Top 35 Michael Dobbs Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “Politics requires sacrifice. The sacrifice of others, of course.”

— Michael Dobbs

2. “I am hurt, but I am not slain; I’ll lay me down and bleed a-while, And then I’ll rise and fight again!”

— Michael Dobbs

3. “Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. Truth lies in the hands of its editor.”

— Michael Dobbs

4. “All members of a Cabinet are referred to as Right. Honorable Gentlemen. There are only three things wrong with such a title...”

— Michael Dobbs

5. “Nothing lasts, not forever. Not laughter, not lust, not even life itself. Not forever. Which is why we make the most of what we have.”

— Michael Dobbs

6. “Politics. The word is taken from the Ancient Greek. “Poly” means “many.” And ticks are tiny, bloodsucking insects.”

— Michael Dobbs

7. “Loyalty is like instant coffee: it’s cheap and ultimately unsatisfying.”

— Michael Dobbs

8. “The nature of ambition is that it requires casualties.”

— Michael Dobbs

9. “Cruelty of any kind is unforgivable. That’s why there is no point at all in being creek in half-measure.”

— Michael Dobbs

10. “Morality, Sir, is the monologue of the unexcited and the unexcitable, the revenge of the unsuccessful, the punishment of those who tried and failed, or who never had the courage to try at all.”

— Michael Dobbs

11. “There is no need to outrun the lion. All that is necessary for a man to do in order to survive is to outrun his friends.”

— Michael Dobbs

12. “I knew what was waiting out there for me,” he said. “Terrifying things. There were German patrol boats, mine fields, and nearly a thousand miles of stormy seas.” “So why did you do it?” “Because also waiting for me was the most terrifying and wonderful thing of all. The future.”

— Michael Dobbs

13. “It’s not respect but fear that motivates a man; that’s how empires are built and revolutions begin. It is the secret of great men.”

— Michael Dobbs

14. “Politicians are much like aging authors and older women. The dangerous phase in their lives is when they are no longer content with the respect of friends but demand the adulation of an audience.”

— Michael Dobbs

15. “Loyalty may be good news, but it is rarely good advice.”

— Michael Dobbs

16. “Why be so bloody miserable when you can pick up a good book or watch a great television drama?”

— Michael Dobbs

17. “In extraordinary circumstances and against the odds, Churchill became Prime Minister instead of Halifax, and that one decision changed the course of history.”

— Michael Dobbs

18. “The captain of the Lowry tried a new approach. He assembled the destroyer’s jazz band on deck, and told them to play some music. Strains of Yankee Doodle floated across the ocean, followed by a boogie-woogie number. The Americans thought they could see a smile on the face of one of the sailors. They asked if there was any particular tune he would like to hear. The Soviet sailor did not respond. The.”

— Michael Dobbs

19. “Why waste a life in search of an epitaph?”

— Michael Dobbs

20. “Loyalty is like the Doctrine of Celibacy – easy to proclaim but damned difficult to live by.”

— Michael Dobbs

21. “She went up on tiptoes, just so she could look down on him.”

— Michael Dobbs

22. “The higher up the tree a cat climbs, the farther it will fall. It’s the same for politicians, except politicians don’t bounce.”

— Michael Dobbs

23. “A prime minister can chose his friends and his Cabinet but not his relatives. Part Chairman Lord Williams.”

— Michael Dobbs

24. “For some it is the end of the rope. For others it is only the beginning.”

— Michael Dobbs

25. “Party conferences can be such fun. They resemble a nest of cuckoos. Sit back and enjoy watching everyone trying to push the others out. The.”

— Michael Dobbs

26. “Communism was not defeated by any one individual or even a combination of individuals. In the last resort communism defeated itself.”

— Michael Dobbs

27. “The immediate reactions of the two superpower leaders when confronted with the gravest international crisis of their careers were much the same, shock, wounded pride, grim determination, and barely repressed fear.”

— Michael Dobbs

28. “Tell me, McFadden, what do you think of our beloved Mr. Chamberlain?” Mac didn’t care for such direct questions. All his adult life had been spent in the mentality of the gulag, never openly complaining, always seeming to conform, never risking a row. Perhaps that’s why he had agreed to marry, not so much to avoid disappointing the lady but more because it was the simplest way to fit into the flow of things.”

— Michael Dobbs

29. “You talk about a tide of history. Well, there are some occasions when one man seems to stand his ground and just refuses to accept getting washed away. That’s how we arrogant Americans won the New World. And that’s how you, Mr Churchill, have saved the Old World. But for you, the whole of Europe would by now be one vast concentration camp. Nobody’s ever going to forget that.”

— Michael Dobbs

30. “He talked about the future with such certainty, he might have been talking about the past.”

— Michael Dobbs

31. “Since he was much weaker than his enemy, he could afford to display no weakness at all.”

— Michael Dobbs

32. “This was suburban Surrey, the land of the A and B social classes in the terminology of pollsters, where passports lay at the ready and Range Rovers stood in the driveway. Range Rovers? The only time they ever encountered mud was when being driven carelessly over front lawns late on a Friday night or when dropping off their little Johnnies and Emmas at their private schools.”

— Michael Dobbs

33. “The design is based on the old St. Stephen’s Chapel, where the earliest parliamentarians sat, like choirboys in facing pews, yet there is little that is angelic in the modern set-up. Members face each other in confrontation, as antagonists. They are separated by two red lines on the carpet, whose distance apart represents the distance of two sword lengths, yet this is misleading, for the most imminent danger is never more than a dagger’s distance away, on the benches behind.”

— Michael Dobbs

34. “Bismarck defined political intuition as the ability to hear, before anybody else, “the distant hoofbeats of history.”

— Michael Dobbs

35. “The issue was not whether Kennedy and Khrushchev wanted to control events; it was whether they could.”

— Michael Dobbs

36. “The closest contact they had with the enemy was a playful sign that boasted: “Worldwide delivery in 30 minutes or less – or your next one is free.” Nuclear apocalypse was as mundane as delivering pizza.”

— Michael Dobbs

37. “Nuclear apocalypse was as mundane as delivering pizza.”

— Michael Dobbs