38 Quotes by Michael Dobbs

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. Truth lies in the hands of its editor.

The design is based on the old St. Stephen’s Chapel, where the earliest parliamentarians sat, like choirboys in facing pews, yet there is little that is angelic in the modern set-up. Members face each other in confrontation, as antagonists. They are separated by two red lines on the carpet, whose distance apart represents the distance of two sword lengths, yet this is misleading, for the most imminent danger is never more than a dagger’s distance away, on the benches behind.

The nature of ambition is that it requires casualties.

The higher up the tree a cat climbs, the farther it will fall. It’s the same for politicians, except politicians don’t bounce.

Loyalty is like instant coffee: it’s cheap and ultimately unsatisfying.

There is no need to outrun the lion. All that is necessary for a man to do in order to survive is to outrun his friends.

This was suburban Surrey, the land of the A and B social classes in the terminology of pollsters, where passports lay at the ready and Range Rovers stood in the driveway. Range Rovers? The only time they ever encountered mud was when being driven carelessly over front lawns late on a Friday night or when dropping off their little Johnnies and Emmas at their private schools.

Loyalty may be good news, but it is rarely good advice.

Tell me, McFadden, what do you think of our beloved Mr. Chamberlain?” Mac didn’t care for such direct questions. All his adult life had been spent in the mentality of the gulag, never openly complaining, always seeming to conform, never risking a row. Perhaps that’s why he had agreed to marry, not so much to avoid disappointing the lady but more because it was the simplest way to fit into the flow of things.