Grant Shapps Quotes

Everyone is looking for the sure thing. They are looking to hedge their bet. They think the way to do that is to go with a proven quantity, a remake of something you have already seen. That is their mindset.

I'm careful, controlled, bodily conservative: if someone offered me a pill I'd only ever take a half.

Hollywood movies are run on fear and they don't want to make bold choices. They, generally, speaking want to keep things status quo. That's not really interesting for me.

Nothing surprises me. One thing I don't ever have in my world is surprise.

An actor always goes to the safe side.

We live in an age of prudence. The leaders of the people now generally follow.

I'm a simple man; I like to stick to what I know.

When Gordon the Brown, in London in 1997, commissioned a great inquisition or survey of his new realm, the result was the so-called national asset register, which was immediately dubbed by the boomers of the UK Treasury 'the modern Domesday Book.'

We carve out risk-free lives where nothing happens.

When Gordon Brown becomes prime minister, the balance sheet that reflects his economic stewardship could look very sickly indeed. He could become Labour's biggest liability, not its most marketable asset.

I used to be such a daredevil but now I'm much more cautious.

Don't pessimism and caution naturally go hand in hand?

David Cameron has a different style to Gordon Brown.

Imagine a State occasion where the Queen is wearing trainers with her tiara because she thinks it will make people like her better, more folksy. It's unthinkable. But that's patently the thought process Gordon Brown (or his spin doctor) went through before the Prime Minister appeared on the world stage in Beijing without his suit and tie.

Maybe I fear things going wrong so much that I pre-empt them by not getting excited about them when they appear to be. going well.

I fear that the rising personal bankruptcies and repossessions are the first signs of bigger problems to come and personal debt - Gordon Brown's legacy to millions of Britain's families - will hang like a millstone around the neck of the British people for years to come.

The policy of being too cautious is the greatest risk of all.

People want change but not too much change. Finding that balance is tricky for every politician.

I'm a really cautious person, so I don't let myself get into near-death experiences. I'm not into the idea of skydiving or anything.

[Referring to Jimmy Carter:] Jimmy's basic problem is that he's super cautious. He looks before and after he leaps.

The perils of change are so great the promise of the most hopeful theories is so often deceptive, that it is frequently the wiser part to uphold the existing state of things, if it can be done, even though, in point of argument, it should be utterly indefensible.

They all overvalued the importance of stability.

I'm not a huge risk taker. I think that, for me, I take certain kinds of risks, but if you look at me, you wouldn't say I was a big risk taker. I'm not going to jump out of an airplane and parachute and things like that. That's not really me.

Gordon Brown is a character from a tragic opera, twisted by ambition and a Presbyterian sense of fateful destiny. He has waited 13 years, mostly in Tony Blair's shadow, for this poisoned chalice and has a pessimist's luck.

I'm the least-experimental writer. The idea of trying things just for the sake of pushing the envelope, that's never really interested me.