Adam Curtis

“At its heart, 'South Park' has a touching faith in human beings: that despite their absurdities and flaws, people have the capacity to create a better world.”

“I have always been fascinated by the way music can completely change the way you watch film - and how you feel as you watch the images.”

“I have always thought that pandas, in evolutionary terms, are the most sophisticated animals in the world. They cannot look after themselves; they are useless at reproducing. But to compensate, they have managed to persuade the most advanced creatures on the planet - human beings - to care for their every need.”

“Throughout the western world, new systems have risen up whose job is to constantly record and monitor the present - and then compare that to the recorded past. The aim is to discover patterns, coincidences and correlations, and from that, find ways of stopping change. Keeping things the same.”

“The idea of elegance and aristocratic indulgence of an ocean cruise was born out of the image of the rich men and women who ruled the British Empire slowly sailing to India and the Far East while sipping gin and tonic on deck - served by men in white jackets.”

“The problem with wonks is that they can't deal with emotion and feeling, and they don't like stories. It means that they cannot connect at all with the feelings and imaginations of the voters.”

“Tyler Kent himself is weird and mesmerising - but still unrepentantly anti-Semitic.”

“Tony Blair believed in a consumerist idea of democracy.”

“Back in the 1950s, America set out to intervene in Syria, liberate the people from a corrupt elite, and bring about a new democracy. They did this with the best of intentions, but it led to disaster. And out of that disaster, the Assad regime rose to power.”

“As well as our relationship with Afghanistan, I am researching the legacy of other European empires - in Africa. We think of those empires as history, but actually, they still haunt our everyday lives in the strangest of ways.”