80 Quotes by Alastair Campbell

My closest friend, who died not long ago, is buried near Marx's grave in Highgate cemetery, so I see the gaggle of admirers laying roses at the foot of his tombstone regularly. I have never been tempted to leave flowers there myself. Great theories, shame about the practice. Marx did many things. But inventing class was not one of them.

So here is one of my theories on happiness: we cannot know if we have lived a truly happy life until the very end. This view of life and death was reinforced by my close witnessing of the buildup to the death of Philip Gould. Philip was without doubt my closest friend in politics. When he died, I felt like I had lost a limb.

My public caricature - that of a self-confident alpha male - is only partly accurate.

The media are obsessed with spin doctors and with portraying them as a bad thing, yet seem addicted to our medicine.

I'm certainly driven, I hate losing, I can be ruthless and short-tempered and terribly competitive.

One in four of us will have a mental illness at some point. That is a lot of people.

Don't accept that you are in crisis just because everyone says you are.

In an ideal world, it would not take a film star to get the media focused on mental illness.

The bad news for journalists today is that the media, however seriously people who are in the public eye take it, is not taken as seriously as it once was - by the public.