Some of the new PD leader's more (in)famous quotes.
"The half-hearted implementation of a compromise between two divergent views as to how the country should be run by a government divided along ideological lines."
November 1982 on the proposed Fine Gael-Labour coalition government while he was constituency chairman for Fine Gael leader Garret FitzGerald.
"I will do anything I can to help you to transform Irish politics."
February 1985 in a letter to Dessie O'Malley on the possibility of forming a new political party.
"Pregnant with all the possibilities of a band of chimpanzees approaching the back of a television set with screwdrivers."
1992 on hearing of a Fianna Fáil parliamentary party meeting to discuss the Maastricht Treaty at a time when his party was in coalition with Fianna Fáil.
"He is, I believe, the Dr Goebbels of propaganda. Deputy Bruton is knee-high to me in terms of anything that he ever managed to do for this country."
March 2006 on Fine Gael's Richard Bruton after Mr Bruton claimed there had not been a major rise in Garda numbers in Dublin the previous year. Mr McDowell later apologised.
"A Ceausescu-era Olympic campus on a single site."
On the proposed national stadium at Abbotstown, a project championed by Taoiseach Bertie Ahern, during the May 2002 general election campaign,
"This is an issue on which we cannot budge and the Provisional movement cannot fudge. There will be no deal if there is not clarity."
December 2004 on the issue of IRA criminality, which he later shortened to "no fudge, no budge, no deal".