Freedom of speech is freedom above all for those whose views you dislike most.
Peter Hitchens
Donald Trump is a symptom, not a disease. The disease is the death of real political conservatism: a cool, intelligent reluctance to believe that all change is good, a love for the established, the particular, and the well-worn.
Skimmed milk was what they used to give to prisoners and workhouse inmates to go with their porridge and gruel. It's a punishment, not a drink.
I have visited nearly 60 countries and lived in the U.S.S.R., Russia, and the U.S.A., and I have never experienced anything as good as what we have. Only in the Anglosphere countries - the U.S.A., Canada, Australia, and New Zealand - is there anything comparable. I am amazed at how relaxed we are about giving this away.
The worst country I ever lived in, the old U.S.S.R., was crammed with privileges for the political elite. They had their own hospital, their own shops, country houses, and blocks of flats, special lanes on the streets so they could bypass the traffic in their special cars.
If a man's reputation can be destroyed in an afternoon by a secret kangaroo court, then we, too, can one day be propelled into a pit of everlasting shame by the same process.
Fear is good and useful when it's deployed on the side of common sense.
The point of Left-wing propaganda is to make us feel powerless.
It's interesting how thrillers reflect the times we live in.
If tough old Lefty Helen Mirren can warm towards the Crown after impersonating Her Majesty, who's next? Since reigning and acting have so much in common, it's surprising all actors aren't fervent royalists.
Nobody under 55 knows anything much about life. Nobody under 30 knows anything.
At every future election, there should be a slot, at the top of each ballot paper, in which we can put a cross against 'None of the below.'
If you really want to conceal something, leave it lying about where everyone can see it.
A referendum is almost always a device by which governments get the voters to endorse what they wanted to do all along.
The picture of Prince Charles meeting Gerry Adams is inexpressibly sad.
What is the point of the police if wrongdoers aren't afraid of them?
News isn't just what happens. It's what a fairly small group of people decide is news.
The sad truth is that mass migration, whatever the colour of the skins of those involved, upsets and worries indigenous people, especially the poorest.
Nobody under the age of 55 should be able to stand for election, and nobody under the age of 30 should be able to vote in those elections.
A fierce and principled opposition stops a fat, complacent government from making stupid mistakes.
The BBC TV programme 'Back In Time For Dinner' doesn't just have one of the cleverest titles ever. It is a more-than-usually-serious attempt to recreate the recent past, the day before yesterday.
During the 1980s, many people mistook Thatcherism and Reaganism - actually a wild form of liberalism - for conservatism.
Mr. Corbyn reminds mature people of the days when the big parties really differed. He impresses the young because he doesn't patronise them, and obviously believes what he says.
If I never again had to read or write a word about homosexuals, I would be very happy.
Man without conscience is wilder and more dangerous than any beast.
We say we want politicians who are open and honest. And then, when we get one, we angrily pelt him with slime until he cringes to the mob, starts hiding his real views, and hires a spin doctor just like all the others.
For every cyclist who jumps a red light, a thousand drivers break speed limits or gape dangerously at their smartphones while driving.
I hate cars and wish they had never been invented. I try to use them only when I absolutely have to.
If we won't fight injustice wherever we see it, then we are not safe from suffering injustice ourselves.
I think we shall have ceased to be a racially divided society only when we stop making a fuss about colour.
Rigid, state-enforced sex equality is a Marxist policy, pursued to the outer limits in the old East Germany and now being adopted here.
A world without a proper day of rest is like a landscape without hedgerows, trees, or landmarks: a howling, featureless wilderness in which we incessantly seek pleasure because we cannot find happiness.
Anyone who seriously wants to keep Scotland in the U.K. must seek to stop the rise of the SNP, not to fuel and encourage it.
The public, unlike our governing elite, are not obsessed by race and sex. They are rightly interested only in the contents of the person's character.
I've tried many times to set out the case against the wicked fantasy of 'ADHD,' which usually earns me nothing but ignorant rage in return.
The most terrifying thing I ever saw in a cinema, thanks to the carefully built-up drama, was in the ancient black-and-white film 'The Innocents,' based on Henry James's 'The Turn Of The Screw.' My skin actually crawled with horror.
Terrorists are overjoyed when we shut down our freedoms and turn ourselves into a police state and when we retaliate, swatting the Middle East with useless bombs or rounding up the wrong suspects and locking them up without charge.
I fear crazy cyclists just as much as I fear inconsiderate drivers. They are like cultists, dressed up like huge insects in dehumanising uniforms, so sure they are saving the planet that they care little for its inhabitants.
There is no such thing as a 'right to buy.' Proper conservatives don't believe in invented, taxpayer-subsidised rights, a creation of liberals. They believe in freedom. And the break-up of council estates was one of the most unconservative things that ever happened, making life harder for young families and destroying settled communities.
As I am actually partly Cornish, I am frequently tempted to start some sort of Cornish liberation front in the Home Counties, where our language rights are badly neglected.
If you want a day free of work, you must expect others to have the same privilege.
Our pious horror at the intolerant and repressive behaviour of Islamic State is bitterly funny, given that it is really not that different from the policies of our close ally, Saudi Arabia.
I don't think the British or American governments really want to fight the Islamic State. They just want to look as if they are doing so.
Fat does not make you fat.
You know you are old when what you still think of as recent films are remade.
People's fates in life are decided largely by their schools.
Successful state schools work because charismatic heads or teachers are terrific bluffers, giving the impression that they are to be feared while knowing in their hearts that they have no real power.
When I rather guiltily read the books on which the TV series 'Game Of Thrones' is based, I was struck by one thing. The whole point of this saga is that ruthlessness pays, that evil generally wins, that justice is non-existent, and utter cynicism the only wisdom. It is the Middle Ages without the saving grace of Christianity.
Gleeful, unembarrassed ruthlessness, once rightly kept in check, has become normal among us, and 'Game Of Thrones' is a success because this change is now more or less complete.
The Channel is an international waterway through which the Russians are quite free to pass - and over which we have no exclusive right.
