Paddy Ashdown Quotes
-
I am formally accountable to the steering board of the PIC, and I meet with nine ambassadors from the PIC every week. I have to have the capitals' broad agreement with what I do.
→ -
Politics is compromise.
→ -
The multinational corporations now developing budgets often bigger than medium-sized countries — these live in a global space which is largely unregulated, not subject to the rule of law, and in which people may act free of constraint.
→ -
At the next election he'll offer the British public an alternative that provides weight and substance and seriousness in a political debate that is, frankly, increasingly obsessed with modishness and flim-flam.
→ -
One of the great barriers to peace in the Middle East is that both sides, both Israel and the Palestinians, do not understand that they share a collective destiny.
→ -
There can be no place in a 21st-century parliament for people with 15th-century titles upholding 19th-century prejudices.
→ -
Now we are intimately locked together. You get swine flu in Mexico; it’s a problem for Charles de Gaulle Airport 24 hours later. Lehman Brothers goes down; the whole lot collapses. There are fires in the steppes of Russia; food riots in Africa.
→ -
It's not my job to be popular. I'm goal-driven; my job is to get results.
→ -
Truth and reconciliation' are always combined, but I would split them: I don't think Bosnia is ready for reconciliation, but I do think it is ready for truth.
→ -
It would be a foolish high representative who worked that way.
→ -
I can create institutions, but I can't rewrite the chips in people's heads.
→ -
The greatest failure is that although we have created institutions, we have not created a civil society.
→ -
Coalition will come sooner or later, I'm certain of that.
→ -
I can establish the expectation of retributive justice. Have we done that? No.
→ -
Bosnia is under my skin. It's the place you cannot leave behind. I was obsessed by the nightmare of it all; there was this sense of guilt, and an anger that has become something much deeper over these last years.
→ -
We have invented a new human right here - the right to return home after a war.
→ -
Maybe it's legitimate criticism, though it can be hurtful. Maybe I haven't paid sufficient attention to the people with whom I would have a natural affinity as a liberal, and they feel let down by that.
→ -
We have to make their livelihoods viable, get them the proper prices for their produce, try and make them stay rather than sell their property and leave again.
→ -
People do not want politicians they know to be corrupt.
→ -
I've had much nastier things said about me in the British press than in the Bosnian press.
→ -
In the modern age where everything is connected to everything, the most important thing about what you can do is what you can do with others.
→ -
Politics is about putting yourself in a state of grace.
→ -
The advent of interconnectedness and of weapons of mass destruction means that, increasingly, I share a destiny with my enemy.
→ -
What my future will not be is active politics in the Liberal Democrat party.
→ -
History teaches us these lessons for the interveners: leave your prejudices at home, keep your ambitions low, have enough resources to do the job, do not lose the golden hour, make security your first priority, involve the neighbours.
→ -
The United States will remain the most powerful nation on Earth for the next 10, 15 years, but the context in which she holds her power has now radically altered.
→ -
Blair is regarded by most people in Britain as a smarmy git.
→ -
My second job has been to try to use my power to create institutions of a modern state that could enter the European Union, and there was very little time. The door was closing, and I wanted to get Bosnia through before it shut.
→ -
The generous way of putting it is that we were not ready for this. The less generous way is to say: How was it possible to return to the politics of appeasement of the 1930s?
→
Related Authors
-
Simon Hughes Former Member of Parliament of the United Kingdom -
George Osborne British Politician -
Vince Cable British Politician -
Tony Blair Former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom -
Neil Kinnock Former Leader of the Labour Party -
Alastair Campbell Journalist -
Menzies Campbell British Politician -
Shirley Williams British Politician -
David Cameron Prime Minister of the United Kingdom -
Peter Mandelson British Politician -
Ed Miliband British Politician -
Michael Heseltine British Politician -
Tim Farron British Politician -
Gordon Brown Former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom -
William Hague British Politician -
Nick Clegg Deputy Prime Minister of the United Kingdom -
John Major Former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom -
Nigel Farage British Politician -
Chris Huhne Former Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change -
Charles Kennedy British Politician
Popular Topics
- Firm Foundation
- Great Native American
- Hurtful
- Romantic Person
- Secondhand Smoke
- Culture And Language
- Berlusconi
- View From The Top
- Birthday Party
- Tired Of Life
- Refocus
- Finding Inner Peace
- Dripping Water
- Leaps And Bounds
- Powerful Man
- Hitchhikers Guide
- Hardest Job
- Globetrotters
- Charity Begins At Home
- Terrace