Quotes of the week

Saturday 02 January 1999 19:02 EST
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I really don't go around asking my cabinet members how they paid for their houses.

Tony Blair on the Peter Mandelson affair

Peter reminds me of the Wizard of Oz. Behind the self-created monster hides someone afraid to show vulnerability as that would bring the myth crashing down.

Derek Draper, Mr Mandelson's disgraced former aide

We have decided that public expenditure is there to uphold the economy in the traditional Keynesian way.

John Prescott, Deputy Prime Minister, reasserting old Labour values

It is dangerous, but it brings real meaning to living. If society wants to bar mankind from such stimulation, then the whole human species might as well be castrated.

Sir Robin Knox-Johnston, the first person to sail solo, non-stop around the world, on the ill-starred Sydney-to- Hobart yacht race

I don't care if they call me a smut peddler. I just want to be called Mr Smut Peddler. Smut is my job, politics is my hobby.

Larry Flynt, publisher of `Hustler' magazine, on his search for sexual hypocrites in Congress

Sometimes you feel this is the only sort of life, and 10 minutes later you're praying for death.

The Duke of Edinburgh on the sea

Should firefighters buy their own hoses? Why should teachers have to pitch in with books?

Peter Smith, of the Association of Teachers and Lecturers after a report revealed that teachers spend pounds 5m a year of their own money on schoolbooks

I wish Mr Blair and his family a happy holiday in the Seychelles, but they should have chosen another place.

Claus Mittermayer, who claims the Blairs' chosen resort was stolen from his father

I had hoped you wouldn't ask that question. The answer is no.

Wim Duisenberg, president of the European Central Bank, when asked if he would step down after four years, as he had earlier indicated

What is most striking about Mr Blair's government is precisely how little is striking about it. This is overwhelmingly a government of non-events, of dogs that fail to bark in the night.

Anthony King, professor of government at Essex University

What they are doing is much closer to a millionaire's whim than a genuine scientific inquiry.

Jean-Jules Verne, explaining why his grandfather would not have been impressed by Richard Branson's ballooning

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