Top 5 Paddy Ashdown Quotes

History teaches us these lessons for the interveners: leave your prejudices at home, keep your ambitions low, have enough resources to do the job, do not lose the golden hour, make security your first priority, involve the neighbours.

My second job has been to try to use my power to create institutions of a modern state that could enter the European Union, and there was very little time. The door was closing, and I wanted to get Bosnia through before it shut.

I don't think Bosnia is ready for reconciliation, but I do think it is ready for truth.

Bosnia is under my skin. It's the place you cannot leave behind. I was obsessed by the nightmare of it all; there was this sense of guilt, and an anger that has become something much deeper over these last years.

There can be no place in a 21st-century parliament for people with 15th-century titles upholding 19th-century prejudices.