Chris Patten Quotes

It is a sort of great Victorian truth that actually, trying to do the right thing is pretty good for you and pretty good for business as well, by and large.

There is a sort of exotic preposterousness about a lot of elections, the way arguments are made even cruder.

Undoubtedly, at the moment, the major cause of CO2 emission is what happens in developed countries.

Multilateralism is not an easy option. We're going to find that the world is very difficult. And relationships between America and the rest of the world are very difficult.

I suppose I've always carried what is regarded as a bit of unnecessary baggage in Britain. I've always carried the charge that I am an intellectual in politics.

I think that if politics is just about getting your backside on important seats, then it's a pretty worthless endeavor.

We have our own system, ... and journalists in our system are not put in prison for embarrassing the government by revealing things the government might not wish to have revealed. The important thing is that our system, under which journalists can write without fear or favor, should continue.

In democracy everyone has the right to be represented, even the jerks.

So, what I say to people is that politics has got to be about principle and values above all. Of course, there are times when you have to make accommodations.

It'd make a wonderful change to have the leader of a pluralist democracy who acted on that, who told people just how tough things are going to be, just what's going to have to be done - and, maybe, ran all the risks on the side of honesty, rather than spinning stories and trying to win the headlines every day.

Anyone who supposed that when Margaret Thatcher left Number Ten she was going to take a Trappist vow did not know that formidable politician.

Green politics at its worst amounts to a sort of Zen fascism; less extreme, it denounces growth and seeks to stop the world so that we can all get off.

It is curious that atheists have proved to be so intolerant of those who have a faith.

You don't have to wait until people say they accept everything you say until you are actually prepared to sit down and discuss matters with them.

Those of us who had a perfectly happy childhood should be able to sue for deprivation of literary royalties.

I don't think that capitalism should be unbridled, if by "unbridled" you mean unregulated.

I think that what most surprises anybody who goes into politics from even a modestly cerebral background is the vulgarity of much of the cut and thrust of politics.

But the ability to articulate what you are doing, to be clear about it, and to stick to it is, I think, the essence of political leadership.

It is almost always wrong that the time isn't ripe to decide something. That is always said of difficult problems.

Hong Kong's people will get what they want, despite China's objections. Freedom invariably wins in the end.

Hong Kong represents the kind of Asia with which both West and East are comfortable... It offers, in that sense, a vision for the future of Asia.

I believe in trying to get a balance between individual freedom on the one hand and social responsibility on the other.

It behaves more like a tribe than a democratic institution...responding to custom rather than reason and using its own liturgy and language for the conduct of its domestic affairs.

In a democracy everybody has a right to be represented, including the jerks.