"...I mean an ancient, healthy, capricious despot, not a miserable, modern official trembling in the middle of all the telephones of Europe..."

If I were a despot (I mean an ancient, healthy, capricious despot, not a miserable, modern official trembling in the middle of all the telephones of Europe) I should be strongly inclined not to suppress certain beliefs, but to suppress certain words. I do not mean terms of abuse; those I might even encourage. I mean certain phrases which are used as terms of abuse, but also convey the impression of having some precise ethical or scientific meaning, when, as a fact, they have practically no meaning at all. I would allow my Prime Minister to call the Leader of the Opposition a traitor. For that is a precise term with a fixed moral meaning, and the other man might bring an action or a big stick. But I would not allow the Prime Minister to call him a Pro-Boer; because that is a phrase meanly selected for its doubtfulness and double-meaning; it might imply anything from pitying a Dutch widow to living on Kruger's bank-notes. Similarly I would permit my Court Prophet to tell my Court Priest that he was telling blasphemous lies. But I could not permit him to tell the priest that he was enunciating out-worn dogmas; for that is trying to discredit a man without really saying anything intelligble about him. I should allow the people to call my Commander-in-chief a murderer, but not to call him a "militarist." I should permit (nay, encourage) a journalist to be called silly, but not to be called paradoxical. After a few years of my severe but beneficient reign words that have wholly lost any working meaning might almost have withered out of the land, and the English race might have begun to think once more.

-January 30, 1909, Illustrated London News