Blind People

"We just didn't understand that they [the Islamists] were not just anti-Western but on a different plane altogether and this is still not widely understood in the UK... We can be as nice as pie to them but that's not the issue. They are on a mission that has taken them outside anything we can say, a mission to destroy completely our way of life... Because they think it's 'just a few extremists,' they are continuing to track the threat of big spectacular attacks, looking for example at transfers of materials for bombs, whereas what they should be looking at is what's going on inside people's heads."

"My opponent has never been quoted on a platform; his campaign is solely based on the fact he has been in public office for forty years."

"She has the understanding of working man’s problems through earning her own living despite handicap of blindness."

"My opponents have not committed themselves to any specific platform – my position has (been) entirely clear."

"I do not feel that I am going to set the world on fire, but I feel that there is a place for some practical work to be done."

"We cannot rob our institutions of learning of their ability to get facts. The truth is our greatest weapon against communism."

"Whoever is misinterpreting my remarks must be more interested in my opponent than in organized labor."

"Blair was a local pioneer who broke new ground for women and people with disabilities in Texas. She was a fighter who did not back down and was willing to stand for causes she felt were important. Blair was ahead of her time."

"I resent that some people do not want to listen to the truth. I will run on my record . . . I have never waited to see how a vote was going to go and then vote in the house with the crowd."

"Her victory made national headlines; even Time magazine did an article about her victory."

"I don't want to make it seem like once you get to the self-acceptance phase — life is good now! Or once you learn how to cope and accommodate yourself and gain all your skills — life is good now! I don't wanna paint that picture — because, frankly, it's just not true."

"He is so joyful all the time. You know, he made me laugh, he made me smile, and I needed that, and it endeared me to him. But I'm not gonna be like, "Oh, I loved him." I didn't. I didn't. I liked him the way I would like a friend's dog, but he didn't feel like my dog. He felt like a stranger that I was sleeping with. And it's kind like losing the love of your life and starting to date straight away. Like putting this bandaid on a gaping wound — but it's hard to fall in love in the midst of healing."

"The fun of living with a , like — progressive meaning you lose vision slowly over time as your retina, a very important piece of the eye, and its function deteriorates, aka breaks down. So you slowly lose the ability to see. I was born legally blind, so I've always been legally blind — though I consider my childhood my quote sighted years because I could see color, I could read print, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And then when I was a child, I slowly would go through spurts of losing vision, and then having my vision stabilize. The majority of my vision loss, which is what I consider myself to have gone blind, is when I was fourteen years old. That was the most significant rapid chunk of my vision loss."

"As an old-fashioned Tory, I have that instinctive sympathy for the Ulster Unionist cause which until recently was, and must now again become, one of the strongest characteristics of that great party."

"Had the British electorate ever been asked plainly whether it wanted to belong to a European state or to remain British, it would have said, with unmistakable emphasis, that it was in favour of an independent Britain. What is more, it would have consigned to perdition any political party which proposed the opposite. Yet, under the conditions of parliamentary democracy, the opposite is plainly coming about. A political élite has so far imposed its views on the people."

"Here, then, is a random selection of the vices and fallacies which, I maintain, have distinguished British policy in Ulster during this period. The dominant vice has been an obdurate refusal to recognise the existence of any ultimately and incorrigibly unpleasant fact. Positively, this has taken the form of an assumption that in politics there can be no final incompatible aspirations; that there is never a point at which it must be recognised that the wishes of one man are wholly irreconcilable with those of another; that there is never a dispute which can only be settled by force. This particular weakness bears fruit in one of the most cherished convictions of British liberalism—the belief in negotiation. Negotiation is seen not as a means of establishing where differences lie or even as a method of persuading adversaries to change their minds: it is seen rather as a form of therapy which, applied with however little regard to the nature of the disease or the character of the cure which it is supposed to effect, has an intrinsic value."

"Few people have possessed such a complete understanding of the central tenets and principles of Toryism as Peter Utley. Certainly no one has articulated them with more eloquence. He stood in the tradition of the great Tory philosophers—Hooker, Burke and Lord Salisbury. Drawing on that tradition, he delivered powerful and incisive judgments on leading political, social and moral issues over a period of more than forty years. Though his range was remarkable, questions affecting the Anglican Church and the unity of the nation always had pride of place in his work. He was, quite simply, the most distinguished Tory thinker of our time."

"Internally, the State is menaced not only by a powerful Fifth Column, strongly represented in the trade unions and in politics, but also by new social divisions more potentially destructive than any it has known before. Massed immigration has saddled it with a "racial problem", to which it has still given no systematic thought and which is being sedulously exploited by people on both left and right who are openly committed to overturning our political and social arrangements. The rule of law is threatened from above and below, by arbitrary bureaucracy and by a steady increase in crime... In these gloomy circumstances, it is mysterious and a scandal that the energies of the Tory party should still be so largely employed in debating the merits of an incomes policy which, at any rate for the moment, has become obligatory. It is certainly not that the electorate has been unwilling to hear about such matters as immigration, terrorism, and violent crime generally; on the contrary, the political establishment has used all its influence to divert attention from these issues, incurring a good deal of unpopularity in the process."

"One obvious and continuous function of the monarchy is to confer approbation by word and deed on those things which, in the common judgement of most men and women of British stock, are still deemed honourable – the bonds of family love and loyalty, care for the unfortunate, respect for human personalities as distinct from dedication to the abstract rights of mankind, even hard work and enterprise. To the various scruffs who assault the monarchy these things are anathema either because they are incompatible with the total transformation of society they want or, at the very least, because they tend to make that transformation less urgently desirable than it otherwise might appear. By upholding these simple pieties, which have worn thin among politicians, the Crown exerts a continuous subtle restraint on reckless and ruthless innovation. Hence the particular venom inspired among the dregs of radicalism by the Duke of Edinburgh, who can speak on such matters with greater freedom than the Queen and who wields that influence, not perhaps with unerring instinct, but with a beneficent effect which is the greater for not being muffled by immaculate conception."

"The habit which exists among many of the advocates of sensible reforms in economic policy of speaking of their "mission" to the universities or middle management, and of the necessity to "convert" the electorate to capitalism is more suitable to the heirs of the nonconformist radicalism than to the Tory party. It also suggests a fundamental misunderstanding of what politics is about; for the political process is concerned not with the preaching and application of doctrines but with the management of prejudices and reconciling of interests."

"There is...the...argument that under PR extremist minorities, like the Front Nationale in France, get a look in which otherwise would be denied them. But is it thoroughly unhealthy to pretend that such minorities do not exist? I am no fascist, but I represent a brand of Toryism, at once traditionalist and populist, which holds sway in every public bar in the kingdom and is almost entirely denied parliamentary expression by the Establishment. Above all, PR would increase the independence of MPs both from their constituency associations and their party machines. I would give it a try."

"On Thursday, I went to a party of the Primrose League, founded 100 years ago in favour of the constitution, patriotism, decency and all that. The members are mostly very old and they have not got much money; but they speak more accurately in the voice of British Conservatism than anyone else. I know rather more young Conservatives than most people do and I think that this sort of thing strikes a stronger chord in their hearts than Monetarism v. Keynesism. What a wonderful thing if someone would try to revive the Primrose League to its former eminence. Think of the patronising remarks from Brian Redhead and other media connoisseurs of Tory antiques. And think how reassured Britain would be!"

"Contrary to popular belief, maintained in the face of much historical experience, the danger-point in the affairs of any régime which is seriously challenged by a substantial number of its subjects, comes not when that régime is resisting all reform but when it has started belatedly on the path of concession."

"It would be equally disastrous to ignore the truth that the theories of classical liberal economics, for all the truth they contain, appear to the average British elector to be profoundly shocking. The notions that a man's wage should be determined entirely by the law of supply and demand, that distributive justice has no place in the organisation of the economy and that the pursuit of profit is not only legitimate but the only proper motive of economic activity, fly in the face not only of modern egalitarian prejudice but also of all the assumptions of a society which is still largely based on the idea of status."

"Suppose that a revolutionary junta of corrupt oligarchy were blatantly to use the machinery of democracy to try to compass democracy's destruction. Would the Crown be wholly impotent? I do not think so."

"Ulstermen knew that the conflict between the Civil Rights Movement and the authorities was largely a charade; that, just below the surface, the old gut conflict survived in the Province. On neither side was it seriously doubted that what was going on was a modern version of the old battle between nationalities, and the real issue was Irish nationalism versus Unionism."

"In the hands of some of the more zealous exponents of revisionist Toryism...criticism has been developed into a general attack on the whole concept of moderation as a political virtue. This sort of thing is most unnerving to the electorate and most damaging to the Conservative party. If moderation means a wish, other things being equal or approximately so, to govern with the consent of as many of those being governed as possible, even if it means a disposition to take into account the prejudices of large sections of the electorate in formulating policy, it is no bad thing. To set about trying to reform the economy without taking into account the real force of such sentiments as loyalty to a trade union would be to court disaster."

"Friendship was salvation, in this fragile world the only thing left that was not fragile. I promise you one can be drunk on friendship as well as on love."

"Throw yourself into each moment as if it were the only one that really existed. Work and work hard."

"The men over thirty round about us were afraid: for their wives and their children — these were real reasons; but also for their possessions, their position, and that is what made us angry; above all for their lives, which they clung to much more than we did to ours. We were less frightened than they were. The years ahead would prove the point. Four-fifths of the Resistance in France was the work of men less than thirty years old."

"fear kills, and joy maintains life."

"I am certain that children always know more than they are able to tell, and that makes the big difference between them and adults, who, at best, know only a fraction of what they say. The reason is simply that children know everything with their whole beings, while we know it only with our heads."

"On being appointed president: "This is an ideal team. The president can't see and the vice president can't talk.""

"There is no power worth defending by bloodshed of the people."

"You don't realise that losing the presidency for me is nothing ... I regret more the fact that I lost 27 recordings of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony."

"Am I to hear myself charged as the author of our present misfortunes? and— [Many gentlemen cried across the house, “You are, you are.”]"

"Oh, God! it is all over!"

"If you mean there should not be a Government by departments, Isigma with you; I think it a very bad system. There should be one man, or a Cabinet to govern the whole, and direct every measure. Government by departments was not brought in by me. I found it so, and had not vigor and resolution to put an end to it. The King ought to be treated with all sort of respect and attention, but the appearance of power is all that a king of this country can have."

"I was not, when I was honoured with office, a Minister of chance, or a creature of whom Parliament had no experience. I was found among you when I was so honoured. I had been long known to you. In consequence, I obtained your support; when that support was withdrawn, I ceased to be a Minister. I was the creature of Parliament in my rise; when I fell I was its victim. I came among you without connection. It was here I was first known: you raised me up; you pulled me down."

"Lord North is a good man, unlike the others. He is a good man."

"Did freedom depend upon every individual subject being represented in that House? Certainly not; for that House, constituted as it was, represented the whole kingdom. Freedom depended on a very different circumstance. He was free, because he lived in a country governed by equal laws. Where the highest and the lowest were governed by the same laws, where there was no distinction of persons, there freedom might be said to exist as purely and as perfectly as in the nature of things it could exist."

"H[is] M[ajesty] continued this Evening to speak very kindly of Lord North, & said He was the Man He loved best in the World."

"When I spoke out against China's 'one child' policy and other injustices, I was persecuted, beaten, and put under house arrest by the government...In April, 2012, I escaped and was given shelter in the American embassy in Beijing. I am forever grateful to the American people for welcoming me and my family to the United States where we are now free."

"The Chinese Foreign Ministry has said more than once that I am a free person. Did I do anything wrong by leaving my home? If other people helped me leave ... this is something that should be praised. Why then when I leave do they break into my home to beat people, detain them."

"China will see democracy, I’m one hundred per cent sure – it just needs time. If everyone makes an effort to build a more just and civil society then it will come faster and if everyone stands by and does nothing, then it will come slower but is still inevitable. Whether the authorities wish it to or not, the dawn comes and the day breaks just the same."

"A man could change, if only to survive."

"Then it happened. One night as the rain beat on the slanted kitchen roof a great spirit slipped forever into my life. I held his books in my hands and trembled as he spoke to me of man and the world, of love and wisdom, pain and guilt, and I knew I would never be the same. His name was Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoyevsky. He knew more of fathers and sons than any man in the world, of brothers and sisters, priests and rogues, guilt and innocence. Dostoyevsky changed me. The Idiot, The Possessed, The Brothers Karamazov, The Gambler. He turned me inside out. I found I could breathe, could see invisible horizons. It was time to become a man, to leave San Elmo and go out into the world. I wanted to think and feel like Dostoyevsky. I wanted to write."

"I had come to the limits of shooting pool, playing poker and bullshitting over beers, of driving off with other guys and broads into lonely orchards, clawing clumsily at skirts and panties, clawing in vain. Women were fine but demanding, you hurt easily at nineteen; you thought women were sweet and submissive but find them alley cats; you find comfort in whores less deceitful, and if you are lucky you learn to read."

"I lay on my back and thought of the future. Any hopes for writing would have to be postponed. What mattered now was just staying alive. From that day forward I resolved never to be poor again. I would work hard for Coletti and the Toyo Fish Company. I would hoard every penny. I would jingle coins in my pocket and store away dollars in the bank. I would cover my body, my life, with money. I would be impregnable. I would not be hurt again."

"Far out across the Mojave there arose the shimmer of heat. I made my way up the path to the Ford. In the seat was a copy of my book, my first book. I found a pencil, opened the book to the fly leaf, and wrote: To Camilla, with love, Arturo I carried the book a hundred yards into the desolation, toward the southeast. With all my might I threw it far out in the direction she had gone. Then I got into the car, started the engine, and drove back to Los Angeles."