John

“Liz Truss had stood at the despatch box and said, ‘I was at HMP Pentonville last week. They’ve now got patrol dogs who are barking which helps to deter drones.’ This, I was told, provoked an MP to shout ‘You are barking.”
― Rory Stewart, Politics On the Edge: A Memoir From Within

“Here, the ancient English sense of journey, ‘a day’s travel’ (French journée), meant the same as the Old Persian word farsang, ‘the distance a man could travel on foot in a day’, and the territory was in effect ungovernable.”
― Rory Stewart, The Places in Between

“Johnson is after all the most accomplished liar in public life – perhaps the best liar ever to serve as prime minister. Some of this may have been a natural talent – but a lifetime of practice and study has allowed him to uncover new possibilities which go well beyond all the classifications of dishonesty attempted by classical theorists like St Augustine. He has mastered the use of error, omission, exaggeration, diminution, equivocation and flat denial. He has perfected casuistry, circumlocution, false equivalence and false analogy. He is equally adept at the ironic jest, the fib and the grand lie; the weasel word and the half-truth; the hyperbolic lie, the obvious lie, and the bullshit lie – which may inadvertently be true. And because he has been so famous for this skill for so long, he can use his reputation to ascend to new levels of playful paradox. Thus he could say to me “Rory, don’t believe anything I am about to say, but I would like you to be in my cabinet” – and still have me laugh in admiration.”
― Rory Stewart

“If democracy is to be rebuilt … it is necessary not just for the public to learn to trust their politicians, but for the politicians to learn to trust the public.”
― Rory Stewart