QUOTES by Michael Portillo
Find most favourite and famour Authors from A.A Milne to Zoe Kravitz.
I can never thoroughly appreciate meals on ships because, away from land, I feel my autonomy is restricted.
Quote by -Michael Portillo
We must have a welfare system that we can afford, which will mean giving greater attention to directing the welfare program toward its primary purposes and its intended beneficiaries.
Quote by -Michael Portillo
It's a dilemma for every modern parent - how to keep children safe on social media without monitoring their every post.
Quote by -Michael Portillo
I have liked trains since I was a boy, although I was never a train-spotter.
Quote by -Michael Portillo
If, like me, you're interested in history, Egypt is a place of wonders. It's the land of many civilisations, including Greek, Roman, Christian, and Muslim.
Quote by -Michael Portillo
As a politician, I spent a lot of time in Washington and New York, cities that are familiar to Europeans.
Quote by -Michael Portillo
We in Britain do not have the same capabilities as the United States, but we are members of the United Nations Security Council. And we take our obligations and duties deriving from that very seriously.
Quote by -Michael Portillo
Television brings with it two dangerous hazards: the worship of celebrity and the blurring of reality and fantasy.
Quote by -Michael Portillo
Before my teens, my contemporaries were reading Tolkien and were absorbed by his works, but try as I might, I could not be drawn in, perhaps as something in me resists the epic, medieval-feeling fantasy.
Quote by -Michael Portillo
The true symbolism of every facet of 'Guernica' can only be guessed at, but we do know that it haunted Picasso.
Quote by -Michael Portillo
If you are a fan of my BBC series 'Great Continental Railway Journeys,' you'll probably not be surprised to learn that one of my great aspirations is to travel on Egypt's railways.
Quote by -Michael Portillo
I'm nothing to do with the Conservative Party; I'm not a member of the Conservative Party. I stopped being a member shortly after I stopped being a member of Parliament and I took up a career as a broadcaster.
Quote by -Michael Portillo
Ask anyone where they were when they heard of Diana's death, and they won't hesitate, because nobody can forget. Along with 9/11, it remains the most poleaxeing public event, news so shocking it made me shake, and drove everything else from my mind for days.
Quote by -Michael Portillo
America, to me, is this enormous contrast between the heady idealism of founding fathers such as Thomas Jefferson, who said, 'All men are created equal,' and the reality that he was himself a slave owner.
Quote by -Michael Portillo
Of all the places I've visited in my life, Egypt has been the most fascinating. I've explored almost the whole country: Cairo and the Pyramids, Alexandria, the temples of Luxor and Karnak, the Valleys of the Kings and the Queens and the Nobles.
Quote by -Michael Portillo
Some people are born to trains, and some have trains thrust upon them. Fortunately, I can be included in this latter category.
Quote by -Michael Portillo
Oppositions usually say ridiculous things and must embarrassingly then ditch untenable positions.
Quote by -Michael Portillo
British-built railways in India helped the British to make money and maintain order and, as a by-product, served to unite the country, ripe for independence.
Quote by -Michael Portillo
For someone like me, making a documentary - I don't kid myself. There's no influence at all. What I do is entertainment. I would even say much the same about the column I write in 'The Sunday Times.'
Quote by -Michael Portillo
Few people have heard of John Hawkshaw, the engineer responsible for Brighton's sewers, but he also built the Severn Tunnel and parts of the London Underground system. Such figures, largely forgotten now, conceived an infrastructure that was perfect in its fine detail and intended to last for a century or more - as it has.
Quote by -Michael Portillo
I hope I succeed in demonstrating that you may equally find compelling and significant narratives - stories that alter or add to our understanding of history - in unprepossessing places: a Victorian sewer system; a Cold War bunker; derelict hospitals.
Quote by -Michael Portillo
Here in Britain, we can get a little bit snobby about American history. Yes, their history is not quite as long as ours. But it isn't all that short, either.
Quote by -Michael Portillo
One of the reasons that Thatcher promoted home ownership is that it promoted responsible citizens with a stake in society. But another reason was that those people would tend to be Conservative.
Quote by -Michael Portillo
Like so many other grammar schools that flourished in Britain before they were abolished through a mix of ideology and political folly, Harrow County was a fiercely competitive institution, where all boys were taught to strive for excellence. It was precisely because of this demanding regime that results were so good.
Quote by -Michael Portillo
Non-fictionalised accounts of horrific accidents, bereavement, and the outrages of officialdom tend to move us deeply.
Quote by -Michael Portillo
There's much about the British Raj which I think is disreputable. It was rapacious; it was a sort of kleptocracy, and it was also racist. Indians were not treated as equals.
Quote by -Michael Portillo
British-built railways in India helped the British to make money and maintain order; but, as a by-product, they served to unite the country, making it ripe for independence.
Quote by -Michael Portillo
As a presenter, you have to speak with artificial energy and enthusiasm.
Quote by -Michael Portillo
My eyes are at different levels, and my right ear's a bit bigger than my left - which showed up particularly in school photographs - so my mother used to call me her 'little Picasso.'
Quote by -Michael Portillo
The advantage of trains over planes is that there is much less hassle. You can get up from your seat and stroll about; you're more likely to meet people, and, particularly if you're making a long journey, you can actually see the terrain.
Quote by -Michael Portillo
For all those who experienced it, the Spanish Civil War was devastating.
Quote by -Michael Portillo
I love a good meal on a train, and if I'm travelling on a discount ticket, the challenge is to eat more than the price of the fare.
Quote by -Michael Portillo
My grandfather, who was always keen to promote living artists, staged an unprecedented exhibition of Peploe's works at Kirkcaldy in 1928.
Quote by -Michael Portillo
My Scottish grandfather, John W. Blyth, was a man addicted to paintings. A manufacturer of linen, he spent all his surplus money on pictures.
Quote by -Michael Portillo
No restaurant, however brilliantly situated, can give you the constantly changing views that you can see from a railway. Revolving restaurants at the tops of tall buildings try to compete, but spinning around is no substitute for speeding along.
Quote by -Michael Portillo
People are obviously very interested in travel, including travel in Britain.
Quote by -Michael Portillo
My favourite British line is the West Highland line. It was built across moorland where no one had succeeded in building a road. So everything in that area is there because of the railway line.
Quote by -Michael Portillo
I don't think I've got a thick skin, but I've not felt particularly humiliated by the things which people think I would have felt humiliated by, such as losing my seat in 1997 and not being elected leader in 2001. In the second case, I felt relieved.
Quote by -Michael Portillo
Three letters send a chill down the spine of the enemy: SAS. Those letters spell out one clear message. Don't mess with Britain!
Quote by -Michael Portillo
Travelling the railways of Europe with a century-old guidebook can be disconcerting: fares, food, and drink seem shockingly expensive compared with what they were; trains and paddle-steamers run to unexpected timetables (assuming they're still running at all); and not only states but whole empires have been wiped from the map.
Quote by -Michael Portillo