“The world is full of evil men engaged in doing evil things. That does not make us policemen to round them up nor judges to find them guilty and to sentence them. What is so special about the ruler of Iraq that we suddenly discover that we are to be his jailers and his judges? … we as a nation have no interest in the existence or non-existence of Kuwait or, for that matter, Saudi Arabia as an independent state… I sometimes wonder if, when we shed our power, we omitted to shed our arrogance.”
The Sunday Correspondent (21 October 1990), quoted in Simon Heffer, Like the Roman. The Life of Enoch Powell (Phoenix, 1999), p. 933
1990s
Help us to complete the source, original and additional information
Enoch Powell 155
British politician 1912–1998Related quotes

“The world at large does not judge us by who we are and what we know; it judges us by what we have.”
As quoted in On Being Blonde: Wit and Wisdom from the World's Most Infamous Blondes (2004) by Paula Munier, p. 70

The Problem of Peace (1954)
Context: We have learned to tolerate the facts of war: that men are killed en masse — some twenty million in the Second World War — that whole cities and their inhabitants are annihilated by the atomic bomb, that men are turned into living torches by incendiary bombs. We learn of these things from the radio or newspapers and we judge them according to whether they signify success for the group of peoples to which we belong, or for our enemies. When we do admit to ourselves that such acts are the results of inhuman conduct, our admission is accompanied by the thought that the very fact of war itself leaves us no option but to accept them. In resigning ourselves to our fate without a struggle, we are guilty of inhumanity.
Source: Growing Up Absurd (1956), p. 152.

Source: Discipleship (1937), The Disciple and Unbelievers, p. 185.

Source: Supergods: What Masked Vigilantes, Miraculous Mutants, and a Sun God from Smallville Can Teach Us About Being Human

“I am not virtuous. Our sons will be if we shed enough blood to give them the right to be.”
Act 3, sc. 5
The Devil and the Good Lord (1951)