Barbara Amiel Quotations

Of course the barbarians' aim of world domination has not escaped the attention of the Europeans, perhaps because unlike us they are closer to the walls.

All share complicity in the destruction of that much under-rated phenomenon called liberty.

There are, of course, all sorts of other unpleasant regimes outside the walls as well - the military dictators of Latin America and the apartheid regime of South Africa.

They are feeding the world that will devour them and their children.

Totalitarianism is feudalism in the twelfth century sense of the word.

Dictatorships do cut down on rape, and pillage, not to mention sexual harassment, by the simple expedient of sending people to labour camps for life or cutting off their hands without a trial.

Among those people lucky enough, if you will, to have actually been brought to trial as a political prisoner, several historians have said there has not been one acquittal since the Bolshevik Revolution.

Our society is not perfect and this will come as no surprise to many of you.

The interests of the Soviet Union are in controlling highly developed countries and having the benefit of their economies so that they can run their own inefficient empire.

The same liberty that protects me also protects members of the Mafia.

It did not occur to us that the Marxists' solution was fraudulent or that their vision was distorted, that whatever the wrongs in our society it was not the ideology of theirs that will cure them.

When faced with the inevitable fatigue that comes with the recycling of speeches and the recycling of thoughts in a rather small stream of vortex, I am urged to not be ashamed of recycling.

There is sometimes a peculiar confusion in the West that equates progress to whatever is recent or whatever is new, and it is time we understood that progress has nothing to do with the chronology of an idea.

It is not empty rhetoric to talk of the Free World.

Outside the walls, among others, is the Soviet Empire. It is malevolent, destructive and expanding. It has swallowed up over half a dozen countries since World War II.

Since Europe is dependent on imports of energy and most of its raw materials, it can be subdued, if not quite conquered, without all those nuclear weapons the Soviets have aimed at it simply through the shipping routes and raw materials they control.

Here in Canada, in the Western world, we are inside the walls. Outside the walls are the barbarians.

By now it is evident that the Soviet Union must gain control of Europe to maintain its empire.

The People's Republic of China has not yet reached the military might of the Soviet Empire. It requires a little more time and a little more infusion of Western aid, loans, technology and the hard currency of our tourists.

In a free world there is, alas, more common crime than in a dictatorial system.

Only a free West can help the prisoners of today's left- and right-wing dictatorships.

The world today is divided into the free and the enslaved.

When virtue is at liberty, so to some extent is vice.

I have been lucky enough to have had the opportunity of travelling across this country and enduring all the classic situations that go with talking to people.

I have got up at truly deplorable hours in the morning to confront Vancouver's Jack Webster on television because I have been told that is the place to get exposure for ideas.

If America was trying to keep the bubonic plague out of its hemisphere, Canadians would import it just to show their independence of American foreign policy.

Power is sexy, not simply in its own right, but because it inspires self-confidence in its owner and a shiver of subservience on the part of those who approach it.

Indeed, we Jews were at the leading edge of communist totalitarianism, one of the most murderous movements of the 20th century.

We listened to the slogans of the barbarians - and this is the core of the problem - we decided that what the Marxists were saying had a point.

One always feels that not only should each speaking occasion require a new speech but also for everybody's sake including my own, a new past.

The Chinese understand that slave labour, which they thrive on, is not productive or useful to the economy if it is only extracted by torture.

But to be frank and I think probably to the relief of many of you, I am withdrawing from the speaking circuit. It has caught up with me.

Among the barbarians as well is the People's Republic of China with a gulag all of its own - far, far more sophisticated than the Russians.