraordinary, explosive growth in our ingenuity.

I can make Tony Blair, Michael Howard, Charles Kennedy or anyone else look bumbling, irrelevant, tetchy... or rather brilliant.