Politics, as I never tire of saying, is for social and emotional misfits, handicapped folk, those with a grudge. The purpose of politics is to help them overcome these feelings of inferiority and compensate for their personal inadequacies in the pursuit of power.

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.

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.

Anyone wishing to communicate with Americans should do so by e-mail, which has been specially invented for the purpose, involving neither physical proximity nor speech.

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

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.

There are countless horrible things happening all over the world and horrible people prospering, but we must never allow them to disturb our equanimity or deflect us from our sacred duty to sabotage and annoy them whenever possible.