Quotes from Rory Stewart

Unlike most travel writers, he [Babur] is honest.

In the mountains, travelers were reduced to the speed of men on foot. Here, the ancient English sense of journey, 'a day's travel' (French journee ), meant the same as the Old Persian word farsang , 'the distance a man could travel on foot in a day,' and the territory was in effect ungovernable.

If democracy is to be rebuilt … it is necessary not just for the public to learn to trust their politicians, but for the politicians to learn to trust the public.

Genghis Khan's 'arrow messengers' could travel 450 kilometers a day.

Everyone had memorized a chant of names and villages along footpaths in every direction. This was a very useful map.

Perhaps it is because no one requires more than a charming illusion of action in the developing world. If policy makers know little about Afghanistan, the public knows even less, and few care about policy failure when the effects are felt only in Afghanistan.

He [Babur] was a type of mastiff, bred to fight against wolves, dogs, and humans. . . . The mastiff is perhaps the oldest breed of dog in the world. . . . The dogs of Ghor . . . were always regarded as particularly special mastiffs. . . . 'so powerful that in frame and strength every one of them is a match for a lion.

I recited and followed this song-of-the-places-in-between as a map.

As we walked past a quad bike chained to a farm gate, he remarked "It's such a pity how times have changed. You can't leave a piece of machinery out on the road any more." He seemed to have forgotten that he had just been describing a time when you couldn't leave you cattle out.

The owl loves its nest in the ruins, The Huma revels in making kings, The falcon will not leave the King's hand, And the wagtail pleads weakness.2

He [Babur] was a ype of mastiff, bred to fight against wolves, dogs, and humans. . . . The mastiff is perhaps the oldest breed of dog in the world. . . . The dogs of Ghor . . . were always regarded as particularly special mastiffs. . . . 'so powerful that in frame and strength every one of them is a match for a lion.

Steep curving stone stairs led to a square library on the floor above. The 4,000 books in the library were mostly collected between 1710 and 1730. ... For a moment I was tempted to ask to be locked in. If I could skim ten books a day for a year, I would be able to get a sense of most of what David Hume might have read in 1730 -- an age when it still might just have been possible to read everything.

For politicians to be honest, the public needs to allow them to be honest, and the media, which mediates between the politicians and the public, needs to allow those politicians to be honest. If local democracy is to flourish, it is about the active and informed engagement of every citizen.

It was a bit of a surprise when I became a Tory MP. My friends said it was a stupid idea.

I have not met, in Afghanistan, in even the most remote community, anybody who does not want a say in who governs them. Most remote community, I have never met a villager who does not want a vote.

I found that Scottishness and Englishness are actually strong, instinctive things, whatever the historical reasons. Even the accent changes - just two inches across the border.

The politicians think the journalists have power, the journalists think bankers have power, bankers think lawyers have power. The truth is, nobody has power.

In the British embassy in Afghanistan in 2008, an embassy of 350 people, there were only three people who could speak Dari, the main language of Afghanistan, at a decent level. And there was not a single Pashto speaker.

I am from Scotland, and I am Christian, not Muslim.

The thing that interests me most about Scotland is how we differ from our neighbours. How do our ambitions differ? What kind of society are we? What can we learn from the mistakes of the past, and how do we position ourselves in the world?

If we say the purpose of life is our children, that's neither a purpose nor a meaning. But I'm sure I will be as besotted as everybody else when I have them.

Nostalgia for dead tyrants and the longing for heroes are unhealthy, and they can result in the deification of a Saddam as easily as a Havel or Mandela.

I had a lot of romantic notions about what it would mean to cross Asia by foot.

Politics feels, on what I have seen of it, like joining a tribe, and a lot of it is about unspoken ways of behaving.