Simon Heffer famous quotes

This is, in theory, still a free country, but our politically correct, censorious times are such that many of us tremble to give vent to perfectly acceptable views for fear of condemnation. Freedom of speech is thereby imperiled, big questions go undebated, and great lies become accepted, unequivocally as great truths.
-- Simon Heffer

#Country #Freedom #Lying

The IRA sending a message of sympathy to America is like Jack the Ripper giving us a lesson in the sanctity of human life.
-- Simon Heffer

#America #Giving #Ira

Those Victorians: endlessly fascinating, broad in their learning, heroic in their achievements, in parts completely mad.
-- Simon Heffer

#Mad #History #Achievement

Of the 664 men who rode into the Valley of Death about 540 eventually got out of it again. By far the highest casualty rate was among the horses. Compared with the Somme or an evening in the Blitz, the Valley of Death was a piece of cake.
-- Simon Heffer

#Horse #Men #Cake

If there is writing on Hadrian's Wall, it reads that the English should leave Scotland to its own devices.
-- Simon Heffer

#Wall #Writing #Scotland

The more a climate can be created in which neither the English nor the Scots are given cause to resent each other, the better.
-- Simon Heffer

#Causes #Climate #Given

Political genius consists in identifying oneself with a principle.
-- Simon Heffer

#Political #Genius #Principles

In England, even the poorest of people believe that they have rights; that is very different from what satisfies the poor in other lands.
-- Simon Heffer

#Believe #Land #Rights

Football is not, in my view, a sport: it is somewhere between a business racket and a mental illness. I associate it with all the worst aspects of our society - violence, drunkenness, drugs, racism, exploitation, greed and stupidity; and that's just for starters.
-- Simon Heffer

#Soccer #Sports #Football

Sport is how poor kids from poor countries pass through the eye of the needle to riches and recognition.

American statesmen might like some Europeans more than others and even detect quaint resemblances to their own outlook; but they no more committed themselves to a particular group or country than a nineteenth-century missionary committed himself to the African tribe in which he happened to find himself.

We lead the world in only 3 categories: number of incarcerated citizens per capita, number of adults who believe angels are real, and defense spending, where we spend more than the next 26 countries combined, 25 of whom are allies. Now none of this is the fault of 20 year old college student, but you nonetheless are without a doubt a member of the worst period generation period ever period, so when you ask what makes us the greatest country in the world I don't know what the f^&k you're talking about.

You are talking to a leftist. I believe in the redistribution of wealth and power in the world. I believe in universal hospital care for everyone. I believe that we should not have a single homeless person in the richest country in the world. And I believe that we should not have a C.I.A. that goes around overwhelming governments and assassinating political leaders, working for tight oligarchies around the world to protect the tight oligarchy here at home.

If there had been no troublemakers, no Dissenters, we should still be living in caves.

Yes there's a lady that stands in a harbor for what we believe. And there's a bell that still echoes the price that it cost to be free.

Democracy is not something you believe in or a place to hang your hat, but it's something you do. You participate. If you stop doing it, democracy crumbles.

Democracy is constructed like an edifice, freedom by freedom, right by right, until it reaches its snapping point.

I walk up a dune to a beach and look out to sea, but it's 100km away. The ships lie askew in their dry beds, at anchor for ever. Today is my son's birthday. Thousands of miles from here, his healthy lungs are blowing out candles. I should be there but I'm here with another boy, who puts his face close to mine and laughs. I smile back but realise he can't see it, because I'm wearing an antiseptic muzzles to protect me from his breath.

White in the moon the long road lies.