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"Defenders of the status quo will argue that this system has served us well over the centuries, that our parliamentary traditions have combined stability and flexibility and that we should not cast away in a minute what has taken generations to build."
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"I grew up in an atmosphere tinged with militarism, and afterwards I spent five boring years within the sound of bugles. To this day it gives me a faint feeling of sacrilege not to stand to attention during 'God save the King'. That is childish, of course, but I would sooner have had that kind of upbringing than be like the left-wing intellectuals who are so 'enlightened' that they cannot understand the most ordinary emotions."

"Even when she had to make some one a present of the kind called 'useful,' when she had to give an armchair or some table-silver or a walking-stick, she would choose 'antiques,' as though their long desuetude had effaced from them any semblance of utility and fitted them rather to instruct us in the lives of the men of other days than to serve the common requirements of our own."

"Your insult has offended me. If we were at the Peaks, we would have to duel in traditional alil'tiki'i fashion.""Which is what?" Teft asked. "With spears?"Rock laughed. "No, no. We upon the Peaks are not barbarians like you down here.""How then?" Kaladin asked, genuinely curious."Well," Rock said, "is involving much mudbeer and singing.""How's that a duel?"He who can still sing after the most drinks is winner. Plus, soon' everyone is so drunk that they forget what argument was about."Teft laughed. "Beats knives at dawn, I suppose."

"A traditional house smelled of wood smoke, the earth, and of thatch; all good smells, the smell of life itself."

"I am sure I have always thought of Christmas time, when it has come round -- apart from the veneration due to its sacred name and origin, if anything belonging to it can be apart from that -- as a good time: a kind, forgiving, charitable, pleasant time: the only time I know of, in the long calendar of the year, when men and women seem by one consent to open their shut-up hearts freely, and to think of people below them as if they really were fellow-passengers to the grave, and not another race of creatures bound on other journeys."

"Cultural values change with times, unless they are built on an absolute standard of values and virtues. This standard must be afterwards well-guarded and protected."

"To the traditional Indians, terms such as "intercourse, "penis, "vagina, "clitoris, "semen, "masturbation, "breasts, etc. are exclusive possessions of the night. The traditional Indians perceive these terms as something "dirty. No matter how old they look, they really never grow up to talk and discuss about sex."
Explore more quotes by Ferdinand Mount

"What the world needs now is more Americans. The U.S. is the first nation on earth deliberately dedicated to letting people choose what they want and giving them a chance to get it."

"We criticize, copy, patronize, idolize and insult but we never doubt that the U.S. has a unique position in the history of human hopes."

"I think it's a pity that in many people's minds constitutional reform and PR have come to mean much the same thing."

"For all its terrible faults, in one sense America is still the last, best hope of mankind, because it spells out so vividly the kind of happiness that most people actually want, regardless of what they are told they ought to want."

"Of course great politicians are always liable to be wrong about something, and the more people tell them they are wrong, the more stubbornly they defend their error."

"No constitution is or can be perfectly symmetrical, what it can and must be is generally accepted as both fair and usable."

"A majority in all parties do, I think, want to see local government recover its old vigour and independence."

"We want a system that will improve consistency and steadiness in the quality of government."

"Sexual relations, of course, have existed, exist, and will exist. However, this is in no way connected with the indispensability of the existence of the family."

"The president is being denounced for not taking the kind of pre-emptive action in Afghanistan that he has been so passionately denounced for taking in Iraq. Damned if he does and damned if he doesn't."
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