Everywhere that the struggle for national freedom has triumphed, once the authorities agreed, there were military coups d'etat that overthrew their leaders. That is the result time and time again.

Information is power. But like all power, there are those who want to keep it for themselves.

To confront those fears, in a controlled environment, where there's 300 people around you going through the same thing, it's this weird sort of yin and yang.

There comes a day when you realise turning the page is the best feeling in the world, because you realise there's so much more to the book than the page you were stuck on

Without dreams, there can be no courage. And without courage, there can be no action

Life is beautiful. Cherish every moment even if you're stressed or hurt or whatnot. There's always tomorrow and it always gets better

There is no way to peace, peace is the way

Winning is great, but it's the long road to get there that makes it worthwhile.

There is a silence, the child of love, which expresses everything, and proclaims more loudly than the tongue is able to do.

I love you, even if there isn’t any me, or any love, or even any life. I love you.

There are accents in the eye which are not on the tongue, and more tales come from pale lips than can enter an ear. It is both the grandeur and the pain of the remoter moods that they avoid the pathway of sound.

And yet to every bad there is a worse.

If way to the better there be, it exacts a full look at the worst.

I don't think there were great beauty trends in the '90s - I was just doing my own thing.

I don't mind being compared to Whitney, there are people miles worse to be compared to.

This is for all of you out there tonight, reaching for a dream - don't ever give up! Never ever listen to anyone, when they try to discourage you, because they do that, believe me!

There is a light at the end of the tunnel... hopefully its not a freight train!

There's an idea that London is a planet on its own: that it's starting to diverge from the rest of the solar system. We need to combat that.

I've got more in common with a three-toed sloth than I have with Winston Churchill. There is no easy comparison with any modern politician. The more you read about him, the more completely amazed you are about what he did - his energy, his literary fecundity, his ability to work - just unbelievable energy.

There is absolutely no one, apart from yourself, who can prevent you, in the middle of the night, from sneaking down to tidy up the edges of that hunk of cheese at the back of the fridge.

Ping-pong was invented on the dining tables of England in the 19th century, and it was called Wiff-waff! And there, I think, you have the difference between us and the rest of the world. Other nations, the French, looked at a dining table and saw an opportunity to have dinner; we looked at it an saw an opportunity to play Wiff-waff.

My friends, as I have discovered myself, there are no disasters, only opportunities. And, indeed, opportunities for fresh disasters.

There was a phase in my career in my late 20s and 30s when I was doing strange, arty-farty Euro films that were, you could tell, never had much chance of any release anywhere in the world.

Broadly speaking, there are two kinds of acting: character acting and lead acting. And in my life, to begin with, in the 1980s, it was all character acting. And then when, by fluke, through 'Four Weddings', I got into doing lead parts, it's a completely different thing.