Top 101 Quotes & Sayings by Gavin Esler
Explore popular quotes and sayings by a Scottish journalist Gavin Esler.
Last updated on September 11, 2024.
Presidents at the end of their second term - Reagan with the Iran-contra affair, Clinton with Monica Lewinsky - often find they are bedevilled by hostile Congressional investigations.
Ronald Reagan offered us an international vision divided between the free world and the evil empire. Even if this was a cartoonish view, it helped us make sense of everything from Star Wars to industrial policy.
My first day at Duddingston Primary is probably my first memory.
Doctors, dentists and nurses commonly take out malpractice insurance to pay for lawsuits. The trend has expanded to include hairdressers, accountants, vets, sports umpires and members of the clergy, all fearful of being sued for wrongful action or advice.
The very idea of a Party of God, Hizbollah, puts the fear of God into British hearts.
Brexit is turning out to be a really really bad meal. We ordered steak and chips and we've now got some raw chicken that smells bad.
My idea of heaven is being in Arizona, stuck up a mountain - somewhere where there are no phones.
The skills necessary to change nappies or negotiate Brexit are obviously very different, but both involve a great deal of trust in the competence of the people doing the job.
Maybe because I've worked in the BBC for so long I am completely allergic to meetings.
I've never been a fan of party politics.
A celebrity can gain attention in our otherwise busy lives. And celebrity sells.
The thing I love most about going to the Rocky Mountain National Park is that mobile phones don't work, and there's no electricity and no TV.
Ian Anderson of Jethro Tull is now a good friend, and the thing that strikes you about him is that he's all about details.
Nigel Farage has got some strengths. He really connects with people. He is a very good talker. I find him very affable. I would very happily buy him a beer. And I am sure he would be happy with it to.
Anyone who goes through divorce goes through a very hard time.
There is a common British delusion that we 'understand' America. We don't. Watching 'Friends' listening to Bruce Springsteen, eating at McDonald's and visiting Disneyland does not do it.
If we have to put music into baskets, then the progressive rock bands I fell in love with as a teenager made sounds that shaded into jazz, folk, metal, and in the case of the wonderful (and sadly missed) Jon Lord, modern classical music.
I remember politicians in Northern Ireland were sometimes called 'verbal incendiarists,' as they didn't actually do anything but they said certain things. So when you hear certain politicians using nasty language, that colours our lives. It makes some other people think it's OK to racially abuse people.
My alphabet book at Duddingston Primary, Edinburgh, began traditionally with 'a is for apple,' but when it came to 'g,' it was 'g is for gas globe.' This was in the late Fifties; there hadn't been gas globes for decades. The textbook must have been 30 or 40 years old!
I have a long connection with Kent and Canterbury and I hope to help other young men and women to achieve their ambitions through a wonderful university experience.
Grits really are food for the soul.
I was going to do medicine at Edinburgh University - when I was three weeks old I nearly died, but they did an operation and I survived. It was a huge thing for my family - I was the first-born - and doctors were heroes, so I wanted to join them.
People in the U.S. who feel they need guns or enjoy gun sports of various types, are, in other words, decent, law-abiding, generally honest members of society. Their wish to have guns should be respected.
Rich, poor, white, people of colour, are all equally irreplaceable.
Every year I go to Denver, usually between June and August. I hire a car and head up to the Rocky Mountain National Park, about a three-hour drive. It's my idea of heaven on earth and just talking about it puts me in a good mood.
In Britain, politicians who openly discuss their spirituality are about as welcome as Jehovah' s Witnesses on the doorstep, and the British associate the mixture of politics and religion as a heady cocktail best reserved for the mass irrationality of Northern Ireland, Iran, Kashmir, and the Middle East.
I'm not anti-American. But I am very strongly anti American bacon - the worst bacon in the world.
Americans, apparently, either do nothing about the world's problems, in which case they are ignorant and isolationist, selfish and gutless, or they try to do something about the world's problems, in which case they are arrogant and naive, greedy and bullying.
Personally, I hope that we British continue to criticise America - just as I hope Americans will criticise us. That is what friends do.
At seven years old, I won a scholarship to George Heriot's School, an independent school in Edinburgh, and I was there until I was 17.
A British politician who cloaks himself in the mantle of God is immediately regarded with suspicion.
Mini-skirts, Prada and Agnes B are for New York and L.A. Washington is more America's equivalent of Marks & Spencer.
For me, prog rock has always been essentially British. It combines all our great and eccentric genius. We are not hung up on categories, rules and classification. We love people who break the mould, challenge us and make us think differently.
In the Stephen Sondheim song, when something bad happens in the circus, they send in the clowns. In America's political circus, they send in the lawyers.
Public displays of puritanical religiosity mask the private perversions of the real Washington behind closed doors.
I feel very fragile cycling in London, whereas in Berlin there are proper cycle paths everywhere.
In the 2016 U.S. presidential election, celebrity endorsements possibly damaged Hillary Clinton, since they allowed Donald Trump to emphasise that she was part of an out-of-touch elite. That is ironic, given that Mr Trump owed his election victory to his own celebrity status on a TV reality show.
Let me say it up front: I don't like bad hair or capes. I'm not into witches, warlocks or elves. I would never try to claim prog rock is cool. But I love it. And I know I'm not the only one.
I have my mother's nose and my father's bone structure, which I've passed on to my children. My eldest daughter and my mother, when she was young, could be sisters.
It's perhaps easier to say what prog rock isn't than what it is: it's not three-minute pop songs, it's not straightforward rock, metal, blues or jazz, but can have elements of all them and more. It's a form that is on the boundaries of many different forms, that is open to all sorts of influences.
Brexit is not only not just about left and right. Brexit is about expertise.
I did modern English and American literature at Kent University, with no Chaucer and no Middle English: a perfect course.
I am the typical British aspiring working class. To be called 'elite' by people who have inherited wealth and run hedge funds or worked in the City of London, I don't criticise them for it, but the idea is frankly laughable. Just ridiculous.
The Cold War, Bosnia and Ukraine remind us that peace is fragile. Iraq and Syria remind us that no society or culture is immune from conflict.
Whether anyone has ever changed their mind as a result of a celebrity endorsement of a candidate is a bit of a mystery.
Viewers don't like rudeness, but they like us to be persistent.
Once upon a time, America was a self-reliant John Wayne society where a man's gotta do what a man's gotta do. Now, America has become an over-lawyered society where nobody takes responsibility for mistakes because it is more profitable to claim victimhood and reach for a lawyer.
My taste in coffee has got better with age, and so has my taste in music.
I can be incredibly stubborn and I'm not sure how that reflects in my looks. The family name is German and translates as donkey! If I think I'm right, I hope I don't seem grumpy.
Maybe I should declare a bias. I like Americans. Always have. Always will.
When I do look at myself, I see someone who is fundamentally optimistic. Quite a lot of what I do in my television work involves the less than pleasant aspects of human nature, yet I'm never pessimistic.
There's no doubt that prog rock has an image problem: many musicians hate the label, and too many people associate it with 10-minute drum solos and the weirder bits of JRR Tolkien.
The U.S. Constitution has absorbed the end of slavery, the Civil War, Civil Rights and Watergate.
With Bill Clinton, his lawyers always wanted him to say nothing about the Lewinsky scandal. Defendant Clinton had the right to remain silent. But President Clinton had a completely different need - political survival. That meant, in the end, that he needed to trumpet his supposed innocence and talk publicly to the American people.
From the moment he took the oath of office in 1993 until he left the White House in 2001, Bill Clinton was a paradox in power. He presided over the United States prosperous and at peace - but never at peace with itself.
What mattered in the cold war was weight - how big are your missiles? How heavy are your tanks? What matters in globalisation is speed. How fast is your modem? How good are you communications?
We're never encouraged by the producers to ask questions in any way. The most important thing to be is authentic and to be yourself. If I feel someone has answered a question then I'll move on. If I feel it's important enough, I will pursue the question.
I want to stop Brexit.
American elections have usually turned on the issues of war, peace and the economy.
A magazine once asked my favourite beauty product and I said water.
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