Free Scorn by Matthew; Parris Page B

How many do you need to look at?
Ronald Reagan on plans to expand California’s Redwood National Park 1967
    Saying sorry is becoming fashionable … because it’s something government can do without raising taxes.
Joe Rogaly
    A diplomat … is a person who can tell you to go to hell in such a way that you actually look forward to the trip.
Caskie Stinnett
    Diplomacy is the art of saying ‘Nice Doggie’ until you can find a rock.
Will Rogers
    The great Unwashed.
Lord Henry Brougham. Attrib.
    The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.
H.L. Mencken
    Freedom’s just another word for nothing left to lose.
Kris Kristofferson, American actor and singer
    I have more than once pointed out that no organisation with ‘liberation’ in its title has ever, or ever will, liberate anyone or anything.
Bernard Levin
    Watching the eurozone countries trying to resolve their debt crisis has been like watching 17 people in oven gloves manipulating a Rubik’s cube.
John Lichfield
    The only person alive actually famed for his obscurity.
Hugo Rifkind on Herman Van Rompuy, first President of the European Council
    All the charisma of a damp rag and the appearance of a low-grade bank clerk.
Nigel Farage on Herman Van Rompuy
    I believe there is something out there watching over us. Unfortunately it’s the government.
Woody Allen

 
    Left and Right
    Welcome to Britain’s New Political Order. No passion … No Right. No Left. Just multi-hued blancmange.
Austin Mitchell
    The facile leather-tongued oracle of the ordinary bourgeois intelligence.
Karl Marx on Jeremy Bentham
    The world would not be in such a snarl, had Marx been Groucho instead of Karl.
Irving Berlin on Karl Marx
    The left always has an orgasm when it sees a crowd.
Simon Jenkins
    The voice of the discontented wealthy.
Nick Cohen on Russell Brand
    You can read Russell Brand’s autobiography and dismiss it asrubbish, if you like. Or you can dismiss it as rubbish without reading it, to save time.
Stewart Lee
    I couldn’t see him overthrowing a table of drinks.
Noel Gallagher on Russell Brand
    As with the Christian religion, the worst advertisement for Socialism is its adherents.
George Orwell
    An idea isn’t responsible for the people who believe in it.
Don Marquis
    We should have had socialism in this country long ago, if it were not for the bloody people who became socialists.
George Bernard Shaw
    Conservative ideal of freedom and progress: everyone to have an unfettered opportunity of remaining exactly where they are.
Geoffrey Madan
    That dreary tribe of high-minded women and sandal-wearers and bearded fruit-juice drinkers who come flocking towards the smell of ‘progress’ like bluebottles to a dead cat.
George Orwell on left-wing intellectuals
    I would rather consult my valet than the Conservative conference.
Arthur Balfour
    My son is 22 years old. If he had not become a communist at 22, I would have disowned him. If he is still a communist at 30, I will do it then.
Georges Clemenceau
    There are lots of ways to get socialism, but I think trying to fracture the Labour party by incessant contest cannot be one of them.
Neil Kinnock
    We know that the organised workers of the country are our friends. As for the rest, they don’t matter a tinker’s cuss.
Emanuel Shinwell, Labour politician
    My epitaph must be: ‘Died of writing inane letters to empty-headed Conservative Associations’. It is a miserable death to look forward to.
Lord Salisbury
    They are political Calibans on Prospero’s island, chanting their subversive songs only to each other.
Jenny McCartney on the Left
    After God had finished the rattlesnake, the toad, and the vampire, he had some awful substance left with which hemade a scab. A scab is a two-legged animal with a corkscrew soul, a water brain, a