Unexpected Responsibility Quotes

All of a sudden, you have this newborn you have no training for. It's frightening.

Honestly, I didn't know I was a role model.

If I go to a party I don't feel like I have to be in the centre. But I do find myself quite often being placed in that position. Even when I was younger at school, I would be asked to make a speech. I don't remember putting up my hand and all that often but I'd just find myself there.

I never thought that I'd be a role model. Everyone kind of just made me a role model, and I hated that.

It is a curious thing, Harry, but perhaps those who are best suited to power are those who have never sought it. Those who, like you, have leadership thrust upon them, and take up the mantle because they must, and find to their own surprise that they wear it well.

No matter how carefully you plan it, there are times when you suddenly find yourself a committee of one, in charge of lifting the entire world with a lever.

I feel incompetent to perform duties... which have been so unexpectedly thrown upon me.

It's one thing getting the job of Doctor Who, which is wonderful. And then the next thing they say to you is, 'We're going to announce it live on television!' And you think, 'That's not exactly what I thought I was signing up for!'

It was my fortune, or misfortune, to be called to the office of Chief Executive without any previous political training.

I was 20 when my daughter was born, and making all these plans during my wife's pregnancy. I was going to be the perfect father. Once she was born, it was suddenly, 'Oh, my God! I'm a parent!'

I got Mary pregnant and man that's all she wrote. And for my 19th birthday, I got a union card and a factory coat.