A Quote by Michael Portillo
My father was possessed of an extraordinary romantic idealism, an unwavering belief in certain principles. He was always talking about the past. Always. Of course, it has a powerful effect on me.
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People are always talking about freedom. Freedom to live a certain way, without being kicked around. Course the more you live a certain way, the less it feel like freedom. Me, uhm, I can change during the course of a day. I wake and I'm one person, when I go to sleep I know for certain I'm somebody else. I don't know who I am most of the time.
I always believed that social science was a progressive profession because it was the powerful who had the most to hide about how the world actually worked and if you could show how the world actually worked it would always have a de-masking and a subversive effect on the powerful. I don't think that's quite true, but it seems to me it's not bad as a point of departure anyway.
I don't see any harm with coming out and talking about your life and talking about problems and talking about things that happened when you're past certain situations.
Certain things do not effect me anymore, which is not always good. There is always commotion, but I notice that hardly anything affects me or puts me out of balance.
Idealism, unrealistic idealism, is always contrasted with the reality of the people, of the man in the street. The details of daily life are always more convincing than the political fantasies of the earlier generations.
I had this idea that the coolest thing that could happen to you was talking with God. My father was always talking about God, and I idolized my father, so I'd spend hours trying to have mental telepathy with God.
I've always noticed talking about lyrics is like talking about a duality. It's like a Gemini time every time I talk about one line. Because each line, of course, means different things to different people, millions of interpretations. With me, I always see two sides. I just see things split into two.
I always wince a little bit when I send me to each of my new books. I wince at submitting myself to my father's judgment. But, of course, he's such a fond father that he always writes back, saying it's the greatest thing ever written.
THE MIRACLE EQUATION: Unwavering Faith + Extraordinary Effort = Miracles. When you maintain unwavering faith in your dreams and give extraordinary effort toward your goals, that is how you create miracles in your life.
If a society takes it upon itself to prescribe and proscribe certain streams of belief - to prohibit certain less-favored strains of conscience - it may be the non-believer who is among the first to be condemned. A coercive monopoly of belief threatens everyone, whether we are talking about those who search the philosophies of men or follow the words of God.
The future, for me, is romantic, I don’t understand people who say the past is romantic. Romantic, for me, is something you don’t know yet, something you can dream about, something unknown and mystical. That I find fascinating.
My father always told me that I was going to be a failure - I think he was more talking about himself, but I didn't know it at the time.
What the nostalgic past and the imaginary future seem to share in common is a form of idealism, perhaps a dream of wholeness. Our future is just as goopy with sentiment as our past. To me, they're the same, both very tempting, and I don't believe in either, although the idealism is probably important.
Americans have been remarkably devoted to the capacity for belief, to idealism. That's why we get into trouble all the time. We're always viewed as naive.
Rattigan's world demanded unwavering trust in principles, loyalty, and virtue. At the time of this play - Rattigan was writing this play in 1947 about an incident that took place in 1914 - should a boy say he didn't do something, his father would believe him; a British father would take the defense of his son's honor to his grave.
As long as you can walk the street and you know there's a tomorrow, there's always that chance. That's how I've always been. I've always had complete belief that I would make something out of myself again, because to me, it's always been about accomplishment.
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