John Le
John Le
power-corrupts
All power corrupts but some must govern.
hypocrisy enemy odd
Those who are not with Mr. Bush are against him. Worse, they are with the enemy. Which is odd, because I'm dead against Bush, but I would love to see Saddam's downfall -- just not on Bush's terms and not by his methods. And not under the banner of such outrageous hypocrisy.
war america pigs
America has entered one of its periods of historical madness, but this is the worst I can remember: worse than McCarthyism, worse than the Bay of Pigs and in the long term potentially more disastrous than the Vietnam War.
moving lips
I move my lips when I read -- I'm painfully slow -- so I like really good English.
party desert disillusionment
Why did I desert Labour? Total bloody disillusionment. The party was a corpse. It had no ideology, it became detached, old, spineless and needed to go.
political spy democracy
It was a charming fantasy of romantics that the spies would stop spying, that political conflict would end and politicians would tell the truth. Unfortunately that has not been the case.
believe opposites spy
The trouble is, when professional spies go out of their way to make a definitive statement about one of their own, the public tends to believe the opposite: which puts us all back where we started.
humility men giving
Give a man a car of his own and he leaves humility and common sense behind him in the garage.
war huffing kind
For all the flailing and huffing and puffing, there is a kind of fatality about the process of war-making and the excuses we find for it, the consolation of belligerence in politics.
loyalty running book
I think that most of my books are part of some process of self-education, often about the places I go to. Most of all, they are about the peculiar tension between institutional loyalty and loyalty to oneself; the mystery of patriotism, for a Brit of my age and generation, where it runs, how it should be defined, what it's worth and what a corrupting force it can be when misapplied. All that stuff is just in me and it comes out in the characters. I don't mean to preach, but I know I do, and I'm a very flawed person. It's quite ridiculous.
water details problem
When a problem threatens to engulf you, there's nothing like irrelevant detail to keep your head above water.
power secrecy distribution
Power expands through the distribution of secrecy.
lying government looks
As our Governments spin, lie and lose their credibility, the electorate simply shrugs and looks the other way.
angel heart self
And the ideologies trailed after these impossible events like condemned prisoners, as ideologies do when they've had their day. Because they have no heart of their own. They're the whores and angels of our striving selves.