Top 21 Quotes & Sayings by Nick Davies

It is an odd thing about newspapers that they live by exposure, yet they keep their own worlds concealed.

I spent two years working on building sites, working on the railways as a guard and in a racing stable, exercising racehorses. I learnt to build relationships. The experience of not being stuck in some middle-class bubble taught me things that being at university hadn't.

It's the tabloids, with their intense commercial need to get scoops to bring in readers, that run a regime of fear, where reporters are bullied, shouted at. That's where things go wrong.

The death of the MG marks the end of one of the most perfect products of free enterprise, born out of the voracious will to succeed of one man and the burgeoning market for middle-class status symbols. The car first appeared as a souped-up Morris Oxford in 1923 when it won the Land's End Rally.

Something very worrying has been going on at Scotland Yard. We now know that in dealing with the phone-hacking affair at the 'News of the World,' they cut short their original inquiry; suppressed evidence; misled the public and the press; concealed information and broke the law. Why?

Once, the world was full of mysteries, some of them frightening, some of them wonderful, some of them merely fascinating. Now, it can be a banal and predictable place, the tracks of daily life so well-beaten and defined, our culture awash with the imbecile obvious, our existence suffocating in safety. But mysteries remain.

The friends of tabloid newspapers often point out that their journalism exists only because millions of people pay money to read it.

In a film muddied by fictional detail, the new Spielberg production Fifth Estate's portrayal of the Guardian's work with Wikileaks is accurate in describing the running dispute between journalists who wanted to redact documents to make them safe and Julian Assange, who wanted no such restraint.

The vast bulk of Murdoch's news output, including the huge majority of any falsehood and distortion, is simply the spontaneous product of his highly commercialised newsrooms. It sells.

Notoriously, in 1975, Murdoch abused his position as a newspaper owner to support a plot that ousted the democratically elected prime minister of Australia, Gough Whitlam, who had dared to wander away from the mogul's path.

The Murdoch-owned 'Sunday Times' has an appalling history of involvement in illegal activity. And it's because they're Sunday papers; they're trying to get scoops that the dailies haven't got.

Back in the 1980s, the 'News of the World' had specialised in digging into the privacy of criminals. In the 1990s, enriched by the excavation of Princess Diana's volatile life, they had widened their work to mine the activities of any celebrity, any public figure.

On first acquaintance, the mystery of the Mayans of Guatemala can seem simply bizarre, as it was when I first encountered Maximon the god.

Julian Assange is self-consciously an individual. He thinks in his own way, primarily as a physicist, having studied pure maths and physics at university in Australia where he grew up.

In my case, I got hit a lot by bullies when I was a child, and so I naturally bristle against anybody who abuses power. And that seems to make me rather persistent when it comes to exposing the abuse of power.

I've learnt that your life is more interesting and fulfilling when you don't lead it in a straight line and you go off on zigzags. I've made it a rule that if life becomes too comfortable and easy, I'll disrupt it.

The U.S. dropped more high explosives on Vietnam than the Allies used on Germany and Japan together in the Second World War.

The effect of climate change is not simply to reduce rain during the summer months, but also to increase the number of torrential storms. When the rain falls that hard and fast, it cannot sink into the ground and go down to the aquifers.

You don't get shouted at at the 'Guardian.' Nobody bullies you at the paper; nobody tells you what to write. Now, I love working in that atmosphere; I am free to research and write what I want.

A trial deals with only a limited amount of information, considering only the evidence which is available and also admissible and which relates directly to the charges on the indictment.

Reporters have to use their imagination, really put themselves in the shoes of the person they want to interview.