Quotes of the Day

Deep-learning will transform every single industry. Healthcare and transportation will be transformed by deep-learning. I want to live in an AI-powered society. When anyone goes to see a doctor, I want AI to help that doctor provide higher quality and lower cost medical service. I want every five-year-old to have a personalised tutor.

The English are a tolerant bunch and, outside elements of the London elite, never much minded the rise of the Scottish Raj: after all, we were British, well-educated, reasonably cultivated and spoke with clear, classless accents.

The English, in their ignorance, still have the romantic notion that Scottish schools are superior to English ones; they are at least a generation out of date.

When I went up to Glasgow University in 1967, student life was dominated by 13-hour debates on Fridays, when one of the student political clubs would form the 'government' for the day and attempt to push through a piece of legislation, which the other clubs either supported or opposed.

Now, I bow to nobody when it comes to estimating the influence of 'This Week.'

As class barriers tumbled and Britain became a more meritocratic society, young, well-educated Scots were best placed to exploit the new social mobility.

If a journalist comes to you with a great story, one of the first questions you ask is how did you get it. How you got it is relevant to judging its accuracy and preparing yourself for any legal challenge.

I don't say for a moment that the far right is no longer a problem. We have seen the neo-Nazi nutters in Charlottesville in America.

Since the Holocaust, anti-Semitism is no longer respectable. It was in the 1920s and '30s, but the Holocaust obviously changed that.

Muslims are not our enemy.

On the far left, just as there is on the far right there is a dislike of Israel, not just a dislike, a hatred of Israel.

When I was growing up the obvious antisemites were the knuckle-draggers in the National Front.

I haven't got a family. I live to work.

No one can be in any doubt that Britain is becoming more like Europe, though few in an increasingly economically illiterate media seem to realise it.

I do not regret working with Rupert Murdoch. But there is a nasty undertone to a lot of what he does which does not exist with the Barclays.

The sucking sound of capital being pulled out of Europe and into East Asia is almost deafening.

Most children of the underclass are born out of wedlock; relationships are fleeting and unstable (which ensures that what is born into the underclass stays in the underclass). This is a world in which there are almost no worthwhile male role models, which is a disaster when boys turn to youths.

With sad, depressing predictability, the children of today's underclass become tomorrow's criminals and dropouts.

With each step away from communist constructivism to Hayekian capitalism, China has been richly rewarded.

During the Blair-Brown decade social concerns - what kind of society we have become - have gradually replaced economic worries. People fear that we have become an increasingly fragmented, boorish, more violent society.

Britain is now living with the consequences of allowing an underclass to take root and fester.

I recently passed through Mumbai airport. I cannot claim it was a pleasant experience. But if I had a choice between Mumbai airport and Euston on a Sunday afternoon, I'd take Mumbai any day.

The Tea Party isn't out to be a third force in American politics. Instead, it has infiltrated the Republicans and remoulded them in its own image.

Memo to self: never again try to travel by train in Britain on a Sunday.

Like all populist movements, the Tea Party will eventually peter out. It won't succeed in returning America to the minimalist state of the 19th century.

Not all Republicans in the class of 2010 owe their seats to the Tea Party. But many do.

I travelled through the night in a bus with the Kentucky Tea Party en route to a massive rally in Washington. For the most part I found them decent, self-reliant, regular Americans who feared the American Dream was now over, not just for them but for their children and grandchildren.

It's probably the journalist in me, but I'm naturally suspicious about consensus and always feel an impulse to confront it.

When I was at Paisley Grammar we were equipped to compete with the private-school kids - and encouraged to do so. The sky was the limit, provided we had ability, ambition and a capacity for hard work.

If you're on the pull, a hen party gaggle, a gang of rowdy chavs or a group of braying snotty bottys, then Baros is not for you - which means it's just grand for the rest of us.

As one of the grammar-school generation, I grew up as part of a postwar meritocracy that steadily infiltrated the citadels of power.

Britain's great postwar meritocratic experiment was broad-based, but it was in politics that the change was most dramatic.

I get nervous if the bath is too deep.

Those who claim to be in the know say Baros is nothing out of the ordinary as Maldivian islands go - that Reethi Ra is far more fashionable, Soneva Fushi more eco-compliant. Truth to tell, they all look pretty much alike from a distance.

There's even less to do in Umea at Christmas than there is in Stockholm.

I've got a house that's only 45 minutes from Monte Carlo.

Donald Trump's grip on the Republican parties stronger than ever post the Mueller report.

I don't think the standard of our politicians is very high. And when you get good ones, world-class ones, like a Blair or a Brown or a Thatcher, then they do stand out - they are head and shoulders above everybody else.

I'm a bit of a loner.

This is the only country in the world where you can be criticised for trying too hard. That's a put-down in London.