Quotes About Auberon

#1. In their quest for power and self-importance, to compensate for whatever feelings of social inadequacy or sexual insecurity, they (Politicians)are prepared to perpetrate something which is hard to distinguish from mass murder if they think they can get away with it ...

Auberon Waugh

#2. I remember also speaking to a reporter on Gay News who enquired about my attitude to Gay Dogs and reassuring him of my compassionate attitude to homosexuality among dogs, while secretly feeling they ought to be whipped.

Auberon Waugh

#3. There are countless horrible things happening all over the world and horrible people prospering, but we must never allow them to disturb our equanimity or deflect us from our sacred duty to sabotage and annoy them whenever possible.

Auberon Waugh

#4. Generally speaking, the best people nowadays go into journalism, the second best into business, the rubbish into politics and the shits into law

Auberon Waugh

#5. Do you not see, first, that - as a mental abstract - physical force is directly opposed to morality; and secondly, that it practically drives out of existence the moral forces?

Auberon Herbert

#6. My own theory is that the spectacle of the homeless may be necessary to keep the rest of us on the straight and narrow ...

Auberon Waugh

#7. Private property and free trade stand on exactly the same footing, both being essential and indivisible parts of liberty, both depending upon rights, which no body of men, whether called governments or anything else, can justly take from the individual.

Auberon Herbert

#8. Anyone might become homosexual after seeing Glenda Jackson naked.

Auberon Waugh

#9. Deny human rights, and however little you may wish to do so, you will find yourself abjectly kneeling at the feet of that old-world god, Force.

Auberon Herbert

#10. Looking back at all the people I have insulted, I am mildly surprised that I am still allowed to exist.

Auberon Waugh

#11. It is the small owner who offers the only really profitable and reliable material for taxation. He is made for taxation.

Auberon Herbert

#12. Anyone wishing to communicate with Americans should do so by e-mail, which has been specially invented for the purpose, involving neither physical proximity nor speech.

Auberon Waugh

#13. The ruling idea of the politician - stated rather bluntly - is that those who are opposed to him exist for the purpose of being made to serve his ends, if he can get power enough in his hands to force these ends upon them.

Auberon Herbert

#14. The career of a politician mainly consists in making one part of the nation do what it does not want to do, in order to please and satisfy the other part of the nation.

Auberon Herbert

#15. Farther the government must not go. It must not attempt any service of any kind for the people, from the mere mechanism of carrying their letters to that most arrogant and ill-conceived of universal schemes, the education of their children.

Auberon Herbert

#16. Strange how much simple wisdom there is to be found in the deformed head and unprepossessing carcase of your typical London cabbie.

Auberon Waugh

#17. I don't suppose there has been a moment in the world's history where more people felt themselves to be artists, of when less art was produced.

Auberon Waugh

#18. I should imagine that in my time I have eaten enough horses to provide a royal escort.

Auberon Waugh

#19. You should tell the truth as often as you can, but in such a way as people don't believe you or think that you're being funny.

Auberon Waugh

#20. We hold that what one man cannot morally do, a million men cannot morally do, and government, representing many millions of men, cannot do.

Auberon Herbert

#21. Better to go than sit around being a terrible old bore.

Auberon Waugh

#22. To live in a state of liberty is not to live apart from law. It is, on the contrary, to live under the highest law, the only law that can really profit a man, the law which is consciously and deliberately imposed by himself on himself.

Auberon Herbert

#23. How can an act done under compulsion have any moral element in it, seeing that what is moral is the free act of an intelligent being?

Auberon Herbert

#24. It is only you, treading in the blessed path of peace and freedom, who can bring about the true regeneration of society, and with it the true happiness of your own lives.

Auberon Herbert

#25. Politicians can forgive almost anything in the way of abuse; they can forgive subversion, revolution, being contradicted, exposed as liars, even ridiculed, but they can never forgive being ignored.

Auberon Waugh

#26. When Glenda Jackson reveals that she has never been in a relationship with a man in which he hasn't raised his fists to her, I don't know whether this tells us more about the contemporary male or about Glenda Jackson.

Auberon Waugh

#27. There is an old story about the boy at Eton who committed suicide. The other boys in his house were gathered together and asked if any of them could suggest a reason for the tragedy. After a long silence a small boy in the front put up his hand: 'Could it have been the food, sir?

Auberon Waugh

#28. The modern State's greatest single instrument of oppression, its murderous tax on drink ... accounts for nearly all the miseries besetting our once-merry land; football hooliganism, colour prejudice, industrial unrest, cynicism about politicians; the list is endless.

Auberon Waugh

#29. By what right do men exercise power over each other?

Auberon Herbert

#30. He looked like the victim of a forceps delivery.

Auberon Waugh

#31. And what sort of philosophical doctrine is thi - that numbers confer unlimited rights, that they take from some persons all rights over themselves, and vest these rights in others.

Auberon Herbert

#32. Every tax or rate, forcibly taken from an unwilling person, is immoral and oppressive.

Auberon Herbert

#33. Justice requires that you should not place the burdens of one man on the shoulders of another man, even though he is better able to bear them. In plainer words, that you should not make one set of men pay for what is used by another set of men.

Auberon Herbert

#34. There are many Welsh who are taciturn, truthful, well formed, open minded, handsome and peaceful, even if no particular individual immediately springs to mind.

Auberon Waugh

#35. It is impossible for us to make any real advance until we take to heart this great truth, that without freedom of choice, without freedom of action, there are not such things as true moral qualities; there can only be submissive wearing of the cords that others have tied round our hands.

Auberon Herbert

#36. Judicial execution can never cancel or remove the atrocity it seeks to punish: it can only add a second atrocity to the original one.

Auberon Waugh

#37. You will not make a man wiser by taking freedom of action from him. A man can only learn when he is free to act.

Auberon Herbert

#38. An unemployed electrician,whom I had been taunting with my reminder of how much richer I was, leaned forward and said:'What are your qualifications? I know exactly what your qualifications are.You bent over in the shower to pick up some soap at Eton and Harrow, like all the rest of them.

Auberon Waugh

#39. I venture to prophesy that there lies before us a bitter and an evil time.

Auberon Herbert

#40. Anyone in England who puts himself forward to be elected to a position of political power is almost bound to be socially or emotionally insecure, or criminally motivated, or mad.

Auberon Waugh

#41. The main objection to killing people as a punishment ... is that killing people is wrong

Auberon Waugh

#42. If government half a century ago had provided us with all our dinners and breakfasts, it would be the practice of our orators today to assume the impossibility of our providing for ourselves.

Auberon Herbert

#43. The two sides of industry have traditionally always regarded each other in Britain with the greatest possible loathing, mistrust and contempt. They are both absolutely right.

Auberon Waugh

#44. Christmas has become a public affirmation of the power and benignity of the state, to which we all make obeisance in the sybolism of the breath test ceremony.

Auberon Waugh

#45. How, then, can the rights of three men exceed the rights of two men? In what possible way can the rights of three men absorb the rights of two men, and make them as if they had never existed.

Auberon Herbert

#46. My own attitude to the innumerable injustices of life has always been a philosophical one, especially when they have tended to operate in my favour.

Auberon Waugh

#47. The instinct of worship is still so strong upon us that, having nearly worn out our capacity for treating kings and such kind of persons as sacred, we are ready to invest a majority of our own selves with the same kind of reverence.

Auberon Herbert

#48. We had to fill in forms which asked us whether we had ever been convicted of any crime. I hesitated about this. The NCO in charge, seeing me hesitate, explained kindly:'You write "No" in that line'.

Auberon Waugh

#49. There never yet has been a great system sustained by force under which all the best faculties of men have not slowly withered.

Auberon Herbert

#50. At any rate it seems unlikely that there is any truth in the rumour as I have just this moment invented it.

Auberon Waugh

#51. It is impossible to be angry for very long with a man who wears a wig.

Auberon Waugh

#52. If you tie a man's hands there is nothing moral about his not committing murder.

Auberon Herbert

#53. The price of privilege is eternal vigilance.

Auberon Waugh

#54. If we cannot by reason, by influence, by example, by strenuous effort, and by personal sacrifice, mend the bad places of civilization, we certainly cannot do it by force.

Auberon Herbert

#55. God, he thought, her eyes are so bright, flashing, deep, full of promise, all those things eyes are in books but never are in life, and she was his.

John Crowley

#56. The course that will restore to the workmen a father's duties and responsibilities, between which and themselves the state has now stepped, is for them to reject all forced contributions from others, and to do their own work through their own voluntary combinations.

Auberon Herbert

#57. The rest of us learned the simple lesson - invaluable in a bureaucratic society - that there is no moral or practical obligation to tell the truth when filling in forms.

Auberon Waugh

#58. It is my settled opinion, after some years as a political correspondent, that no one is attracted to a political career in the first place unless he is socially or emotionally crippled.

Auberon Waugh

#59. History, having destroyed the religion as the opium of the people, now requires that they be given a taste of the real stuff.

Auberon Waugh

#60. Unless people are prepared to declare themselves your enemies you have to hunt around for them.

Auberon Waugh

#61. Politics, as I never tire of saying, is for social and emotional misfits, handicapped folk, those with a grudge. The purpose of politics is to help them overcome these feelings of inferiority and compensate for their personal inadequacies in the pursuit of power.

Auberon Waugh