Conservatives From The United Kingdom

"Let me repeat that the absurd thing about the anti-Islam neo-conservatives is that they are invariably supporters of unrestricted migration, the means by which Islam has quite peacefully established itself as a permanent, growing major social, religious and political force in our country. If Sharia law comes to Britain, as Mr Jacubs fears, it will not be because of violent actions such as the Woolwich outrage, which I think we can safely assume were condemned and disowned by most British Muslims. It will be as the result of the entirely peaceful establishment of a sizeable Muslim population in this country."

"People are terrified of changing their minds. Changing your mind is a door you don’t want to open because you don’t know what’s behind it. Changing your mind means losing all your friends. Changing your mind means a complete revolution in your life. Changing your mind means publicly admitting you’ve been wrong. […] People don’t want to change their minds."

"To complain that a European Union official is a federalist, is like complaining that a bicycle has handlebars. That's what they are, that's what they do."

"My gorge rises at the use of the word 'white.' The issue should never be the colour of somebody's skin. I thought we all very, very long ago accepted that what mattered about somebody was not the colour of his skin but the content of his character. And I'm not interested in what colour they are. The real question is, does a country which has a very large amount of immigration adapt to the immigrants, or do the immigrants who arrived in that country adapt to that country. And it's my very strong view that the only hope of a tranquil and peaceful and productive and successful society is that the migrants adapt to the place to which they come. And for very many years we have not been encouraging or indeed helping them to do that. We've been encouraging, through a policy of official state multiculturalism, that people should stay separate ,and should remain within their migrant communities and we have not created a single British nationality. There are various feeble efforts to make them take exams in how to claim social security benefits, or who was Winston Churchill. That is not the same. We have ceased to be proud of our own country, culture, history, religion, language, and we haven't asked our new citizens to be proud of them either. And we now see the result of that. It's not a question whether they're white. It's a question whether they're British. And my fear is they're not becoming British and the Britain is ceasing to be Britain, and that is a very great shame both for us who were already here, and for those who have come.""

"To anyone brought up when English literature, scripture, liturgy, poetry and hymns were still taught and learned, it is astonishing to find out how little they have in common with those who were raised and educated in the post-revolutionary culture. The pre-revolutionary survivor can finish other people's sentences, detect the rhythm in other people's speeches, recognise a score of allusions in a page of print. There is hardly a word or phrase which does not awake a richer thought, or an echo of something hauntingly similar."

"When I was a Revolutionary Marxist, we were all in favour of as much immigration as possible. It wasn't because we liked immigrants, but because we didn't like Britain. We saw immigrants – from anywhere – as allies against the staid, settled, conservative society that our country still was at the end of the Sixties. Also, we liked to feel oh, so superior to the bewildered people – usually in the poorest parts of Britain – who found their neighbourhoods suddenly transformed into supposedly 'vibrant communities'. If they dared to express the mildest objections, we called them bigots."

"Atheists cannot bear to look their faith’s faults full in the face. They cannot even admit that their dogmatic insistence that there is no God is in fact a faith, though they cannot possibly know if they are right. Their belief, apparently, is not even a belief. And so the escape clauses come thick and fast. If atheism in practice appears at any point to have bad consequences, that is because it took on the character of religion. So this murder, that massacre, that purge just do not count. If religious people do good things with good consequences, that is because they are really atheists without knowing it."

"There is a strong moral case for strict border controls and severe limits on immigration. A country is the only unit in which it is possible for people to be effectively unselfish to their neighbours. Without its shared culture and loyalty, there can be no shared law, no shared willingness to pay taxes or accept authority, no free nation capable of protecting its own people from danger within and without, and of sheltering those fleeing from oppression elsewhere. This argument often goes unsaid because of the semi-official ideological censorship now operating in most Western countries, which is called political correctness and which smears all dissenting views, usually as 'racist'. It is important that those genuinely concerned with freedom and with the defence of civilisation armour themselves against this foolish attempt to suppress free debate, and perhaps reconsider positions taken more because they are modish than because they are defensible with truth and reason."

"Since the French Revolutionaries set up the guillotine, the same thing has been true. Revolutions are all based on the false idea that humans and their nature can be changed. And once changed, they will fit neatly into the Utopia that is planned for them. Utopia, as we find every so often in Russia, China and Cambodia, can only be approached across a sea of blood, and you never actually arrive."

"I hid my love in field and town Till een the breeze would knock me down, The bees seemed singing ballads oer, The fly's bass turned a lion's roar; And even silence found a tongue, To haunt me all the summer long; The riddle nature could not prove Was nothing else but secret love."

"In politics and politicians' lies The modern farmer waxes wondrous wise; Opinionates with wisdom all compact, And een could tell a nation how to act; Throws light on darkness with excessive skill, Knows who acts well and whose designs are ill, Proves half the members nought but bribery's tools, And calls the past a dull dark age of fools."

"And what's more wonderful, when big loads foil One ant or two to carry, quickly then A swarm flock round to help their fellow-men."

"And what is Life? — An hour-glass on the run,"

"Superstition lives longer than books, it is engraved on the human mind 'til it becomes a part of its existence."

"I love to see the old heath's withered brake Mingle its crimpled leaves with furze and ling, While the old heron from the lonely lake Starts slow and flaps its melancholy wing"

"The ivyed oaks dark shadow falls Oft picking up with wondering gaze Some little thing of other days Saved from the wreck of time."

"I am: yet what I am none cares or knows, My friends forsake me like a memory lost: I am the self-consumer of my woes, They rise and vanish in oblivious host, Like shades in love and death's oblivion lost: And yet I am, and live with shadows tost"

"O how I feel, just as I pluck the flower And stick it to my breast — words can't reveal; But there are souls that in this lovely hour Know all I mean, and feel whate'er I feel."

"When trouble haunts me, need I sigh? No, rather smile away despair;"

"This world has suns, but they are overcast; This world has sweets, but they're of ling'ring bloom; Life still expects, and empty falls at last; Warm Hope on tiptoe drops into the tomb."

"And don't despise your betters cause they're old."

"Popularity is a hasty and busy talker, she catches hold of topics and offers them to fame without giving herself time to reflect whether they are true or false."

"Arts may ply fantastic anatomy but nature is always herself in her wildest moods of extravagence."

"Fashion is her favourite disciple."

"Throw not my words away, as many do; They're gold in value, though they're cheap to you."

"I hid my love when young till I Couldn't bear the buzzing of a fly; I hid my love to my despite Till I could not bear to look at light: I dare not gaze upon her face But left her memory in each place; Where eer I saw a wild flower lie I kissed and bade my love good bye."

"To-morrow comes, true copy of to-day, And empty shadow of what is to be; Yet cheated Hope on future still depends, And ends but only when our being ends."

"Literature is the Thought of thinking Souls."

"No man lives without jostling and being jostled; in all ways he has to elbow himself through the world, giving and receiving offense."

"The suffering man ought really 'to consume his own smoke'; there is no good in emitting smoke till you have made it into fire, — which, in the metaphorical sense too, all smoke is capable of becoming!"

"Under all speech that is good for anything there lies a silence that is better. Silence is deep as Eternity; speech is shallow as Time."

"There is no heroic poem in the world but is at bottom a biography, the life of a man; also, it may be said, there is no life of a man, faithfully recorded, but is a heroic poem of its sort, rhymed or unrhymed."

"It depends on what we read, after all manner of Professors have done their best for us."

"Adversity is sometimes hard upon a man; but for one man who can stand prosperity, there are a hundred that will stand adversity."

"There are depths in man which go down the length of the lowest Hell, as there are heights which reach the highest Heaven; — for are not both Heaven and Hell made out of him, everlasting Miracle and Mystery that he is?"

"The difference between Orthodoxy or Mydoxy and Heterodoxy or Thy-doxy."

"Certainly the Art of Writing is the most miraculous of all things man has devised."

"The All of Things is an infinite conjugation of the verb To do."

"He that has a secret should not only hide it, but hide that he has it to hide."

"In books lies the soul of the whole Past Time; the articulate audible voice of the Past, when the body and material substance of it has altogether vanished like a dream."

"All that Mankind has done, thought, gained or been: it is lying as in magic preservation in the pages of Books."

"The true University of these days is a Collection of Books."

"Misery which, through long ages, had no spokesman, no helper, will now be its own helper and speak for itself."

"History a distillation of Rumour."

"The man whom Nature has appointed to do great things is, first of all, furnished with that openness to Nature which renders him incapable of being insincere! To his large, open, deep-feeling heart Nature is a Fact: all hearsay is hearsay; the unspeakable greatness of this Mystery of Life, let him acknowledge it or not, nay even though he seem to forget it or deny it, is ever present to him,—fearful and wonderful, on this hand and on that."

"Battles, in these ages, are transacted by mechanism; with the slightest possible development of human individuality or spontaneity: men now even die, and kill one another, in an artificial manner."

"Do nothing, only keep agitating, debating; and things will destroy themselves."

"Great souls are always loyally submissive, reverent to what is over them."

"This Burns appeared under every disadvantage: uninstructed, poor, born only to hard manual toil; and writing, when it came to that, in a rustic special dialect, known only to a small province of the country he lived in. Had he written, even what he did write, in the general language of England, I doubt not he had already become universally recognized as being, or capable to be, one of our greatest men."

"Where this will end? In the Abyss, one may prophecy; whither all Delusions are, at all moments, travelling; where this Delusion has now arrived. For if there be a Faith, from of old, it is this, as we often repeat, that no Lie can live for ever. The very Truth has to change its vesture, from time to time; and be born again. But all Lies have sentence of death written down against them, and Heaven's Chancery itself; and, slowly or fast, advance incessantly towards their hour."