"My optimism rests on my belief in the infinite possibilities of the individual to develop benevolence ... in a gentle way you can shake the world."

Roger Federer In an interview with the Sunday Times after his defeat by Marat Safin in the semi-final at the Australian Open in 2005:

"...the more success you have the easier it is to deal with def...

"There is an immutable conflict at work in life and in business, a constant battle between peace and chaos. Neither can be mastered, but both can be influenced. How you go about that is the key to suc...

If you nod your head any longer I'm going to put you on the back seat of my bloody car.

Creativity can be applied to anything and everything we do. Creative thinking just means looking at a situation differently; whether we're faced with a problem, a decision, or a chance to have fun, a ...

"I make films because if I don't make them then I don't have anything to distract me. My whole life I am constantly fighting all kinds of depression and terror and anxiety and I find that, like a ment...

"You'll like this, not a lot, but you'll like it." was Paul Daniels's catchphrase.

On 20 March 2010, collecting a lifetime achievement award from the Bradford International Film Festival, John Hurt said that he continued to want to act:

"I can't see any other reason to be alive u...

"I'm fond of Tony Blair and Gordon Brown. They are kind of the John and Paul of the global development stage, in my opinion.

"But the point is, Lennon and McCartney changed my interior world - Blai...

I don't believe in psychology. I believe in good moves.

From an interview with Scott Davidson of Regeneration: "Take a project like Band Aid for instance. Many people worked very hard for Band Aid, and OK, it raised millions of pounds, but then more money ...

“It incrementally came to me that when I audition I’m not trying to get a job, but to give them something, my acting. The victory is not ‘Did I beat that other guy out?’ but ‘Did I present t...

"When I got to drama school there were all these people going 'Oh, my Dad used to watch Ken Loach films' and I would be thinking, who is Ken Loach?"

Mhairi Black said in her maiden speech in the House of Commons: "Tony Benn once said that in politics there are weathercocks and signposts. Weathercocks will spin in whatever direction the wind of pub...

In today’s world, hospitality and love are our most formidable weapons against hatred and extremism.

"Vote Labour and you build castles in the air. Vote Conservative and you can live in them."

"We find ourselves in a market system which seems to have taken its rules of trade from Alice in Wonderland ... To a bystander like me, those who made £190m deliberately underselling the shares of HB...

On the share collapse (Oct 1987) Blair said:
" the City whizz-kids, with salaries only fractionally less than their greed, now seem not only morally dubious, but incompetent"

Time flies like an arrow. Fruit flies like a banana.

Alfred Hitchcock once remarked:

"Disney has the best casting. If he doesn't like a character, he just tears him up."

Hiroshima Mon Amour, Les Quatre cent coups, Les Amants were tremendously important events. These days, because of television and the incredible saturation of images, I'm not sure this would happen any...

"When the seagulls follow the trawler, it's because they think sardines will be thrown in to the sea".

From Tony Blair's speech to the TUC, September 1995:
"But what has come home to me more than anything else is the utter futility of Opposition. I did not join the Labour Party to protest. I joined it...

"I think the openness that might be necessary to be a good actor can be lethal in your real life."

Without good time management the plan fails and you end up not getting anything done. You have to know what you want to do, how much time you've got to do it and then sit down and work out the best wa...

"Celebrity is a lot like ice cream, you know, it melts and then you've got to live with yourself."

When you want to be ranked number 1 in the world, when you want to be Olympic gold medallist and you want to make history you're really careful setting your goals along the way. You take small steps i...

Freud remarked in 1933 when there was a public burning of his books in Berlin: "What progress we are making. In the Middle Ages they would have burned me. Now they are content with burning my books."

"I guess that when you get into your fifties you just have to keep reinventing yourself as an actor. They kind of don't know what to do with you. Thankfully, Judi Dench and Helen Mirren have shown the...

Asked by The Guardian whether The X Factor is having a negative influence on the music business, Steve Brookstein replied: "No, it is more having a negative effect on Christmas. Simon Cowell bought th...

"I'm quite urban. I don't like to be too far away from an espresso machine."

"If you have the most beautiful castle with nobody you love inside, it is shit. That is why you must spend less money on decoration and more money on finding the person you love. And then, once you’...

"If you had been at the Last Supper, you would have asked for ketchup."

"The only exercise I get these days is walking behind the coffins of my friends who take exercise."

How do you stop a polite conversation about politics, even with your nearest and dearest, descending into a slanging match?

The only failsafe answer of course is not to talk about politics at all.

Upon being given the freedom of Preston, Freddie Flintoff noted:

"That means I can drive a flock of sheep through the town centre, drink for free in no less than 64 pubs and get a lift home with th...

"I often suffer from the opposite of loneliness, which is; where I am with a bunch of people and I wish I was on my own."

I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal."

I have a dream that one d...

There is enough means to feed the planet but two thirds of the world lives below the poverty line

The Rough Guide to Rock has this quote from David Bowie:

"I once asked John Lennon what he thought of what I do. He said 'It's great, but it's just rock 'n' roll with lipstick on."

“I was always told by my Russian partners that I had to have a vodka, because it was like an anti-inflammatory so it made the muscles relax and calm.”

"I like to show that it's possible to be big and be fit. I have a healthy lifestyle. I don't smoke, don't drink and I eat well. You don't have to be skinny to take part in sport."

"Power without principle is barren, but principle without power is futile. This is a party of government, and I will lead it as a party of government."

"I did not have sexual relations with that woman, Miss Lewinsky. I never told anybody to lie, not a single time - never. These allegations are false."

"He would have to stand on a tanner to see over a thruppenny-bit"

"You spend your life working on your craft - I started acting as a seven-year-old - and then, all of a sudden, you're an 'overnight success'."

Steve Guttenberg told Metro:

"Typecasting is a good thing. It's good to be known for what you do. It's good Xerox is known for its copying machines and it's good Jim Carrey is known for comedy. Tha...

Lisa Francesca Nand (Chessy to Talksport listeners) wrote an article for Radiojam, which quoted Tommy Boyd on the future of the talk radio format: "I wonder if we're going to let the boat sail without...

It's sink or swim, and you've most probably picked up by now that I don't do life jackets.

"When I was in England I experimented with marijuana a time or two, and I didn't like it. I didn't inhale."

"Genius is one per cent inspiration, ninety-nine per cent perspiration."

The key to life is to make your own path, set your own rules."

"I didn't come into politics to change the Labour Party. I came into politics to change the country."

Referring to the 'Beat' writers, Truman Capote remarked: "This isn't writing at all - it's typing."

"Try not to worry about the small things in life that go wrong. You are only on the planet once. Get the best out of it."

"I like working on stage because there's something very immediate about it, that interaction with an audience where you immediately hear their reaction, or feel them, whether they're with you."

I’m not a rearview mirror person. I only go forward. I’ve worked with some extraordinary people and loved it. Some of them have left this earth. That makes me sad but all the more appreciative.

‘I would much rather someone say that is a George Ezra song than be famous’

Love’s about finding a connection and keeping that connection.

But I could not more write a romance than an epic poem. I could not sit seriously down to write a serious romance under any other motive than to save my life; and if it were indispensible for me to ke...

"It seems to me, that it's much more important to be happy than ordinary."

"A classic is something that everybody wants to have read and nobody wants to read."

"Everyone wants to understand art. Why don't people try to understand the song of a bird? Why do people love the night, the flowers and everything around us without insisting on understanding them? Bu...

"Giving young men what they want doesn't generally bring out the best in them. Success is almost guaranteed to mess you up more than failure."

John Banville told Mariella Frostrup on The Book Show:

"If you want to write noir fiction, Dublin in the 1950s is the place to set it ... all that cigarette smoke, all that fog, all that guilt, all...

Frank Zappa described rock journalists as "people, who can't write, interviewing people, who can't talk, for people, who can't read."

"I play my best in finals. That's why I'm Number 1, you know. There's no secret."

'Be like a duck, my mother used to tell me. Remain calm on the surface and paddle like hell underneath.'

Martha Kearney told The Telegraph: "The hardest job to get is your first. be persistent ...Get your foot in the door. Be inquiring."

In 2005, before the India v Pakistan test series, Zaheer Abbas advised his countrymen:
"Glue yourselves to the Indian pitches to the extent they have to call the police to budge you."

"Too bad that all the people who know how to run the country are busy driving taxi-cabs and cutting hair."

"Once you get into your stride, the camera becomes like another person in the room. It's like being in a very small theatre where there is no getting away with anything because the audience is centime...

The lesson I've learned are you've always got to be proud of what you've done and enjoy what you're doing rather than fixate on what might be in the future.

I think greed is very corrupting and one of the sad things is that greed is so unimaginative. Sometimes I see people spend fortunes on preposterous toys or daft experiences and think, “You could do ...

Bogart described himself as: "Democrat in politics, Episcopalian by upbringing. dissenter by disposition."

"To be a pair skater, you have to be a little bit crazy" - Amani Fancy quoted in https://theorbital.co.uk/

"You learn your lessons from the mistakes you make, not the things you achieve."

"The Sun once did 20 things you never knew about Angus Deayton – and I didn't know 16 of them ..."

Regarding David Gest's marriage to Liza Minnelli:

"We were taking bets in our pew about how long it would last ... that [wedding] kiss wasn't a kiss, it was like sucking chrome off a Cadillac."

Scammers are getting smarter and the scams are becoming more personal, which make them more believable.

Maurice Greene once said:

"If you want to be number one, you have to train like you're number two"

"As an actor you have to communicate all the time. So when I get home I'd rather dig the garden or take the dog for a walk than, say, go out to lunch and start communicating again."

Float like a butterfly, sting like a bee

On Rupert Murdoch:"one of the most impressive and significant figures of the last 50 years"

In discussing School for Seduction, Kelly Brook told the BBC:

"Regardless of what hair colour you have, what you look like, what accent you have, what you do for a living even, it's all about how y...

‘if you can soundtrack somebody’s memory, that is a beautiful thing’

"I invented World Music. I was the first person to use Plasticine in a video"

I paint objects as I think them, not as I see them

“Racism is like cricket. It was invented here but perfected in Australia.”

From Goodbye to Berlin: "I am a camera with its shutter open, quite passive, recording, not thinking."

Character is like a tree and reputation its shadow. The shadow is what we think it is and the tree is the real thing.

"It's a small world but you wouldn't want to paint it"

The first rule of survival is learning to control your emotions.

"My own experience has shown that you can survive after going through terrible times at home and I give my utmost support to those women and young people living with the threat of domestic abuse... Do...

Alda appeared on Inside The Actor's Studio and said, "Listening is being able to be changed by the person."

Regrets and mistakes are the touchstone of spiritual growth.

"To find a form that accommodates the mess, that is the task of the artist now."

Dustin Hoffman told The Sunday Times: "I get up at 4.30 every morning. It's the best time in the world. You see the break of dawn, and you're on your own and I have my bachelorhood back. For those two...

"The maintenance of the tradition of fashion is in the nature of an act of faith. In a century which attempts to tear the heart out of every mystery, fashion guards its secret well, and is the best po...

“It takes 20 years to build a reputation and five minutes to ruin it. If you think about that, you’ll do things differently.”

Life's too short to make filo pastry.

Lenny Bruce said of his own work: "All my humour is based upon destruction and despair. If the whole world were tranquil, without disease and violence, I'd be standing on the breadline right in back o...

"The Fame is about how anyone can feel famous."

"Isn't the Ego a wonderful thing?"

Beacham once said of Joan Collins:
"Joan Collins is like the old children's nursery rhyme: 'When she is good, she is very, very good. And when she is bad, she is horrid.' I can't remember how the who...

I can’t stress enough the importance of appreciating and even loving where you are. Happiness is relative. There will always be something more, something bigger or better. The more you focus on the ...

I never forget a face, but in your case I'll be glad to make an exception.

Clearly, I don't think anybody in this city is shocked about what consenting adults do. As long as you don't involve children, animals or vegetables they leave people to get on and live their own life...

The English like eccentrics. They just don't like them living next door

"Human beings are brilliantly creative at finding ways to pass time in unconstructive ways."

"If Donald Trump is president of the United States, it will be the end of the world. And he’s also the best thing to happen to the Democrats ever.”

Gerald Kaufman has crawled so far up the backside of NATO that only the soles of his feet are visible.

"If the glove doesn't fit, you must acquit"

A memorandum is written not to inform the reader but to protect the writer.

"Acting is a job like any other. It takes practice to be good at it. After that you learn your lines, concentrate on nothing else, get dressed and go home."