"My father taught me that one of the most important abilities in life is to be able to take the pain and persevere, and for years this lesson had served me well."

"The worst-case scenario I guess I’ll buy second-hand, but I don’t need new clothes. I know people who have clothes, so I would ask them if I could borrow them or if they have something they don’t need…"

"The last hundred years have shown... that one man cannot do it all, and that anyone who attempts to hold within his two hands all the threads of a great business of the present day fails to achieve th…"

"In Cabinet the important thing is to stop people from talking. Some people are loquacious, some are eloquent. I always used to point out that rhetoric is wasted on a Cabinet of hard-boiled politicians…"

"Greenock was one of the great centres of the sugar trade...Then came foreign competition, aided by bounties; and your trade declines so seriously that only the very best, the very richest, the most en…"