Top 109 Quotes & Sayings by Gyles Brandreth - Page 2

It's called 'Odd Boy Out' because as I was writing it I realized I was a bit of an oddity as a child.

The essence of democracy is that you can kick people out.

Greyfriars School is like Hogwarts School in the Harry Potter stories and the whole world of magic is the world of J.M.Barrie.

I was in the debating society at school, I was the president of the Oxford Union, and then I became an MP in the Nineties.

When you are standing in a corner at the party, when you've arrived early for the meeting, when the doors have closed but the lift won't start, there's nothing worse than being lost for words.

I made that great mistake of trying to be funny.

Prince Philip is conscious of his place in the heritage of the Royal Family.

With a rowdy audience, the trick is not to go louder and try to beat them into submission. It's to go quieter. As they get loud, you get soft. Then they lean in towards you to listen.

The biggest and loudest weddings don't always produce the happiest marriages.

Private weddings are becoming something of a family tradition. My daughter Saethryd married her husband Jason at Marylebone Register Office in 2005 while my wife and I had a lunch at Pizza Express.

Princess Anne is like her father. From her, you'll never hear a complaint of any kind about her upbringing.

If you are getting married it's about the person you are marrying, it's about the relationship. For me it's not about the party.

There are people who have rabbit stew still, it's quite a dish!

We did marry in secret and it was several years before we even told our parents that we were married.

It was Napoleon who said if you want to understand a man, look at the world as it was when he was 20. When the Queen and the Duke were in their early 20s, it's around 1940. Their values are the values of Britain in 1940; all that is best of Britain in 1940 is exemplified by the Duke.

There's nothing so unemployable as a man in his 50s who's no longer on the winning side.

Prince Philip prides himself on being a realist. He knows he is not going to live for ever.

Prince Philip protected the Queen and made her laugh.

When it comes to personal communication, words are all we've got. It is the simple use of language that makes us human beings.

Now I'm just loving the world of Oscar Wilde and Arthur Conan Doyle so much. I really wouldn't want to go back into the world of Gordon Brown and Alistair Darling - where would the fun and adventure be in that?

If you were doing a Des O'Connor show, you were in safe hands.

What's interesting is I don't think you will find anyone to say anything against Des O'Connor, he was the nicest of people and the ultimate professional and he made it look effortlessly easy.

I don't poo-pooh anyone's knighthood or other honors.

I wanted to have a house near his grave, and that's exactly what I did get. When I woke up in the morning, I would open my window and look out upon Holy Trinity Church, where Shakespeare's grave is. Not once did it fail to move me.

During the summer of 2000, in the run-up to Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother's 100th birthday, I asked the Duke of Edinburgh if he was hoping to reach 100. 'Good God, no,' he spluttered, 'I can't imagine anything worse. What a ghastly idea.'

When I was a boy, I began writing a biography of Shakespeare, and since then I've written a number of biographies of actors and famous people.

If you are conscious of the journey you are taking, wherever you are it will help you know where you are going next.

Quite out of proportion to the size of the country, British children's writers swept the world in the 20th century. We should celebrate them.

A chap can go too far in the pursuit of authenticity.

It's good to stretch your mind.

Once, during one of the jubilee tours, I was in the car immediately behind theirs and I watched Prince Philip telling the Queen a story. He kept her laughing for 20 minutes.

There is an invisible moat around the senior royals.

I am interested in the Oscar Wilde we don't know.

Whatever you wanted in entertainment, Des O'Connor could provide, so he was in a way the last of his kind.

I learnt German as well as English, so by the time I was three my parents has already decided I was a gifted child.

We loved the line 'I'm a luxury... few can afford.' It still makes me smile. It's a jumper for people with a sense of style and a sense of humor.

Not only did I cross-dress at 10, playing Rosalind in 'As You Like It,' I also found myself in a cross-dressed part at 60, when I played Lady Bracknell in 'The Importance of Being Earnest.'

If you're the Queen you don't need to say anything and you don't get into trouble. If you're the Duke of Edinburgh you say a lot of things, sometimes too many, and you do get into trouble.

I've learnt that you've got to accept the audience you've got.

When I was an MP, I worked at the department where we gave honors to people from the arts world, I was quite keen.

If God had meant us to go metric, why did he give Christ twelve apostles?

If you'd spent your life being called "Gyles Brandreth", you would crawl across broken glass to achieve the bliss, the simplicity, the purity, the joy of simply being called "Bob".

As a politician, you only meet two types of people. People with problems, and people who are right.

I think it should be made clear that the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats, they have not got into bed together; they are merely sharing a room.

In the Members' Dining Room, the Conservatives eat at one end, the Labour Party at the other, while the Liberals wait at table.

John Major. He dresses so well. And so quickly.

Praise makes me humble, but when I am abused, I know that I have touched the stars.

Gazing at the typewriter in moments of desperation I console myself with three thoughts. Alcohol at six, dinner at eight, and to be immortal you've got to be dead.

He loved what he did, he loved being on Countdown - he just loved life