It is by its promise of a sense of power that evil often attracts the weak.

There's been a slow death in a way. On the positive side there are films getting into the Academy Awards that wouldn't have but on the negative side financiers are now dominant and making all the decisions. I can't count the ways a director's vision is compromised.

In politics sometimes you have to lie or you make a promise that you cannot keep.

Inauthenticity is endemic in American politics today. The political backrooms where I spent much of my career were just as benighted as my personal life equally crowded with shadowy strangers and compromises truths I hoped to deny. I lived not in one closet but in many.

That is why everyone in politics and we do it must make sure that they do not depend on one single interest group. A good compromise is one where everybody makes a contribution.

We read too much Shakespeare at school and view our parliamentary politics as dynastic drama in which an impatient crown prince frets at his long subordination and begins to scheme for the throne he knows he merits was promised and has earned.

One thing I have frankly decided is that when it comes to political reform we have two conservative parties in British politics. Both the Labour and Conservative parties have constantly and repeatedly failed to honour promises they have made about reforming cleaning modernising our clapped-out system.

I don't compromise my principles for politics.

Compromise makes a good umbrella but a poor roof it is temporary expedient often wise in party politics almost sure to be unwise in statesmanship.

I was losing interest in politics when the repeal of the Missouri Compromise aroused me again. What I have done since then is pretty well known.