Top 104 Quotes & Sayings by Peter Hitchens

Explore popular quotes and sayings by an English journalist Peter Hitchens.
Last updated on December 21, 2024.
Peter Hitchens

Peter Jonathan Hitchens is an English author, broadcaster, journalist, and commentator. He writes for The Mail on Sunday and was a former foreign correspondent reporting from both Moscow and Washington D.C. Peter Hitchens has contributed to The Spectator, The American Conservative, The Guardian, First Things, Prospect, and the New Statesman. He has published numerous books, including The Abolition of Britain, The Rage Against God, The War We Never Fought and The Phoney Victory.

I'm always a bit suspicious of the sort of person who argues by saying 'What would Jesus have said?' They usually mean that they are quite sure Jesus would have agreed with them.
Direct Grants, private schools which took huge numbers of state pupils, involved effective co-operation between state and private sectors - a thing all modern governments claim they want. So why were they abolished? And why aren't they now restored?
The worst country I ever lived in, the old U.S.S.R., was crammed with privileges for the political elite. They had their own hospital, their own shops, country houses, and blocks of flats, special lanes on the streets so they could bypass the traffic in their special cars.
If you really want to conceal something, leave it lying about where everyone can see it. — © Peter Hitchens
If you really want to conceal something, leave it lying about where everyone can see it.
If migrants from other cultures arrive too fast and in numbers too great for society to absorb and integrate them, they begin to impose those cultures on the host country.
Freedom of speech is freedom above all for those whose views you dislike most.
Female politicos mostly represent a rather militant faction.
In a supposedly free and equal country, there is no excuse for our rulers having VIP treatment. On the contrary, there is every reason for them to get what we get, hot and strong.
Actually, I never wanted an E.U. referendum, and I think those who called for it will one day wish they hadn't.
A referendum is almost always a device by which governments get the voters to endorse what they wanted to do all along.
At every future election, there should be a slot, at the top of each ballot paper, in which we can put a cross against 'None of the below.'
I ride a bicycle daily in London and have done for many years.
The Channel is an international waterway through which the Russians are quite free to pass - and over which we have no exclusive right.
As I am actually partly Cornish, I am frequently tempted to start some sort of Cornish liberation front in the Home Counties, where our language rights are badly neglected.
What is the point of the police if wrongdoers aren't afraid of them?
If a man's reputation can be destroyed in an afternoon by a secret kangaroo court, then we, too, can one day be propelled into a pit of everlasting shame by the same process.
There is no such thing as a 'right to buy.' Proper conservatives don't believe in invented, taxpayer-subsidised rights, a creation of liberals. They believe in freedom. And the break-up of council estates was one of the most unconservative things that ever happened, making life harder for young families and destroying settled communities.
The picture of Prince Charles meeting Gerry Adams is inexpressibly sad. — © Peter Hitchens
The picture of Prince Charles meeting Gerry Adams is inexpressibly sad.
Without doubt, the Queen's personal acceptance of her role as a loyal E.U. servant was one of the great symbolic moments of our history. A bit like Magna Carta, but backwards.
All serious elite institutions, from the great London clubs to the Central Committee of the Soviet Communist Party, have always made sure that most people can't get into them. That's the point.
I fear crazy cyclists just as much as I fear inconsiderate drivers. They are like cultists, dressed up like huge insects in dehumanising uniforms, so sure they are saving the planet that they care little for its inhabitants.
Work, especially if you're lucky in what you do, is one of the great pleasures of life, but - like all pleasures - it can become selfish.
Our education system teaches the young what to think, not how to think. And if you ever wonder why so many things don't work properly any more, or why you can't get any sense out of so many organisations, this is one of the main reasons.
I have visited nearly 60 countries and lived in the U.S.S.R., Russia, and the U.S.A., and I have never experienced anything as good as what we have. Only in the Anglosphere countries - the U.S.A., Canada, Australia, and New Zealand - is there anything comparable. I am amazed at how relaxed we are about giving this away.
The self-righteous supporters of mass immigration think the rest of us are stupid and evil.
Skimmed milk was what they used to give to prisoners and workhouse inmates to go with their porridge and gruel. It's a punishment, not a drink.
Our pious horror at the intolerant and repressive behaviour of Islamic State is bitterly funny, given that it is really not that different from the policies of our close ally, Saudi Arabia.
For every cyclist who jumps a red light, a thousand drivers break speed limits or gape dangerously at their smartphones while driving.
Revolutions are all based on the false idea that humans and their nature can be changed.
When I lived in the suburbs of Washington, D.C., I was rather proud that my landlord was almost the only African-American in my unofficially segregated neighbourhood (the other one was the adopted child of our admirable next-door neighbours).
I can't say I'm sorry to see that the name 'Nigel' is dying out, but I'd be happier if it wasn't being replaced by made-up names out of TV series 'Game Of Thrones.'
The public, unlike our governing elite, are not obsessed by race and sex. They are rightly interested only in the contents of the person's character.
Anyone who seriously wants to keep Scotland in the U.K. must seek to stop the rise of the SNP, not to fuel and encourage it.
If I never again had to read or write a word about homosexuals, I would be very happy.
I think we shall have ceased to be a racially divided society only when we stop making a fuss about colour.
As far as our rulers in Brussels are concerned, Her Majesty can stand for the European Parliament and vote in the elections for it. She doesn't, but she could.
I hate cars and wish they had never been invented. I try to use them only when I absolutely have to.
The BBC TV programme 'Back In Time For Dinner' doesn't just have one of the cleverest titles ever. It is a more-than-usually-serious attempt to recreate the recent past, the day before yesterday.
If tough old Lefty Helen Mirren can warm towards the Crown after impersonating Her Majesty, who's next? Since reigning and acting have so much in common, it's surprising all actors aren't fervent royalists.
Successful state schools work because charismatic heads or teachers are terrific bluffers, giving the impression that they are to be feared while knowing in their hearts that they have no real power.
People's fates in life are decided largely by their schools. — © Peter Hitchens
People's fates in life are decided largely by their schools.
I still don't understand why we need a gigantic airport sprawled across South East England. What does it gain us, compared with the misery of noise, pollution and congestion it causes in our cramped country? Would it really be so bad if we had to take a train to Paris or Amsterdam to fly to the U.S.A.?
I'm surprised that more people don't emulate Rachel Dolezal and pretend to be black or members of some other minority. Our gullible society rushes to reward such status, often with jobs and money.
How I shall miss Alan Rickman, his beautiful command of English, and a voice he played like a musical instrument.
Radical multicultural types will, in the end, destroy the things they claim to like, because they don't understand that liberty and reasonable equality are features of stable, free, conservative societies based on Christian ideas, which guard their borders and are proud of their civilisation.
Donald Trump is a symptom, not a disease. The disease is the death of real political conservatism: a cool, intelligent reluctance to believe that all change is good, a love for the established, the particular, and the well-worn.
The most terrifying thing I ever saw in a cinema, thanks to the carefully built-up drama, was in the ancient black-and-white film 'The Innocents,' based on Henry James's 'The Turn Of The Screw.' My skin actually crawled with horror.
What many of us object to is the politicians who, for whatever reason, forget that societies cannot easily absorb huge numbers of new citizens. I resent the suggestion that this perfectly reasonable view is motivated by racial hatred or personal spite.
You know you are old when what you still think of as recent films are remade.
When I rather guiltily read the books on which the TV series 'Game Of Thrones' is based, I was struck by one thing. The whole point of this saga is that ruthlessness pays, that evil generally wins, that justice is non-existent, and utter cynicism the only wisdom. It is the Middle Ages without the saving grace of Christianity.
The world's poor have discovered that the E.U. (that's the country we live in, no point pretending there's anywhere called Britain any more) has absolutely no clue how to stop determined immigrants.
Gleeful, unembarrassed ruthlessness, once rightly kept in check, has become normal among us, and 'Game Of Thrones' is a success because this change is now more or less complete.
The safest period of my lifetime was the Cold War, when Europe was more sharply divided than ever. — © Peter Hitchens
The safest period of my lifetime was the Cold War, when Europe was more sharply divided than ever.
The point of Left-wing propaganda is to make us feel powerless.
Thanks to centuries of island freedom, when we were able to decide who came in and who didn't, it is far easier to disappear in Britain than in almost any other country in the world.
The sad truth is that mass migration, whatever the colour of the skins of those involved, upsets and worries indigenous people, especially the poorest.
Man without conscience is wilder and more dangerous than any beast.
Fat does not make you fat.
If you claim to represent and speak for the people, and they are forced to pay your salary, you have a duty to experience life as near as possible to the way others live it.
Fear is good and useful when it's deployed on the side of common sense.
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