"There has been a revolution, then, but a silent one. It has taken place with such stealth, and so gradually, that people have become accustomed to it little by little. I am reminded of the famous Chinese executioner whose ambition it was to be able to cut off a head so that the victim would not realize what had happened. For years he worked on his skill, and one day he cut off a head so perfectly that the victim said: "Well, when are you going to do it?" The executioner gave a beatific smile and said: "Just kindly nod.""

"My concern with democracy is highly specific. It begins in observing the remarkable fact that, while democracy means a government accountable to the electorate, our rulers now make us accountable to them. Most Western governments hate me smoking, or eating the wrong kind of food, or hunting foxes, or drinking too much, and these are merely the surface disapprovals, the ones that provoke legislation or public campaigns. We also borrow too much money for our personal pleasures, and many of us are very bad parents. Ministers of state have been known to instruct us in elementary matters, such as the importance of reading stories to our children. Again, many of us have unsound views about people of other races, cultures, or religions, and the distribution of our friends does not always correspond, as governments think that it ought, to the cultural diversity of our society. We must face up to the grim fact that the rulers we elect are losing patience with us."

"Our rulers are theoretically 'our' representatives, but they are busy turning us into the instruments of the projects they keep dreaming up. The business of governments, one might think, is to supply the framework of law within which we may pursue happiness on our own account. Instead, we are constantly being summoned to reform ourselves. Debt, intemperance, and incompetence in rearing our children are no doubt regrettable, but they are vices, and left alone, they will soon lead to the pain that corrects. Life is a better teacher of virtue than politicians, and most sensible governments in the past left moral faults to the churches. But democratic citizenship in the twenty-first century means receiving a stream of improving 'messages' from politicians. Some may forgive these intrusions because they are so well intentioned. Who would defend prejudice, debt, or excessive drinking? The point, however, is that our rulers have no business telling us how to live. They are tiresome enough in their exercise of authority -- they are intolerable when they mount the pulpit. Nor should we be in any doubt that nationalizing the moral life is the first step towards totalitarianism."

"We might perhaps be more tolerant of rulers turning preachers if they were moral giants. But what citizen looks at the government today thinking how wise and virtuous it is? Public respect for politicians has long been declining, even as the population at large has been seduced into responding to each new problem by demanding that the government should act. That we should be constantly demanding that an institution we rather despise should solve large problems argues a notable lack of logic in the demos. The statesmen of times past have been replaced by a set of barely competent social workers eager to help 'ordinary people' solve daily problems in their lives. This strange aspiration is a very large change in public life. The electorates of earlier times would have responded with derision to politicians seeking power in order to solve our problems. Today, the demos votes for them."

"The evident problem with democracy today is that the state is pre-empting – or 'crowding out', as the economists say – our moral judgments. Rulers are adding moral judgments to the expanding schedule of powers they exercise. Nor does the state deal merely with principles. It is actually telling its subjects to do very specific things. Yet decisions about how we live are what we mean by 'freedom,' and freedom is incompatible with a moralizing state. That is why I am provoked to ask the question: can the moral life survive democracy?"

"For it is a conspicuous feature of democracy, as it evolves from generation to generation, that it leads people increasingly to take up public positions on the private affairs of others. Wherever people discover that money is being spent, either privately or by public officials, they commonly develop opinions on how it ought to be spent. In a state increasingly managed right down to small details of conduct, each person thus becomes his own fantasy despot, disposing of others and their resources as he or she thinks desirable. And this tendency itself results from another feature of the moral revolution. Democracy demands, or at least seems to demand, that its subjects should have opinions on most matters of public discussion. But public policy is a complicated matter and few intelligent comments can be made without a great deal of time being spent on the detail. On the other hand, every public policy may be judged in terms of its desirability. However ignorant a person may be, he or she can always moralize. And it is the propensity to moralize that takes up most of the space for public discussion in contemporary society."

"... Kenneth Minogue, a renowned authority of the nature and influence of ideologies..."

"It was the calm and silent night! Seven hundred years and fifty-three Had Rome been growing up to might, And now was queen of land and sea. No sound was heard of clashing wars, Peace brooded o’er the hushed domain; Apollo, Pallas, Jove, and Mars Held undisturbed their ancient reign In the solemn midnight, Centuries ago."

"[Winston Churchill]...detested David Low's politics, while admiring his skill. Low was a New Zealand Communist who was a favourite of Beaverbrook's. I found his employment inexplicable. In his own quirkish way Beaverbrook was a true patriot, yet he employed people like Frank Owen, Michael Foot and, appropriately below all, Low. Competent and talented they undoubtedly were, but the harm they did in opposing Britain's rearmament programme against Hitler is appalling. One of Low's cartoons depicted Colonel Blimp, his favourite Tory butt, exclaiming over our belated, inadequate but desperately needed arms programme of the late 1930s: 'Gad Sir, if we want to keep our place in the sun, we must darken the sky with our planes.' I would like to have confronted these gentlemen with the sight of one of our stricken airfields in the Battle of Britain. Would they have adopted for their own use Churchill's earlier saying: 'I have often eaten my own words and found them on the whole a most nourishing diet'? I doubt it."

"It may well be, that the future historian, asked to point to the most characteristic expression of the English temper in the period between the two wars will reply without hesitation, "Colonel Blimp"."

"Strube is a gentle genius. I don't mind his attacks because he never hits below the belt. Now Low is a genius, but he is evil and malicious. I cannot bear Low."

"I have never met anyone who wasn't against war. Even Hitler and Mussolini were, according to themselves."

"That is all right. I had them on my list too."

"Gad, sir, Churchill is right. The Govt. has evidently made an irrevocable decision to be guided by circumstances with a firm hand."

"Very well, alone."

"Gad, sir, Lord Beaverbrook is right! A conference should be held at once for the U. S. A. to pay back the money Europe owes her."

"The scum of the earth, I believe?" "The bloody assassin of the workers, I presume?"

"For courage, for power, for skill, for fighting will, there is nothing on record that holds a candle to Fitz."

"He knows all the vulnerable spots of the human anatomy as well as the most erudite surgeon in the business and has a greater variety of effective blows than any fighter who ever lived."

"Each year in Africa about two and a half million people go blind...and they just go blind... they sit around in their huts."

"Every eye is an eye. When you are doing surgery there, that is just as important as if you were doing eye surgery on the Prime Minister or King."

"To my mind, having a care and concern for others is the highest of the human qualities."

"That the Macedonians were of Greek stock seems certain. The claim made by the Argead dynasty to be of Argive descent may be no more than a generally accepted myth, but Macedonian proper names, such as Ptolemaios or Philippos, are good Greek names, and the names of the Macedonian months, although differed from those of Athens or Sparta, were also Greek. The language spoken by the Macedonians, which Greeks of the classical period found unintelligible, appears to have been a primitive north-west Greek dialect, much influenced by the languages of the neighboring barbarians."

"...neither tolerance nor intolerance is grounded in science and reason, but they are themselves acts of faith grounded in social custom and the politics of expediency and power."