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.

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.

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.

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

Judicial execution can never cancel or remove the atrocity it seeks to punish; it can only add a second atrocity to the original one ... So long as one sees killing as wrong there is no need to waste time with the deterrent argument, since it would be nonsense to try to prevent a theoretical evil in the future by perpetrating an actual one in the present.

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

Now that Mandela has been released from prison we can all admit what has been apparent, that he is not a Tembu tribesman, in fact he is not an African at all. He is quite obviously Chinese. Nothing wrong with that, of course, but it makes those who persist in seeing him as a great African statesman look rather foolish.