Like the Roman

Witty, profound, prophetic, call them what you will. These quotations are from the speeches, books, articles, or letters, of the late Enoch Powell, cited in Simon Heffer's recent biography "Like the Roman: The Life of Enoch Powell" (Weidenfeld & Nicholson: hardback 1998: paperback 2000) to which all page numbers refer.

• "The world is full of evil men engaged in doing evil things. That does not make us policemen to round them up nor judges to find them guilty and to sentence them. What is so special about the ruler of Iraq that we suddenly discover that we are to be his jailers and his judges?" (1990) p.933.
• "Those who at the end of the twentieth century wish to keep alive that consciousness of being English, which seemed so effortless and uncontroversial to their forefathers, will discover that they are called upon, if they take their purpose seriously, to confront the most arrogant and imposing prejudices of their time." (1988) p.919.
• "A life peerage is a sort of insult, isn't it? Look at the people that are given them."(1995) p. 917.
• "I just don't like America, or Americans. It is like saying you like sugar in your tea. De gustibus non est disputandum." (1986) pp.900-901.
• "Alf Garnett? Alf Garnett? Who's he? One of the new ministers?" (1985) p.893
• "This nation is an island, and islands, especially islands of sanity, have no business to be attending, let alone hosting, international economic conferences." (1984) p. 882.
• "Britain's fondness for America has turned this country into something horribly resembling a satellite of the United States." (1983) p. 880.
• "...Americans' belief that they are authorised, possibly by the deity, to intervene, openly or covertly, in the internal affairs of other countries anywhere in the world."(1982) p.861.
• "I would sooner receive injustice in the Queen's courts than justice in a foreign court. I hold that man or woman to be a scoundrel who goes abroad to a foreign court to have the judgments of the Queen's courts overturned, the actions of her Government countermanded or the legislation of parliament struck down." (1982) p. 853.
• "My considered conclusion is that a considerable and increasing proportion of MPs, including most of the occupants of both front benches, do know they are talking nonsense, but they go on doing so because they are ashamed to stop after so long, because it gives them something to say, and because, as everyone is talking the same nonsense, they feel quite safe." (1978) p.807.
• "The EEC is the most un-Tory thing that can be conceived" (1978), p. 800.
• "I find a certain contradiction in the notion of keeping one's head down out of conviction." (1975) p. 755.
• "There is a German proverb to the effect that against stupidity the Gods themselves contend in vain; but when the stupidity is fashionable to boot, the frowning battlements are indeed impregnable." (1975) p.748.
• "When the connection of policy with party is assumed to be spurious or reversible, parliamentary politics sink to the level of triviality, and men will begin to look for other ways to influence or control the nation's affairs." (1974), p.715.
• "A party is not the private property of its leader." (1973) p.685.
• "Independence, the freedom of a self-governing nation, is in my estimation the highest political good, for which any disadvantage, if need be, and any sacrifice are a cheap price." (1973) p.669.
• "I am a politician: that is my profession and I'm not ashamed of it. My race of man is employed by society to carry the blame for what goes wrong. As a very great deal does go wrong in my country there is a lot of blame. In return for taking the blame for what is not our fault, we have learned how not to take the blame for what is our fault." (1973) p. 660.
• "The United Nations is, always has been, and always will be, an absurdity and a monstrosity, which no lapse of time and no application of ingenuity and effort can remedy." (1971) p. 571.
• "Too often today people are ready to tell us: 'This is not possible, that is not possible.' I say: whatever the true interest of our country calls for is always possible. We have nothing to fear but our own doubts." (1968) p.483
• "...We are told in terms of arrogant moral superiority that we have got a 'multi-racial society' and had better like it." (1968) p. 492.
• "Yes, I am a virus. I am the virus that kills socialists." (1968) p. 482
• "Often when I am kneeling down in church, I think to myself how much we should thank God, the Holy Ghost, for the gift of capitalism." (1968) p. 444.
• "One of my sayings is that Toryism is about enjoyment." (1966) p. 409
• "As a Tory I have great respect for authority, for traditional instruments of authority. But intellectually speaking there is no such thing as authority. Someone may have the right to tell me to do something, but that cannot be authority for a view. The mere fact that 60 or 60 million people happen to think something is so, is neither here nor there. You cannot have anyone else's ideas but your own - or at least I can't." (1966) p.409