In years of interviewing presidents, prime ministers and chief executives all over the world, I can remember only a handful of times in which a leader has said: 'I don't know' in answer to a question. Perhaps everyone I have ever interviewed knows everything about everything, but I doubt it.

Gavin Esler

Mr. President, prime ministers, let us have ambitions: ambitions to move beyond the violence and occupation, to the day when two states, Palestine and Israel, can live together side by side in peace and security.

Abdullah II of Jordan

Peace Violence Us

In the end we are all sacked and it's always awful. It is as inevitable as death following life. If you are elevated there comes a day when you are demoted. Even Prime Ministers.

Alan Clark

Life Death You

I think prime ministers, I actually think Cabinet ministers should be subject to intense scrutiny, I think that's in the public interest, even if some of the allegations made aren't right and so on, and they have to correct the record, it doesn't matter.

Alexander Downer

Tiny Tin Think

The eight-year-long Algerian war was to bring down six French prime ministers, open the door to de Gaulle - and come close to destroying him, too. The war was the last of the grand-style colonial struggles, but, perhaps more to the point, it was also the first campaign in which poorly equipped Muslim mujahedin licked one of the top Western armies.

Alistair Horne

War Yin Year

You don't try and put rockets under prime ministers.

Andrew Forrest

You UN Try

New Zealand, by the way, where I was ambassador, has had two women prime ministers - one from either party.

Carol Moseley Braun

Women Sad Men

The reason most people don't express their individuality and actually deny it, is not fear of what prime ministers think of us or the head of the federal reserve, It's what their families and their friends down at the bar are going to think of them.

David Icke

Fear Us Think

I think personality correction is necessary for successful men, like prime ministers, businessmen, politicians... it's essential that one should keep an eye on one's own personality. You must have seen people in politics who become chief ministers and then pass into oblivion - how egotistical they became and how pathetic they look.

Dilip Kumar

Success Politics Men

The first two Prime Ministers whom I served, Ted Heath and Margaret Thatcher drew strikingly different lessons from the Second World War.

Douglas Hurd

War World War World

In years of interviewing presidents, prime ministers and chief executives all over the world, I can remember only a handful of times in which a leader has said: 'I don't know' in answer to a question. Perhaps everyone I have ever interviewed knows everything about everything, but I doubt it.

Gavin Esler

Time Years Year

Our laws are ultimately all that protect us from tyranny, and before them we are all equal - prime ministers and private citizens alike.

Gina Miller

Zen Us Ultimately

Other prime ministers leave office and stay in London. I have come back with my whole family to Fife. This is where they are being brought up. It is better for them and better for me. It's great to see more of the kids.

Gordon Brown

Great Family Wit

A woman said to me, 'You're better than your successor.' She then said she's lived under 10 prime ministers, and each was worse than the last. That put me in my place.

Gordon Brown

Success Your You

Well, there have been periods in the past when prime ministers of Australia and New Zealand were at each others' throats publicly and frequently. That's not productive at all.

Helen Clark

Zealand Zeal Were

Some newspapers in Britain have become closer to these kind of mafia families. They wield an incredible power. They choose our governments, they choose our prime ministers, and they live above the law.

Hugh Grant

Power Men Government

Political risk is hard to manage because so much comes down to the personal choices of policymakers, whether prime ministers or heads of central banks.

James Surowiecki

Age Whether Use

I get to deal with presidents and prime ministers and - and employees from tellers on up. And I love it.

Jamie Dimon

Love Wit Up

I am not deeply involved in Australian politics but I know there are prime ministers, governments around the world who are not acting responsibly in relation to climate change.

Jane Goodall

Politics Men Government

You look around the world in 2013, and you say, 'How many prime ministers or presidents are in prison?' One or two. 'How many generals or bankers?' Two or three. 'But how many writers?' 850 or so.

John Ralston Saul

You Writers Writer

Presidents and prime ministers, whether they live in the rich or the poor world, are insulated and isolated from the devastating impact of global poverty. They read the statistics, but they rarely witness at first hand the misery and degradation of life on a dollar a day.

Jonathan Dimbleby

Life World Witness

There seems to be a sense in the British media that prime ministers enjoy going to war. They do not. The decision to send British soldiers into battle is the worst and most stomach-churning senior politicians have to take. It makes them wake up in the middle of the night in a cold sweat worrying if they have done the right thing.

Jonathan Powell

The historical kings of England are all strong soldiers and leaders, but can you be a sensitive leader? It's the same in politics, we talk about how proud we are to have had two women prime ministers, but would we be less ready for a sensitive prime minister?

Josh O'Connor

British prime ministers and prime ministers' spouses and children are together becoming ever more like first families. They need to be given sufficient resources and personnel to enable them to carry out their shifting roles efficiently, decently, and safely.

Linda Colley

In the old days we were the challenger brand competing against the big banks, but today I go round the world and I sit with governors of central banks and finance ministers and, in some cases, prime ministers. They all know Travelex. We are regarded as the establishment - the world's largest retailer of foreign currency.

Lloyd Dorfman

I have dealt with politicians ever since I came into the government in 1971. I have seen many prime ministers, many finance ministers.

Manmohan Singh

In my experience (I am the lone father of an eight-year-old boy who lost his mother when he was one year old), parenting is the most difficult of all jobs: forget your chief executives, editors, prime ministers and the like - parenting is far more challenging.

Martin Jacques

Prime ministers come and go, but so long as he or she lives, the sovereign remains, receiving and reading all state papers and meeting once a week with the prime minister to advise, enquire, and comment - sometimes sharply, as was the case with Queen Elizabeth II and Mrs. Thatcher - on affairs of state.

Michael Korda

As a student, I had stayed with Winston Churchill; later, I had lunched with Harold Macmillan - in fact, had met most of the post-war prime ministers of Great Britain from Douglas-Home to Tony Blair.

Nigel Hamilton

As an economist specializing in the global economy, international trade and debt, I have spent most of my career helping others make big decisions - prime ministers, presidents and chief executives - and so I'm all too aware of the risks and dangers of poor choices in the public as well as the private sphere.

Noreena Hertz

Well, Australians should speak for the national interests of Australia, and whatever role former Australian prime ministers may have, one of the things you do is speak frankly about the country as you see the country's best interests, you know?

Paul Keating

The death of Malcolm Fraser underwrites a great loss to Australia. Notwithstanding a controversial prime ministership, in later years he harboured one abiding and important idea about Australia - its need and its right to be a strategically independent country.

Paul Keating

Limos are fine for prime ministers or presidents who need the security, but there's no need for CEOs or executives to have one as a status symbol.

Richard Quest

Prime ministers with full majority have behaved differently from each other. Jawaharlal Nehru was a leader who ruled by consensus while Indira Gandhi was considered more unilateral in her approach.

Sanjaya Baru

This Sonia Gandhi thing should be seen in perspective - the people of India have an emotional attachment to the family. And why not? Three of the five Congress prime ministers belong to that family. The people empathise with the family name.

Sharad Pawar

On the question of comfort women, when my thought goes to these people, who have been victimized by human trafficking and gone through immeasurable pain and suffering beyond description, my heart aches. And on this point, my thought has not changed at all from previous prime ministers.

Shinzo Abe

My student days in PSG saw three Prime Ministers, two wars, taught us courage, resilience, leadership and optimism.

Shiv Nadar

The country's image has improved ten-fold during Vajpayee's prime ministership.

Sowcar Janaki

Just as the England football manager starts with bells and flags and balloons and ends up reviled, so do prime ministers. Tony Blair - is there anyone more despised now? Gordon Brown - all right, nobody voted for him but, you know... just think of any of them. Margaret Thatcher. John Major. Steve McLaren. Fabio Capello.

Terry Wogan

Canadians are hardly assertive or demanding. We don't expect U.S. presidents to bow down to our prime ministers when they visit us in Ottawa, nor are we looking for the occasional kickback on an F-16 deal.

Vaclav Smil