“Our society is not perfect and this will come as no surprise to many of you. But liberty, you see, that precious child of our liberal democracy only two hundred years old, has one notable side effect.”

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

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

When virtue is at liberty, so to some extent is vice. In a free world there is, alas, more common crime than in a dictatorial system.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

It depends, because sometimes an action role can be very demanding, and sometimes a dialogue-driven character can be very demanding, and vice versa. It depends.

Slander is a vice that strikes a double blow; wounding both him that commits, and him against whom it is committed.

The mere abhorrence of vice is not a virtue at all.

It is useless to subdue the flesh by abstinence, unless one gives up his irregular life, and abandons vices which defile his soul.

The common vice of democracy is disregard for morality.

Beware of the beginnings of vice. Do not delude yourself with the belief that it can be argued against in the presence of the exciting cause. Nothing but actual flight can save you.

One way or another we all work for our vice.

Vice Is like a fury to the vicious mind, And turns delight itself to punishment.