Auberon Waugh Quotes

“My own attitude to the innumerable injustices of life has always been a philosophical one, especially when they have tended to operate in my favour.”

“Christmas has become a public affirmation of the power and benignity of the state, to which we all make obeisance in the sybolism of the breath test ceremony.”

“Unless people are prepared to declare themselves your enemies you have to hunt around for them.”

“Rather to my surprise, I found myself genuinely indignant at the suggestion that murder was to be reintroduced as a means of political advancement for the first time since the Tudors, and even more indignant that the legal and political establishments in all their forms - which included, at that stage, the police - were going to cover up the whole episode. In the event, it turned out that my anxieties were unfounded, as Thorpe was totally innocent of all charges brought against him.”

“The instinct of worship is still so strong upon us that, having nearly worn out our capacity for treating kings and such kind of persons as sacred, we are ready to invest a majority of our own selves with the same kind of reverence.”

“If government half a century ago had provided us with all our dinners and breakfasts, it would be the practice of our orators today to assume the impossibility of our providing for ourselves.”

“God, he thought, her eyes are so bright, flashing, deep, full of promise, all those things eyes are in books but never are in life, and she was his.”

“The expression often used by Mr. Herbert Spencer of the Survival of the Fittest is more accurate, and is sometimes equally convenient.”

“Allan praised Herbert for a job well done and for acting the part well. Herbert blushed, while dismissing the praise, saying it wasn't hard to play stupid when you are stupid. Allan said that he didn't know how hard it was, because the idiots Allan had met so far in his life had all tried to do the opposite.”

“In the future I see open fields for more important researches. Psychology will be securely based on the foundation already laid by Mr. Herbert Spencer, that of the necessary acquirement of each mental power and capacity by graduation.”