This week they said

A failure to ratify the Nice Treaty would seriously complicate and delay the enlargement process.

A failure to ratify the Nice Treaty would seriously complicate and delay the enlargement process.

- The Taoiseach, Mr Ahern, speaking be- fore the result

Voting No would let the Government realise it takes more than 21 days to come to terms with the implications of this treaty.

- Mr Trevor Sargent, Green Party TD

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You will never get me to say anything kind about Gerry Adams.

- Mr Peter Robinson, DUP deputy leader

Mine are all natural. I don't need any enhancement.

- Ms Ann Widdecombe, British Conservative MP, responding to model Jordan's call for free breast implants

We have enough of asylum-seekers.

- Ennis Independent councillor Mr Tommy Brennan

The only qualification I have is a full driving licence and I like driving.

- Mr Gerry Hutch, known also as the Monk, after he was granted the right to a taxi licence

I'm going to have to do the hardest thing I've ever done in my life - act humble.

- Mel Brooks after the success of his musical The Producers at the Tony awards

In the next 48 hours we need to go into all Palestinian areas and destroy the entire infrastructure of the Palestinian Authority.

- Mr Avigdor Lieberman, hardliner in Mr Ariel Sharon's cabinet, explaining measures to halt Palestinian action

He did have this slightly mad streak: you didn't want to get on his bad side.

- A former college friend of Nepal's Prince Dipendra, believed to have shot dead his parents, brother, sisters and several relatives

We will not let the king rule. The public will decide who rules over them.

- Mr Deepak Shrisht, Kathmandu resident, of newly-crowned King Gyanendra

These people are not just looking for publicity. They are aiming to kill.

- Security source on the gun attack on a polling station in Co Derry which injured two RUC officers and a young woman. The "Real IRA" is being blamed

There is no doubt Sinn Fein is involved in electoral fraud on a massive scale.

- Mr David Trimble, UUP leader

We have no wish to renegotiate the Good Friday agreement, and in our own lights we are honourable people. If we made a deal we made a deal, and we did.

- Mr Gerry Adams, Sinn Fein president

This is the work of a crank. And I would reissue my call for the government to take control of these sites on the Internet. I think this site is a very sad reflection on them.

- John Dallatt, SDLP MLA, on the Please Shoot John Dallatt loyalist website

Arguably, the most important thing to come out of the last few years has been the fact that nationalists, perhaps for the first time since partition, have become stakeholders in this society.

- Mr Trimble

McDonald's, please pay attention to public morality. McDonald's, don't make mischief anymore.

- Headline in the Chinese Southern after a promotional giveaway of Snoopy dolls led to scuffles, hoarding, black-marketeering and the smashing in of one restaurant's window when supplies diminished

You don't sue Jeffrey Archer.

- Ms Angela Peppiatt, Lord Archer's former secretary, on why she took no legal action after he accused her of financial irregularities

I don't really follow football. But when I saw Beckham on telly I decided to have the same haircut.

- Ms Zella Sparks, an 85-year-old grand- mother from Dorset, England, after she decided to copy the footballer's hairstyle

He was a brave man. He never complained.

- Mr Fika Mbambo, uncle of 12-year-old South African AIDS activist Nkosi John- son, who has died

The David Andrews column has been held over due to space constraints