Quotes by Chris Patten

“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.”

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

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

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

“She destroyed the Conservative party,”

“We are profoundly disappointed that Zimbabwes parliament has passed this law, which represents a fundamental attack on media freedom,”

“Most worrying for me in China is the stoking up of nationalist sentiment as an alternative to, I think, moral fervor that used to accompany Communism. I hope that the Chinese authorities will be careful about that.”

“He would like Britain to take a leading role in the affairs of the EU, and to lay to rest our ambivalence about membership of the union,”

“the armed extremists will lose.”

“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.”

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.

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