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Revision as of 23:59, 29 May 2013
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[[File:Britannia-Statue.jpg|thumb|right|[[Values]] exist in a transcendental realm, beyond [[space]] and [[time]]. They can neither be fought for, nor destroyed.]]
[[File:Britannia-Statue.jpg|thumb|right|[[Values]] exist in a transcendental realm, beyond [[space]] and [[time]]. They can neither be fought for, nor destroyed.]]
[[File:Bundesarchiv B 145-Bild-P049594, Döberitz, SA Fahnenweihe und Vereidigung.jpg|thumb|right|Some of us personally witnessed what was done on the continent under that [[sign]] and it is a [[symbol]] we shall never forget]]
[[File:Bundesarchiv B 145-Bild-P049594, Döberitz, SA Fahnenweihe und Vereidigung.jpg|thumb|right|Some of us personally witnessed what was done on the continent under that [[sign]] and it is a [[symbol]] we shall never forget]]
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* [In Italy, when every sentence is liable to be scanned for traces of anti-Fascist sentiment] it is obviously safer to begin by choosing a more congenial subject than a free Athens or a free Rome. In Germany the effect of National-Socialism has been the opposite. Racial doctrines and political antipathy to the whole Roman Empire and its cognate ideas have had the result of discouraging study of the Italic peoples and of Rome, the mistress of the world. On the other hand, a peculiar kinship has been detected between the ancient Greeks and modern Germans. Not only the Greek civilization in general, but Thucydides in particular, has proved exceptionally congenial. The intensely political outlook of Thucydides may be made serviceable to a doctrine which asserts the absolute dominion of the State over every phase of individual existence; and, as the more striking figures of Caesar and Augustus had already been captured as prototypes by Mussolini, Hitler might well be made to look very like Pericles—or Pericles, rather, to look like Hitler.
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** "The War and its Aftermath in their influence on Thucydidean Studies", address given to the Classical Association at Westminster School (4 January 1936), from ''The Times'' (6 January 1936), p. 8.
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* The world has recently been treated for nearly a decade to the unusual spectacle of a great empire deliberately taking every possible step to secure its own destruction, because its citizens were so obsessed by prejudice, or incapable of thinking for themselves, as never to perform the few logical steps necessary for proving that they would shortly be involved in a ''guerre à outrance'', which could be neither averted nor escaped.
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** Powell's inaugural lecture as Professor of Greek (7 May 1938), from ''Greek in the University. An Inaugural Lecture'' (Oxford University Press, 1938), p. 9.
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* I do here in the most solemn and bitter manner curse the Prime Minister of England for having cumulated all his other betrayals of the national interest and honour, by his last terrible exhibition of dishonour, weakness and gullibility. The depths of infamy which our accurst "love of peace" can lower us are unfathomable.
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** Letter to his parents (18 September 1938) after Neville Chamberlain's meeting with Adolf Hitler at Berchtesgaden, from Simon Heffer, ''Like the Roman. The Life of Enoch Powell'' (Phoenix, 1999), p. 47.
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*It is the English, not their Government; for if they were not blind cowards, they would lynch Chamberlain and Halifax and all the other smarmy traitors.
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** Letter to his parents (27 June 1939), from Simon Heffer, ''Like the Roman. The Life of Enoch Powell'' (Phoenix, 1999), p. 53.
* The thought struck me for the first time today that our duty to our country may not terminate with the peace – apart, I mean, from the duty of begetting children to bear arms for the King in the next generation. To be more explicit, I see growing on the horizon the greater peril than Germany or Japan ever were; and if the present hostilities do not actually merge into a war with our terrible enemy, America, it will remain for those of us who have the necessary knowledge and insight to do what we can where we can to help Britain be victorious again in her next crisis.
* The thought struck me for the first time today that our duty to our country may not terminate with the peace – apart, I mean, from the duty of begetting children to bear arms for the King in the next generation. To be more explicit, I see growing on the horizon the greater peril than Germany or Japan ever were; and if the present hostilities do not actually merge into a war with our terrible enemy, America, it will remain for those of us who have the necessary knowledge and insight to do what we can where we can to help Britain be victorious again in her next crisis.
** Letter to his parents (16 February 1943), from Simon Heffer, ''Like the Roman. The Life of Enoch Powell'' (Phoenix, 1999), p. 75.
** Letter to his parents (16 February 1943), from Simon Heffer, ''Like the Roman. The Life of Enoch Powell'' (Phoenix, 1999), p. 75.
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* You have never expressed any decided political opinions, and indeed I do not know if or how far you assent to the proposition that almost unlimited sacrifices of individual life and happiness are worth while to preserve the unique structure of power of which the keystone (the only conceivable and indispensable keystone) is the English Crown. I for my part find it the nearest thing in the world to an absolute (as opposed to a relative) value: it is like the outer circle that bound my universe, so that I cannot conceive anything beyond it.
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** Letter to his parents (9 March 1943), from Simon Heffer, ''Like the Roman. The Life of Enoch Powell'' (Phoenix, 1999), p. 75.
* I believe a second factor which has weighed heavily in this matter is the attitude, or supposed attitude, of the United States. I confess that I am not greatly moved by this. Whatever may be the attitude of the American Government and public to the United Kingdom as such, my view of American policy over the last decade has been that it has been steadily and relentlessly directed towards the weakening and the destruction of the links which bind the British Empire together. [Cyril Osborne: "No!"] We can watch the events as they unfold and place our own interpretation on them. My interpretation is that the United States has for this country, considered separately, a very considerable economic and strategic use but that she sees little or no strategic use or economic value in the British Empire or the British Commonwealth as it has existed and as it still exists. Against the background I ask the House to consider the evidence of advancing American imperialism in this area from which they are helping to eliminate us.
* I believe a second factor which has weighed heavily in this matter is the attitude, or supposed attitude, of the United States. I confess that I am not greatly moved by this. Whatever may be the attitude of the American Government and public to the United Kingdom as such, my view of American policy over the last decade has been that it has been steadily and relentlessly directed towards the weakening and the destruction of the links which bind the British Empire together. [Cyril Osborne: "No!"] We can watch the events as they unfold and place our own interpretation on them. My interpretation is that the United States has for this country, considered separately, a very considerable economic and strategic use but that she sees little or no strategic use or economic value in the British Empire or the British Commonwealth as it has existed and as it still exists. Against the background I ask the House to consider the evidence of advancing American imperialism in this area from which they are helping to eliminate us.
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* In the end, the Labour party could cease to represent labour. Stranger historic ironies have happened than that.
* In the end, the Labour party could cease to represent labour. Stranger historic ironies have happened than that.
** Article for ''The Sunday Telegraph,'' citing the swing to the Conservatives in his constituency and others with large working-class electorates (18 October 1964), from Simon Heffer, ''Like the Roman. The Life of Enoch Powell'' (Phoenix, 1999), p. 364.
** Article for ''The Sunday Telegraph,'' citing the swing to the Conservatives in his constituency and others with large working-class electorates (18 October 1964), from Simon Heffer, ''Like the Roman. The Life of Enoch Powell'' (Phoenix, 1999), p. 364.
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* The happiest and most glorious hours of my life with books have been with German books.
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** ''The Observer'' (24 April 1966).
* Once you go nuclear at all, you go nuclear for good; and you know it. Here is the parting of the ways, for from this point two opposite conclusions can be drawn. One is that therefore there can never again be serious war of any duration between Western nations, including Russia—in particular, that there can never again be serious war on the Continent of Europe or the waters around it, which an enemy must master in order to threaten Britain. That is the Government's position. The other conclusion, therefore, is that resort is most unlikely to be had to nuclear weapons at all, but that war could nevertheless develop as if they did not exist, except of course that it would be so conducted as to minimise any possibility of misapprehension that the use of nuclear weapons was imminent or had begun. The crucial question is whether there is any stage of a European war at which any nation would choose self-annihiliation in preference to prolonging the struggle. The Secretary of State says, "Yes, the loser or likely loser would almost instantly choose self-annihiliation." I say, "No. The probability, though not the certainty, but surely at least the possibility, is that no such point would come, whatever the course of the conflict."
* Once you go nuclear at all, you go nuclear for good; and you know it. Here is the parting of the ways, for from this point two opposite conclusions can be drawn. One is that therefore there can never again be serious war of any duration between Western nations, including Russia—in particular, that there can never again be serious war on the Continent of Europe or the waters around it, which an enemy must master in order to threaten Britain. That is the Government's position. The other conclusion, therefore, is that resort is most unlikely to be had to nuclear weapons at all, but that war could nevertheless develop as if they did not exist, except of course that it would be so conducted as to minimise any possibility of misapprehension that the use of nuclear weapons was imminent or had begun. The crucial question is whether there is any stage of a European war at which any nation would choose self-annihiliation in preference to prolonging the struggle. The Secretary of State says, "Yes, the loser or likely loser would almost instantly choose self-annihiliation." I say, "No. The probability, though not the certainty, but surely at least the possibility, is that no such point would come, whatever the course of the conflict."