Paddy Ashdown Quotes

• There can be no place in a 21st-century parliament for people with15th-century titles upholding19th-century prejudices.

  Paddy Ashdown

  Topics in Uncategorized

• I have learnt from bitter experience that when the armchair theorists and the Whitehall generals start talking of a surgical war, it is time to run for cover.

  Paddy Ashdown

  Topics in Uncategorized

• The ringmaster has altered, but the circus remains the same.

  Paddy Ashdown

  Topics in Uncategorized

• Neil Kinnock has travelled the road to Damascus so often, I hear that he has decided to buy himself a season ticket.

  Paddy Ashdown

  Topics in Uncategorized

• It was a superb agreement to end a war, but a very bad agreement to make a state. From now on, we have to part company with Dayton and try to build a modern democratic state, for which I have tried to lay the foundations.

  Paddy Ashdown

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Agreement, Democratic

• Bosnia is under my skin. It’s the place you cannot leave behind. I was obsessed by the nightmare of it all; there was this sense of guilt, and an anger that has become something much deeper over these last years.

  Paddy Ashdown

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Behind

• We who came here saw what was happening. This was far more than a war in a faraway place. This was a moral imperative, a terrible vision of the future.

  Paddy Ashdown

  Topics in Future

• We have to make their livelihoods viable, get them the proper prices for their produce, try and make them stay rather than sell their property and leave again.

  Paddy Ashdown

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Property, Livelihoods

• The generous way of putting it is that we were not ready for this. The less generous way is to say: How was it possible to return to the politics of appeasement of the 1930s?

  Paddy Ashdown

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Generous, Way

• I love this country, I love these people, though I can’t say I love their politicians. People are always nicer than politicians, but here, you can mark that difference up a hundredfold.

  Paddy Ashdown

  Topics in Country, Love

  Tags in Politician

• I am formally accountable to the steering board of the PIC, and I meet with nine ambassadors from the PIC every week. I have to have the capitals’ broad agreement with what I do.

  Paddy Ashdown

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Agreement

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

  Paddy Ashdown

  Topics in Future

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

  Paddy Ashdown

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Human Rights, War

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

  Paddy Ashdown

  Topics in Failure, Society

• Politics is compromise.

  Paddy Ashdown

  Topics in Politics

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

  Paddy Ashdown

  Topics in Job

  Tags in Result

• It would be a foolish high representative who worked that way.

  Paddy Ashdown

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Foolish

• I’ve had much nastier things said about me in the British press than in the Bosnian press.

  Paddy Ashdown

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in British

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

  Paddy Ashdown

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Riot

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

  Paddy Ashdown

  Topics in Truth

  Tags in Think

Paddy Ashdown (27)

Birth:	27th February, 1941
Nationality:	British
Profession:	Diplomat, Politician, Soldier

About

Paddy Ashdown is a British politician and diplomat. He is the Chair of the Liberal Democrats 2015 General Election Team. After service as a Royal Marine and as an intelligence officer for the UK security services, Lord Ashdown was a Member of Parliament for Yeovil from 1983 to 2001, and leader of the Liberal Democrats from 1988 until August 1999; later he was the international High Representative for Bosnia and Herzegovina from 27 May 2002 to 30 May 2006, following his vigorous lobbying for military action against Yugoslavia in the 1990s.

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Today's Anniversary - 5th April

Births

• 1944 - Peter King
• 1971 - Krista Allen
• 1917 - Robert Blake
• 1962 - Richard Gough
• 1938 - Marilyn Ferguson

Deaths

• 1982 - Abe Fortas
• 2005 - Saul Bellow
• 2000 - Lee Petty
• 1994 - Kurt Cobain
• 1992 - Sam Walton