The Scottish Communist is a much misunderstood person. When he is a true Caledonian, and not a Pole or an Irishman, he is simply the lineal descendan… - John Buchan
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The Scottish Communist is a much misunderstood person. When he is a true Caledonian, and not a Pole or an Irishman, he is simply the lineal descendant of the old Radical. The Scottish Radical was a man who held a set of inviolable principles on which he was entirely unable to compromise. It did not matter what the principles were; the point was that they were like the laws of Sinai, which could not be added to or subtracted from. When the Liberal party began to compromise, he joined Labour; when Labour began to compromise, by a natural transition he became a Communist. Temperamentally he has not changed. He is simply the stuff which in the seventeenth century made the unyielding Covenanter, and in the eighteenth the inflexible Jacobite. He is honesty incarnate, but his mind lacks flexibility.
John Buchan, 1st Baron Tweedsmuir (26 August 1875 – 11 February 1940) was a Scottish novelist, poet, and politician who was Governor-General of Canada from 1935 to 1940.
Biography information from
Wikiquote·
Portrait adapted from
Wikimedia Commons, Bassano Ltd (Public domain / CC0)
Also Known As
Native Name:
John Buchan, 1. Baron Tweedsmuir
Alternative Names:
Lord Tweedsmuir
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Sir John Buchan
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John Buchan, 1st Baron Tweedsmuir
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John Buchan, Baron Tweedsmuir
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Our ignorance of the future has been wisely ordained of Heaven. For unless man were to be like God and know everything, it is better that he should know nothing. If he knows one fact only, instead of profiting by it he will assuredly land in the soup.