Review of the year: Quoted

'We cannot and will not leave Iraq until victory is achieved.'


President George Bush

'The truth is, if I hadn't had the funding from the state to go to university, I would have worked in a shop.'

Cherie Booth, barrister

'When you have been in politics as long as I have, you can smell and feel when it is time to step away.'
David Blunkett, former Work and Pensions Secretary

'There are villages that have been wiped off the face of this earth.'

Major General Shaukat Sultan, Pakistan's military spokesman, on the south Asia earthquake devastation

'The day will come when I'll have to tell our children what he did.'
Samantha Lewthwaite, widow of 7 July London bomber Germaine Lindsay

'I keep hearing that it's coming. This is coming. That is coming. My answer to that is: BS.'

Ray Nagin, Mayor of New Orleans, on unfulfilled promises of help for his city

'There is no famine in Niger. All those who say that either have political motivations or an economic interest.'
Mamadou Tanja, President of Niger

'Fanaticism is not a state of religion but a state of mind.'

Prime Minister Tony Blair in his Commons statement on the London bombings

'Any who say that we've lost this war, or that we're losing this war, are wrong.'
Donald Rumsfeld, US Defence Secretary

'I don't think it's the pop stars the politicians are afraid of. It's the audience. They are young people and they can change things.'

Bono, musician, on Live8

'I'm just a girl from a trailer park who had a dream.'
Hilary Swank, accepting her second Best Actress Oscar

'The tsunami is an act of God, an act of nature. Africa is an act of man.'

Bob Geldof, musician and campaigner

'A job that is so hard is not good for a 78-year-old man.'
The Reverend Georg Ratzinger, the brother of Pope Benedict XVI

'Bono can sing his songs until he is giving his gigs on a Zimmer frame, but if he thinks he is going to abolish poverty, he must be mad.'

Frederick Forsyth, author

'Scientology hurts nobody. If it makes Tom Cruise happy, I don't care if he prays to turtles.'
Madonna, pop singer

'The white working class is the only group that can be abused and maligned with impunity.'

Julie Burchill, journalist

The most important thing to me is my privacy'
'Big Brother' contestant Jackie Stallone

'You could not live on £3m. You could not buy a house. You would have to be living at the YMCA.'

Michael Winner, film director

'After a few years you look back at your stuff and it's embarrassing. Everything you make is no masterpiece.'
Damien Hirst, Brit Art artist

'My family and I stand by what we believe: forgiveness.'

Gee Walker, mother of Anthony, murdered in a racist attack

'You may be Jewish but you're just like a concentration camp guard. You are doing it because you are paid to, aren't you?'
London Mayor Ken Livingstone to an 'Evening Standard' reporter

'You can't make people love people of other races - and you cannot have a law which says we have to love each other. That's bonkers.'

Trevor Phillips, chairman of the Commission for Racial Equality

'The Tories' main problem is that they don't have anyone you'd want to go to bed with.'
Anne Robinson, TV presenter

'I have met Saddam Hussein the same number of times as Donald Rumsfeld. The difference is that Donald Rumsfeld met him to sell him guns.'

George Galloway MP appearing before a US Congressional committee to deny American claims of his having corrupt dealings with the Iraqi dictator

'Follow our example, and make hoodies school uniform. How uncool does that make them?'
Richard Haigh, the headmaster of Coombeshead College in Devon