Chris Patten > Quotes

“Those of us who had a perfectly happy childhood should be able to sue for deprivation of literary royalties.”
― Chris Patten

“Know thyself’ was Socrates’ challenge, a challenge both to personal memory and to honesty.”
― Chris Patten, First Confession: A Sort of Memoir

“It’s an astonishing mixture of Chinese hard work, entrepreneurialism, self-discipline and individual guts along with good old-fashioned British public administration.”
― Chris Patten, The Hong Kong Diaries

“[Hong Kong] was indeed (in the words of the Chinese journalist Tsang Ki-fan) the only Chinese society that, for a brief span of 100 years, lived through an ideal never realized at any time in the history of Chinese society — a time when no man had to live in fear of the midnight knock on the door.”
― Chris Patten, East and West