Jeremy Hardy quotes:

For me, ancestry is just one thing that connects us to people, and feeling connected to other people is generally a good thing, as long as one kind of connection does not have primacy over all the others. Heredity, race and nationhood are not the best criteria by which to judge our fellow humans.

I think ageing suits me because I was born old, like Spencer Tracy or Dolly the Sheep.

My maternal grandmother had what might be described in a school report as a 'lively imagination.' She told us that she was a direct descendant of Sir Christopher Wren.

Being in the latter stages of life means the morning is unkind to the reflection. It takes a few hours for the creases to fall out. By about 4 P.M., I look quite nice.

You can inherit male-pattern baldness from your mother's father, but not a tendency to fight in the First World War.

Northern Ireland is part of Ireland, not Britain, as can clearly be seen from aerial photographs.

It seems a shallow observation, but... the Tory Conference are not an attractive lot, are they? I mean, if all those people were born in the same village, you'd blame pollution, wouldn't you?

I love many places to which I have no connection, but identifying an ancestor, or someone I think is an ancestor, has taken me to places I'd never have gone to otherwise.

If you just took everyone in the BNP and everyone who votes for them and shot them in the back of the head, there would be a brighter future for us all.

The only way you can ever accuse a Conservative of hypocrisy is if they walk past a homeless person without kicking him in the face.

Most harm is done by people who are awake.

The Afghan War has clearly reached a stage similar to that moment at your child's party where you realise you've forgotten to give the other parents a pick up time.

Why don't people just accept that life is sad and cheer up? After all, it's not going to last for ever.

Capitalism is a great idea in theory, but in practice it just doesn't work.

The need to compile lists is a personality disorder, as is the need to assert the superiority of some things over other things.

The thing that interests me most about family history is the gap between the things we think we know about our families and the realities.

Marriage is like the witness protection programme: you get all new clothes, you live in the suburbs, and you're not allowed to see your friends anymore.

My daughter wanted a new pair of trainers. I told her You're eleven, make your own!