41 Quotes by Douglas Hurd

Prison is an expensive way of making bad people worse.

People know they are lacking something, they are constantly wanting some kind of spiritual guidance.

But Germany will always suffer, I fear, from the intensely dramatic character of the crimes of the Third Reich.

Margaret Thatcher was fearful of German unification because she believed that this would bring an immediate and formidable increase of economic strength to a Germany which was already the strongest economic partner in Europe.

There are thus great swathes of the past where understanding is more important and reputable than judgement, because the principal actors performed in line with the ideas and values of that time, not of ours.

We must admit that history is enjoyable to a large extent because it enables us to pass judgment on the past.

But it cannot follow that because weapons and troops are now being deployed we are bound to go to war.

Men like Hitler and Stalin and their immediate lieutenants cannot plead in defence of their actions that these were justified by the accepted values of that time.

A genuinely democratic Iraq might well act as a fresh spur.