In their quest for power and self-importance, to compensate for whatever feelings of social inadequacy or sexual insecurity, they (Politicians)are prepared to perpetrate something which is hard to distinguish from mass murder if they think they can get away with it.

Auberon Waugh

Categorized in : Thinking Feelings Self

The urge to pass new laws must be seen as an illness, not much different from the urge to bite old women. Anyone suspected of suffering from it should either be treated with the appropriate pills or, if it is too late for that, elected to parliament [or congress, as the case may be] and paid a huge salary with endless holidays, to do nothing whatever.

Auberon Waugh

holiday suffering law

Politics, as I never tire of saying, is for social and emotional misfits, handicapped folk, those with a grudge. The purpose of politics is to help them overcome these feelings of inferiority and compensate for their personal inadequacies in the pursuit of power.

Auberon Waugh

emotional overcoming feelings

There are countless horrible things happening all over the world and horrible people prospering, but we must never allow them to disturb our equanimity or deflect us from our sacred duty to sabotage and annoy them whenever possible.

Auberon Waugh

sacred people world

Generally speaking, the best people nowadays go into journalism, the second best into business, the rubbish into politics and the shits into law

Auberon Waugh

rubbish law people

Politicians can forgive almost anything in the way of abuse; they can forgive subversion, revolution, being contradicted, exposed as liars, even ridiculed, but they can never forgive being ignored.

Auberon Waugh

being-ignored abuse liars

When Glenda Jackson reveals that she has never been in a relationship with a man in which he hasn't raised his fists to her, I don't know whether this tells us more about the contemporary male or about Glenda Jackson.

Auberon Waugh

males fists men

It is my settled opinion, after some years as a political correspondent, that no one is attracted to a political career in the first place unless he is socially or emotionally crippled.

Auberon Waugh

political careers years

Anyone in England who puts himself forward to be elected to a position of political power is almost bound to be socially or emotionally insecure, or criminally motivated, or mad.

Auberon Waugh

insecure mad political

You should tell the truth as often as you can, but in such a way as people don't believe you or think that you're being funny.

Auberon Waugh

believe people thinking

There are many Welsh who are taciturn, truthful, well formed, open minded, handsome and peaceful, even if no particular individual immediately springs to mind.

Auberon Waugh

peaceful mind spring

Anyone wishing to communicate with Americans should do so by e-mail, which has been specially invented for the purpose, involving neither physical proximity nor speech.

Auberon Waugh

purpose wish talking

In England, we have a curious institution called the Church of England. Its strength has always been in the fact that on any moral or political issue it can produce such a wide divergence of opinion that nobody -- from the Pope to Mao Tse-tung -- can say with any confidence that he is not an Anglican. Its weaknesses are that nobody pays much attention to it and very few people attend its functions.

Auberon Waugh

issues political people

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

Auberon Waugh

hunts people enemy

Judicial execution can never cancel or remove the atrocity it seeks to punish; it can only add a second atrocity to the original one ... So long as one sees killing as wrong there is no need to waste time with the deterrent argument, since it would be nonsense to try to prevent a theoretical evil in the future by perpetrating an actual one in the present.

Auberon Waugh

evil trying long

Strange how much simple wisdom there is to be found in the deformed head and unprepossessing carcase of your typical London cabbie.

Auberon Waugh

typical london simple

History, having destroyed the religion as the opium of the people, now requires that they be given a taste of the real stuff.

Auberon Waugh

drug real people

The two sides of industry have traditionally always regarded each other in Britain with the greatest possible loathing, mistrust and contempt. They are both absolutely right.

Auberon Waugh

loathing two-sides insulting

Anyone might become homosexual after seeing Glenda Jackson naked.

Auberon Waugh

homosexual naked might

The main objection to killing people as a punishment...is that killing people is wrong

Auberon Waugh

punishment killing people

An unemployed electrician,whom I had been taunting with my reminder of how much richer I was, leaned forward and said:'What are your qualifications? I know exactly what your qualifications are.You bent over in the shower to pick up some soap at Eton and Harrow, like all the rest of them.

Auberon Waugh

eton bent soap