There are so many demands on your time, on your resources, and on the prestige of the government.

If your only objective is to be popular, you're going to be popular but you will be known as the Prime Minister who achieved nothing.

It's my responsibility, and entirely my fault, Of course I regret it. It's the kind of locker-room conversation we all use, but as prime minister I shouldn't have used it.

You can't be chasing 15 rabbits. Otherwise, the public mind cannot follow you.

So that was Reagan's political problem. As a rancher in California, he was an environmentalist himself. But the President of the United States doesn't control everything that happens in Washington.

When I appointed the Minister of the Environment to major cabinet status, the Planning and Priorities committee, the signals that that sent through Ottawa were major, because that's what the bureaucracy understands.