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The generous way of putting it is that we were not ready for this. The less generous way is to say: How was it possible to return to the politics of appeasement of the 1930s?

Paddy Ashdown

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Paddy Ashdown
Age: 77 †
Born: 1941
Born: February 27
Died: 2018
Died: December 22
British Politician
Diplomat
Politician
New Delhi district
Jeremy John Durham Ashdown
Baron Ashdown of Norton-sub-Hamdon
Lord Ashdown of Norton-sub-Hamdon
Less
Appease
Way
Comeback
Generous
Putting
Return
Ready
Possible
Politics
Appeasement

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At the next election he'll offer the British public an alternative that provides weight and substance and seriousness in a political debate that is, frankly, increasingly obsessed with modishness and flim-flam.
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What my future will not be is active politics in the Liberal Democrat party.
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The United States will remain the most powerful nation on Earth for the next 10, 15 years, but the context in which she holds her power has now radically altered.
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I can create institutions, but I can't rewrite the chips in people's heads.
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The advent of interconnectedness and of weapons of mass destruction means that, increasingly, I share a destiny with my enemy.
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Maybe it's legitimate criticism, though it can be hurtful. Maybe I haven't paid sufficient attention to the people with whom I would have a natural affinity as a liberal, and they feel let down by that.
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Politics is about putting yourself in a state of grace.
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The multinational corporations now developing budgets often bigger than medium-sized countries — these live in a global space which is largely unregulated, not subject to the rule of law, and in which people may act free of constraint.
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Blair is regarded by most people in Britain as a smarmy git.
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One of the great barriers to peace in the Middle East is that both sides, both Israel and the Palestinians, do not understand that they share a collective destiny.
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I've had much nastier things said about me in the British press than in the Bosnian press.
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The greatest failure is that although we have created institutions, we have not created a civil society.
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There can be no place in a 21st-century parliament for people with 15th-century titles upholding 19th-century prejudices.
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My second job has been to try to use my power to create institutions of a modern state that could enter the European Union, and there was very little time. The door was closing, and I wanted to get Bosnia through before it shut.
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Now we are intimately locked together. You get swine flu in Mexico it’s a problem for Charles de Gaulle Airport 24 hours later. Lehman Brothers goes down the whole lot collapses. There are fires in the steppes of Russia food riots in Africa.
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