Rory Stewart
Rory Stewart
Roderick James Nugent 'Rory' Stewart, OBE, FRSLis a British academic, author, diplomat, documentary maker and Conservative politician currently serving as a Minister of State at the Department for International Development. He is a former Chair of the House of Commons Defence Select Committee. Since May 2010, he has been the Member of Parliament for Penrith and The Border, in the county of Cumbria, North West England...
NationalityBritish
ProfessionPolitician
Date of Birth3 January 1973
democracy dignity equality government individual matters reflects
Democracy matters because it reflects an idea of equality and an idea of liberty. It reflects an idea of dignity, the dignity of the individual, the idea that each individual should have an equal vote, an equal say, in the formation of their government.
connecting connects interested places
I like connecting to places by foot, and I'm interested in experiencing how somewhere like Crieff connects to somewhere like London.
family love
I want to 'normalise' myself. I would love to have a family.
bit
Being a backbench MP is a bit of an anti-climax for a superhero.
fixing stuff
I did stuff for three years in Kabul that I found exciting, and a lot of that was fixing roofs, talking about sewage installation.
mind democracy states
Democracy is not simply a question of structures. It is a state of mind. It is an activity.
international-relations interventionism can-do
The question shouldn't be what we ought to do, but what we can do.
want poverty doe
I have never met a villager who does not want a vote.
motivation inspiration law
The point about democracy is not that it delivers legitimate, effective, prosperous rule of law. It's not that it guarantees peace with itself or with its neighbors. ... Democracy matters because it reflects an idea of equality.
fighting democracy statistics
Despite the dubious statistics … democracy is a thing of value for which we should be fighting.
ideas invisible inevitable
This idea that failure is not an option: It makes failure invisible, inconceivable and inevitable.
distance journey men
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.
democracy politician ifs
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.
scotland leaving magic
I had been walking one afternoon in Scotland and thought: Why don't I just keep going? There was, I said, a magic in leaving a line of footprints stretching across Asia.