Paddy Ashdown

I am formally accountable to the steering board of the PIC, and I meet with nine ambassadors from the PIC every week.…

— Paddy Ashdown

We have invented a new human right here - the right to return home after a war.

— Paddy Ashdown

It works both ways: there are victims of tragedy who come to me who have experienced grief of such magnitude that they…

— Paddy Ashdown

I am here because I think it was a terrible sin of the west to allow those years of war.

— Paddy Ashdown

I don't think Bosnia is ready for reconciliation, but I do think it is ready for truth.

— Paddy Ashdown

The multinational corporations now developing budgets often bigger than medium-sized countries — these live in a global space which is largely unregulated,…

— Paddy Ashdown

Now we are intimately locked together. You get swine flu in Mexico; it’s a problem for Charles de Gaulle Airport 24 hours…

— Paddy Ashdown

Politics is about putting yourself in a state of grace.

— Paddy Ashdown

I can create institutions, but I can't rewrite the chips in people's heads.

— Paddy Ashdown

One of the great barriers to peace in the Middle East is that both sides, both Israel and the Palestinians, do not…

— Paddy Ashdown

It's not my job to be popular. I'm goal-driven; my job is to get results.

— Paddy Ashdown

I was told there would be riots in the streets, but there were no riots.

— Paddy Ashdown

We who came here saw what was happening. This was far more than a war in a faraway place. This was a…

— Paddy Ashdown

We have to make their livelihoods viable, get them the proper prices for their produce, try and make them stay rather than…

— Paddy Ashdown

My second job has been to try to use my power to create institutions of a modern state that could enter the…

— Paddy Ashdown

Coalition will come sooner or later, I'm certain of that.

— Paddy Ashdown

What my future will not be is active politics in the Liberal Democrat party.

— Paddy Ashdown

The greatest failure is that although we have created institutions, we have not created a civil society.

— Paddy Ashdown

I love this country, I love these people, though I can't say I love their politicians. People are always nicer than politicians,…

— Paddy Ashdown

There can be no place in a 21st-century parliament for people with 15th-century titles upholding 19th-century prejudices.

— Paddy Ashdown

Maybe it's legitimate criticism, though it can be hurtful. Maybe I haven't paid sufficient attention to the people with whom I would…

— Paddy Ashdown

Truth and reconciliation' are always combined, but I would split them: I don't think Bosnia is ready for reconciliation, but I do…

— Paddy Ashdown

Blair is regarded by most people in Britain as a smarmy git.

— Paddy Ashdown

History teaches us these lessons for the interveners: leave your prejudices at home, keep your ambitions low, have enough resources to do…

— Paddy Ashdown

Politics is compromise.

— Paddy Ashdown