I think there has been a significant change in China, in Beijing, since Xi Jinping became president or dictator for life, complete with a personality cult which is extraordinary, i think the sad point is that Xi Jinping and his court have regarded Hong Kong and Hong Kong's freedoms as an existential problem for them because Hong Kong represents so much of what they don't like.

Chris Patten

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

Chris Patten

jerk democracy freedom

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

Chris Patten

winning want people

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.

Chris Patten

asia east vision

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.

Chris Patten

government wish writing

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.

Chris Patten

accommodations principles people

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

Chris Patten

vow politician numbers

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.

Chris Patten

green growth world

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.

Chris Patten

tribes affair language

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

Chris Patten

should mean thinking

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

Chris Patten

difficult problem said

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

Chris Patten

royalty childhood able

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.

Chris Patten

victorian wells trying

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

Chris Patten

endeavor important thinking

We're not trying to recreate Yugoslavia

Chris Patten

yugoslavia recreation trying

All parts of the society need to feel that the police service is their police service, and that does not happen unless all parts of society are represented in the police

Chris Patten

police doe needs

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.

Chris Patten

honesty winning people

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

Chris Patten

jerk democracy freedom

Of course, there were huge disagreements in the arguments of military intervention, .. There is no point at the moment on focusing on those disagreements.

Chris Patten

argument moments military

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

Chris Patten

causes moments country

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

Chris Patten

curious atheist