Enoch Powell Quotes - Page 2

When we look at the astonishing material achievements of the West. we see these things as the result, not of compulsion or government action or the superior wisdom of a few, but of that system of competition and free enterprise, rewarding success and penalising failure, which enables every individual to participate by his private decisions in shaping the future of his society.

I have set and always will set my face like flint against making any difference between one citizen of this country and another on grounds of his origin.

It is the English, not their Government; for if they were not blind cowards, they would lynch Chamberlain and Halifax and all the other smarmy traitors.

The life of nations no less than that of men is lived largely in the imagination.

If in the words which the Secretary of State has just used, the use of a nuclear weapon is to be avoided 'at all costs'. what is the point of having one?

As so often, the ordinary rank and file of the electorate have seen a truth, an important fact, which has escaped so many more clever people - the underlying value of that which is traditional, of that which is prescriptive.

It is no accident that wherever the State ha taken economic decision away from the citizen, it has deprived him of his other liberties as well.

'Helping industry' is the elephant pit of socialism, a deep hole with sharp spikes at the bottom, covered over with twigs and fresh grass.

I will not surrender responsibility for my life and my actions.

Of all political sacred-cows, education is the most sacred and the most cow-like.

I do not keep a diary. Never have. To write a diary every day is like returning to one's own vomit.

I do not know if the doctrine that the nation-state arose in the 19th century was still being taught:;... but it is erroneous. The nation-state reaches back far into the origins of Europe itself and perhaps beyond. If Europe was not always a Europe of nations, it was always a Europe in which nations existed, and were taken for granted, as a basic form of the State.

Of course I am very proud of being a Tory. Yes, in my head and in my heart I regard myself as a Tory. As I have said, I was born that way; I believe it is congenital. I am unable to change it. That is how I see the world... [The EEC] is the most un-Tory thing that can be conceived.

Politicians who complain about the media are like sailors who complain about the sea.

Paisley has been and remains a greater threat to the Union than the Foreign Office and the Provisional IRA rolled into one.

It is advertising that enthrones the customer as king. This infuriates the socialist...[it is] the crossing of the boundary between West Berlin and East Berlin. It is Checkpoint Charlie, or rather Checkpoint Douglas, the transition from the world of choice and freedom to the world of drab, standard uniformity.

A little nonsense now and then is not a bad thing - where would we politicians be if we were not allowed to talk it sometimes.

The Prime Minister, shortly after she came into office, received a sobriquet as the 'Iron Lady'. It arose in the context of remarks which she made about defence against the Soviet Union and its allies; but there was no reason to suppose that the Right Honourable Lady did not welcome and, indeed, take pride in that description. In the next week or two this House, the nation and the Right Honourable Lady herself, will learn of what metal she is made.

I should like to have been killed in the war.

When I repress my emotion my stomach keeps score.

The enemies of advertising are the enemies of freedom.

It so happens that I never talk about race. I do not know what race is.

The happiest and most glorious hours of my life with books have been with German books.

I am the last person whom it would be reasonable to expect to leave the Conservative Party.