Quotes from Kwasi Kwarteng

It's the easiest thing in the world to assume that what seems so obvious at one moment in time is a hard, perpetual fact of life.

We are often told that capitalism is in crisis, but look around the world and you'll see that it has never been so buoyant.

If Martin Luther King were here he'd be very surprised at some of the sugar-coated versions of American history presented today.

The extent to which lawyers and judges are interfering in politics is something that concerns many people.

If you are a borrower, the more you borrow, the more it costs.

In Ghana, Nigeria, Togo, Angola and Cameroon maize is a staple, yet the earliest mention of maize in west Africa comes from a Portuguese document that lists it as being loaded on to slave ships bound for Africa.

Mrs Thatcher not only made history by becoming Britain's first female prime minister, she was the first woman to hold any comparable position in the western world.

From the start of her leadership of the Conservative party in February 1975, Thatcher's style seemed shrill and uncompromising, and she became an easy object of mockery. When she left office nearly 16 years later, she was a widely recognised, but clearly still highly controversial, figure.

I don't see how a lowering of VAT helps much, in terms of stimulus. VAT is a form of sales tax. It gets paid when you spend. A stimulus should put money in your pocket before you have actually spent the money.

The name Noel Skelton is largely forgotten today, but his legacy in the Conservative Party in the 20th century was enormous.

Margaret Thatcher was Britain's most controversial modern politician.

The bull market, rising prices, earning lots of money, make it seem as if the good days will never end. When prices are falling and there is a recession, that also feels as though it will last for ever. Politics is the same. People simply can't imagine changing circumstances.

I've always thought my main concern is to alleviate the burdens on people, who were earning less money, perhaps than £80,000.

The idea that, in the age of Google, Facebook and the internet, government can control the 'commanding heights' of the economy is one of the great delusions of our age. Modern techonology, social media, the explosion of online retail, among many other things, have meant that governments have less and less control.

Using food as a way of understanding empire is highly effective. Food knows no barriers of race, gender or even time.

The British in South Africa always portrayed themselves as more enlightened and tolerant than the 'narrow-minded', 'intolerant' Boers.

In our media-driven age, the mere fact of having name recognition is a big advantage. When the leadership election was confined only to Conservative MPs, relatively obscure figures could emerge quickly.

There seems to be no end of books about the British empire, and the fascination it holds for historians of all descriptions is inexhaustible.

But while the British empire is easy to write about, it is very difficult to summarise. This is because what we call 'empire' spans 400 years in time and thousands of miles in space; every continent on Earth was directly affected by it.

Frontrunners always attract envy, and a desperate campaign to stop them in their tracks.

It's often been said that conservatism is successful because it chimes with these basic human instincts. It's time for us to ask fundamental questions about what the Conservative Party is for, and what it actually believes.

I think interventions tend to be wrong. That doesn't mean to say that every intervention has been a disaster, but it does mean that generally they tend to screw up.

Of all the meals that represented British culture, perhaps none captured the imagination more than the Christmas pudding. It was the Victorians who firmly fixed the traditional plum pudding as a festive dish.

The idea that historians aren't affected by what goes on around them I think is slightly fanciful.