House of Cards (trilogy)

House of Cards is a trilogy of British political dramas, detailing the rise - and fall - of a scheming, Machiavellian British politican, Francis Urquhart, from a lowly Cabinet position to the office of Prime Minister. It was broadast by the BBC in 1990 and based on the novel by Michael Dobbs, a former Chief of Staff at the UK Conservative Party headquarters.

House of Cards

• You might very well think that. I couldn't possibly comment.
  • Francis Urquhart's stock response to questioning, indicating an affirmative.

• His morality is strictly back-street, sunday school, hypocritical cant. Picked up in Peterborough, or Rugeley, or some such god-awful place.
  • Francis Urquhart on Henry Collingridge

• A politician needs a wife. And other people too, regrettably. A man of state needs helpers; little elves and sprites to do his bidding.
  • Francis Urquhart

• Roger: "I haven't got a problem, I'm not addicted, I just use it occasionally for recreational purposes and now and again when I have to work late".
  Urqhuart: "I understand that Roger but there aren't many who would are there? And I know this sounds old-fashioned - but isn't it illegal?"
  • Urqhuart confronting Roger O'Neil after discovering he has been fiddling his expenses to fund his cocaine habit.

• His deepest need was that people should like him. An admirable trait that; in a spaniel or a whore. Not, I think, in a Prime Minister.
  • Urquhart on Henry Collingridge.

• This is an act of mercy. Truly. You know the man now, you can see he has nowhere to go, he's begging to be set free. He's had enough. And when he's finally at rest we'll be free to remember the real Roger: the burning boy in the green jersey, that legendary, fabulous side-step and the brave, terrified smile.
  • Urqhuart, whilst mixing Roger O'Neil's cocaine with rat poision.

To Play The King

• If you will the end, you must will the means.
  • Francis Urquhart.

• Prime Minister's Question Time: very frightening - like being mugged by a guinea pig.
  • Francis Urquhart

• Ireland is to do with honour, Sarah, not profit. I'll never give an inch there.
  • Francis Urquhart

• Under the show, the struggle for power. Deep down below it all, deeper than honour, deeper than pride, deeper than lust, and deeper than love, is the getting of it all, the seizing and the holding on, the jaws locked, biting into power and hanging on - biting and hanging on!
  • Francis Urquhart

• But they all, all of them, betray us eventually. They love us, but not quite enough. They trust us, but not quite enough. And we trust them to be entirely human, meaning less than trustworthy. Which means that we can never quite entirely sleep. As the cat's eyelids flicker, some part of us must stay awake, always, ready as the coiled spring is ready.
  • Francis Urquhart

• Socialism's collapsed all over the world and now the King of England's planning to revive it.
  • Sarah Harding.

• You owe me, Francis, and you set your whore up over me.
  • Tim Stamper

The Final Cut

• ...and fight and win another election. Then I'll have beaten that bloody woman's record!
  • Urquhart on Margaret Thatcher.