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All Quotes by author - Jonathan Dimbleby

" Anyone who thinks that you become a journalist or broadcaster in order to be a wallflower needs to think again. "

" As a young man, causes of one kind or another engaged me, and I thought the media is where you express yourself in that. I lived with the illusion, for quite a long time, that if you described something accurately, something would be done about it. "

" As it is, the grotesque distortions of the global market mean that for every dollar the West dispatches to Africa in the form of aid, two dollars are clawed back through subsidies and tariff barriers: a monumental rip-off by the rich as they instruct the poor to accept 'free' trade or else. "

" At home in Devon, my wife Jessica does a huge proportion of the cooking - I do the basics. My timing is extremely good, particularly when it comes to vegetables, perhaps because in my work, timing is everything. I know exactly what fits into a minute when broadcasting, and I apply the same to carrots. "

" Ethiopia is engraved on my heart. I first went in 1973 because I heard of a terrible famine. They were denying it even as we got the film out. The coverage destroyed the emperor's credibility. "

" Food is about communal togetherness. Our family does sit at the table. I think it's a great tragedy if a family doesn't have a table, as there is such an atmosphere of good will and warmth when we have eight people sitting around it. "

" Food is important to me, but I wouldn't say that I'm a gourmet. I don't like tricksy food. "

" For a few months when I was about 17, I smoked a small cigar because I thought it looked cool and it would get me the girls. It didn't. "

" I adore Madonna. She reinvents herself like no one else. "

" I am now certain that we have no alternative but to reduce urgently the levels of carbon that we are still pumping into the atmosphere as though tomorrow simply didn't matter. If we don't act collectively and individually, our children and their children will reap a whirlwind which will obliterate their civilisation. "

" I cycle, I take an hour's strenuous walk in the evening, I play tennis twice a week with a trainer, and I sail. I used to ride horses professionally - I'd ride seven or eight horses a day, so I had to be fit for that. "

" I deplore the loss of arts on BBC One and Two. "

" I don't love the media. I'm part of it, but you can't love a porcupine. "

" I fail to understand how you can justify a poll tax on the entire population, yet exclude a significant proportion of that population from programmes that this tax is paying for. "

" I had no expectation that the Prince would offer me the unprecedented and unfettered access to the original and entirely untapped sources on which this biography is based. "

" I hate flying. My stomach churns at the mere thought of it. "

" I have a great deal of joy in my life, and I'm very fortunate. That combination makes you aware of just how wonderful life can be on the one hand and how dreadful it can be for people on the other. You can't be happy in isolation. "

" I have to grit my teeth sometimes, knowing I am going to be written about. But I think it is my life, and I don't want to get people interested in debating it. But I do feel that if you are going to put yourself about as a public person on a television screen, there's a curiosity. "

" I honestly believe that TV generally is obsessed with the ratings battle to the point of cutting its own throat. "

" I'm not certain that the BBC can claim to be making a wide enough range of distinctive programmes to make the case convincingly. "

" In the world in which we live, truth is an ancillary virtue, but it shouldn't be. "

" I ought to rejoice in the fact that our principal rival has died, but I don't. "

" It is easy enough to hold an opinion, but rather more testing to act on it. "

" It's absolutely fine to think of new ways of doing things, and I'm not just asking for the traditional reporter to look into our living rooms night after night. "

" I used to hunt as a child but gave up the chase in my 'Ho Ho Ho Chi-Minh, we shall fight and we shall win' chanting and marching days - by which time I had come to share Oscar Wilde's feelings about 'the unspeakable in full pursuit of the uneatable.' "

" I've never been a depressive, but I felt quite close to the edge at times. But you never know what's around the corner. Mercifully, what's around the corner is joy. "

" I was a reluctant convert, and I am by no means a zealot. But the evidence is compelling: to write off wind-power is either ill-informed or dishonest. "

" I was born with a silver microphone in my mouth, and that was an advantage. My father wrote books and was also a great broadcaster. "

" I was disappointed not to be able to interview Mr. Clinton. I met him two years ago. I was looking forward to talking with him about issues from Africa to terrorism. "

Looking Forward

" I was obliged to play the piano, like middle-class children are. I didn't start to love it until I was 14. "

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