Educators from England

"If you wish to be like a little child, study what a little child could understand — nature; and do what a little child could do — love."

"So give me the political economist, the sanitary reformer, the engineer; and take your saints and virgins, relics and miracles. The spinning-jenny and the railroad, Cunard's liners and the electric telegraph, are to me, if not to you, signs that we are, on some points at least, in harmony with the universe; that there is a mighty spirit working among us, who cannot be your anarchic and destroying Devil, and therefore may be the Ordering and Creating God."

"Hold on yet awhile. More ways of killing a cat than choking her with cream."

"Science frees us in many ways...from the bodily terror which the savage feels. But she replaces that, in the minds of many, by a moral terror which is far more overwhelming."

"Tell us not that the world is governed by universal law; the news is not comfortable, but simply horrible, unless you can tell us, or allow others to tell us, that there is a loving giver, and a just administrator of that law."

"Don't holla till you are out of the wood. This is a night for praying rather than boasting."

"I have fought my fight, I have lived my life, I have drunk my share of wine; From Trier to Coln there was never a knight Led a merrier life than mine."

"For to be discontented with the divine discontent, and to be ashamed with the noble shame, is the very germ and first upgrowth of all virtue."

"I am haunted by the human chimpanzees I saw [in Ireland] . . . I don't believe they are our fault. . . . But to see white chimpanzees is dreadful; if they were black, one would not feel it so much. . . .""

"All but God is changing day by day."

"Toil is the true knight's pastime."

"Changeless march the stars above, Changeless morn succeeds to even; And the everlasting hills, Changeless watch the changeless heaven."

"Oh! that we two were Maying."

"Oh! that we two lay sleeping, Under the churchyard sod; With our limbs at rest on the quiet earth's breast, And our souls at home with God!"

"Are gods more ruthless than mortals? Have they no mercy for youth? no love for the souls who have loved them?"

"'O Mary, go and call the cattle home, And call the cattle home, And call the cattle home Across the sands of Dee;' The western wind was wild and dank with foam, And all alone went she."

"They rowed her in across the rolling foam, The cruel crawling foam, The cruel hungry foam, To her grave beside the sea: But still the boatmen hear her call the cattle home Across the sands of Dee."

"For men must work, and women must weep, And there's little to earn, and many to keep, Though the harbor bar be moaning."

"And the sooner it's over, the sooner to sleep— And good-bye to the bar and its moaning."

"Sad, sad to think that the year is all but done."

"Be good, sweet maid, and let who will be clever; Do noble things, not dream them, all day long: And so make life, death, and that vast for-ever One grand, sweet song."

"The world goes up and the world goes down, And the sunshine follows the rain; And yesterday's sneer and yesterday's frown Can never come over again."

"Pain is no evil, Unless it conquers us."

"Fools! who fancy Christ mistaken; Man a tool to buy and sell; Earth a failure, God-forsaken, Anteroom of Hell."

"In the light of fuller day, Of purer science, holier laws."

"Clear and cool, clear and cool, By laughing shallow, and dreaming pool."

"When all the world is young, lad, And all the trees are green; And every goose a swan, lad, And every lass a queen; Then hey for boot and horse, lad, And round the world away; Young blood must have its course, lad, And every dog his day."

"When all the world is old, lad, And all the trees are brown; And all the sport is stale, lad, And all the wheels run down; Creep home, and take your place there, The spent and maimed among:— God grant you find one face there, You loved when all was young."

"[A] man may learn from his Bible to be a more thorough gentleman than if he had been brought up in all the drawing-rooms in London."

"And I am very ugly. I am the ugliest fairy in the world; and I shall be, till people behave themselves as they ought to do. And then I shall grow as handsome as my sister, who is the loveliest fairy in the world; and her name is Mrs. Doasyouwouldbedoneby. So she begins where I end, and I begin where she ends; and those who will not listen to her must listen to me, as you will see."

"Nothing like one honest look, one honest thought of Christ upon His cross. That tells us how much He has been through, how much He endured, how much He conquered, how much God loved us, who spared not His only begotten Son, but freely gave Him for us. Dare we doubt such a God? Dare we murmur against such a God?"

"And what is the joy of Christ? The joy and delight which springs forever in His great heart, from feeling that He is forever doing good; from loving all, and living for all; from knowing that if not all, yet millions on millions are grateful to Him, and will be forever."

"Never trample on any soul though it may be lying in the veriest mire; for that last spark of self-respect is its only hope, its only chance; the last seed of a new and better life: — the voice of God that whispers to it: "You are not what you ought to be, and you are not what you can be. You are still God's child, still an immortal soul. You may rise yet. and fight a good fight yet, and be a man once more, after the likeness of God who made you, and Christ who died for you!""

"The health of a church depends not merely on the creed which it professes, not even on the wisdom and holiness of a few great ecclesiastics, but on the faith and virtue of its individual members."

"And how high is Christ's cross? As high as the highest heaven, and the throne of God, and the bosom of the Father — that bosom out of which forever proceed all created things. Ay, as high as the highest heaven! for — if you will receive it — when Christ hung upon the cross, heaven came down on earth, and earth ascended into heaven."

"This is eternal life; a life of everlasting love, showing itself in everlasting good works; and whosoever lives that life, he lives the life of God, and hath eternal life."

"The righteousness which is by faith in Christ is a loving heart and a loving life, which every man will long to lead who believes really in Jesus Christ."

"Ah, my friends, we must look out and around to see what God is like. It is when we persist in turning our eyes inward, and prying curiously over our own imperfections, that we learn to make God after our own image, and fancy that our own darkness and hardness of heart are the patterns of His light and love."

"Whatever may be the mysteries of life and death, there is one mystery which the cross of Christ reveals to us, and that is the infinite and absolute goodness of God. Let all the rest remain a mystery so long as the mystery of the cross of Christ gives us faith for all the rest."

"If thou art fighting against thy sins, so is God. On thy side is God who made all, and Christ who died for all and the Spirit who alone gives wisdom, purity, and nobleness."

"Do you feel that you have lost your way in life? Then God Himself will show you your way. Are you utterly helpless, worn out, body and soul? Then God's eternal love is ready and willing to help you up, and revive you. Are you wearied with doubts and terrors? Then God's eternal light is ready to show you your way; God's eternal peace ready to give you peace. Do you feel yourself full of sins and faults? Then take heart; for God's unchangeable will is, to take away those sins, and purge you from those faults."

"Let us ask ourselves seriously and honestly, " What do I believe after all? What manner of man am I after all? What sort of show would I make after all, if the people around me knew my heart and all my secret thoughts?" What sort of show then do I already make in the sight of Almighty God, who sees every man exactly as he is?"

"Take comfort, and recollect however little you and I may know, God knows; He knows Himself and you and me and all things; and His mercy is over all His works."

"I believe not only in "special providences," but in the whole universe as one infinite complexity of "special providences.""

"Let us be content to do little, if God sets us at little tasks. It is but pride and self-will which says, "Give me something huge to fight, — and I should enjoy that — but why make me sweep the dust?""

"Do not fancy, as too many do, that thou canst praise God by singing hymns to Him in church once a week, and disobeying Him all the week long. He asks of thee works as well as words; and more, He asks of thee works first and words after."

"And therefore let us say, in utter faith, "Come as Thou seest best — but in whatsoever way Thou comest — even so come, Lord Jesus.""

"Born in the same year as the Queen, Kingsley typifies the Victorian man as closely as she presents the Victorian woman. He shared most of her fundamental principles. He believed in England, in the Empire, in the Established Church; in the ennobling influence of womanhood and the sanctity of the home; in a good God guiding the universe and each of its individual inhabitants; in the spiritual brotherhood of men within a benevolent aristocracy; in evolutionary progress and the compatibility of science and religion."

"Every one who is fond of reading books of travel in the tropics must know what it is like to long for an hour or two of real life in a virgin forest, or in the boundless expanses of the pampas, or even in the depths of a mangrove swamp. We would willingly put up with mosquitoes and "piums" and poisonous ants, if we could but see that world for ourselves which Darwin and and Wallace and have made almost, but not quite, a reality for us. Charles Kingsley had this ambition all his life, and was able in the end to indulge it. His enthusiastic delight at what he saw in the West Indies made him more than usually eloquent, and his chapter on the "High Woods" marks perhaps the highest point which a traveller's descriptive power can reach."

"I think sir, since you care for the advice of an old man, sir, you will find it a very good practise, always to verify your references, sir!"

"It will lead to nothing, I fear, sir"

"But I know, my friends, that you may object to me what St. Irenaeus says."

"Wait, sir, until I am gone!"

"Be Prepared."

"The secret of sound education is to get each pupil to learn for himself, instead of instructing him by driving knowledge into him on a stereotyped system."

"I went and saw a lot of them at their daily practice of fencing with bamboo sticks and practicing jiu-jitsu to make themselves strong and active and good-tempered. I say good-tempered because it is very much like boxing; you have to take a good many hard knocks and take them smiling. If a fellow lost his temper at it, everybody would laugh at him and think him a fool. In jiu-jitsu they learn how to exercise and how to develop their muscles, how to catch hold of an enemy in many different ways so as to overpower him, how to throw him and, what is very important, how to fall easily if they get thrown themselves. I expect the Scouts of Japan, if they visit England later on, will be able to show us a thing or two in this line."

"Scouting is not an abstruse or difficult science: rather it is a jolly game if you take it in the right light. In the same time it is educative, and (like Mercy) it is apt to benefit him that giveth as well as him that receives."

"The Scoutmaster guides the boy in the spirit of an older brother.... He has simply to be a boy-man, that is: (1) He must have the boy spirit in him: and must be able to place himself in the right plane with his boys as a first step. (2) He must realise the needs, outlooks and desires of the different ages of boy life. (3) He must deal with the individual boy rather than with the mass. (4) He then needs to promote a corporate spirit among his individuals to gain the best results."

"It is the Patrol System that makes the Troop, and all Scouting for that matter, a real co-operative matter."

"If a man cannot make his point to keen boys in ten minutes, he ought to be shot!"

"No one can pass through life, any more than he can pass through a bit of country, without leaving tracks behind, and those tracks may often be helpful to those coming after him in finding their way."

"The most worth-while thing is to try to put happiness into the lives of others."

"Somewhere about 1893 I started teaching Scouting to young soldiers in my regiment. When these young fellows joined the Army they had learned reading, writing, and arithmetic in school but as a rule not much else. They were nice lads and made very good parade soldiers, obeyed orders, kept themselves clean and smart and all that, but they had never been taught to be men, how to look after themselves, how to take responsibility, and so on. They had not had my chances of education outside the classroom. They had been brought up in the herd at school, they were trained as a herd in the Army; they simply did as they were told and had no ideas or initiative of their own. In action they carried out orders, but if their officer was shot they were as helpless as a flock of sheep. Tell one of them to ride out alone with a message on a dark night and ten to one he would lose his way. I wanted to make them feel that they were a match for any enemy, able to find their way by the stars or map, accustomed to notice all tracks and signs and to read their meaning, and able to fend for themselves away from regimental cooks and barracks."

"Leave this world a little better than you found it."

"Here is the hatchet of war, of enmity, of bad feeling, which I now bury in Arrowe," said the Chief, at the same time plunging a hatchet in the midst of a barrel of golden arrows." "From all corners of the earth," said the Chief as soon as the cheering had subsided "you have journeyed to this great gathering of World Fellowship and Brotherhood. Today I send you out from Arrowe to all the World, bearing my symbol of Peace and Fellowship, each one of you my ambassador bearing my message of Love and Fellowship on the wings of Sacrifice and Service, to the end of the Earth. From now on the Scout symbol of Peace is the Golden Arrow. Carry it fast and far so that all men may know the Brotherhood of Man." "To THE NORTH—From the Northlands you came at the call of my horn to this great gathering of Fellowship and Brotherhood." "Today I send you back to your homelands across the great North Seas as my Ambassadors of Peace and Fellowship among the Nations of the World." "I bid you farewell." "TO THE SOUTH—From the Southland you came at the call of my horn to this great gathering of Fellowship and Brotherhood." "Today I send you back to your homes under the Southern Cross as my Ambassadors of Peace and Fellowship among the Nations of the World." "I bid you farewell." "TO THE WEST—From the Westlands you came at the call of my horn to this great gathering of Fellowship and Brotherhood." "Today I send you back to your homes in the Great Westlands to the Pacific and beyond as my Ambassadors of Peace and Fellowship among the Nations of the World." "I bid you farewell." "TO THE EAST—From the Eastlands you came at the call of my horn to this great gathering of Fellowship and Brotherhood." "Today I send you back to your homes under the Starry Skies and Burning Suns to your people of the thousand years, bearing my symbol of Peace and Fellowship to the Nations of the Earth, pledging you to keep my trust." "I bid you farewell."

"Happiness is not mere pleasure, not the outcome of wealth. It is the result of active work rather than passive enjoyment of pleasure."

"Aristotle him selfe sayeth, that medicines be no meate to lyue withall."

"There is no such whetstone, to sharpen a good wit and encourage a will to learning, as is praise."

"The Herr Doctor does not know about peoples."

"The man who tells the tale if he has a tale worth telling will know exactly what he is about and this business of the artist as a sort of starry-eyed inspired creature, dancing along, with his feet two or three feet above the surface of the earth, not really knowing what sort of prints he's leaving behind him, is nothing like the truth."

"Basically I'm an optimist. Intellectually I can see man's balance is about fifty-fifty, and his chances of blowing himself up are about one to one. I can't see this any way but intellectually. I'm just emotionally unable to believe that he will do this. This means that I am by nature an optimist and by intellectual conviction a pessimist, I suppose."

"The theme is an attempt to trace the defects of society back to the defects of human nature. The moral is that the shape of a society must depend on the ethical nature of the individual and not on any political system however apparently logical or respectable. The whole book is symbolic in nature except the rescue in the end where adult life appears, dignified and capable, but in reality enmeshed in the same evil as the symbolic life of the children on the island. The officer, having interrupted a man-hunt, prepares to take the children off the island in a cruiser which will presently be hunting its enemy in the same implacable way. And who will rescue the adult and his cruiser?"

"One day I was sitting one side of the fireplace, and my wife was sitting on the other, and I suddenly said to her, “Wouldn’t it be a good idea to write a story about some boys on an island, showing how they would really behave, being boys and not little saints as they usually are in children’s books.” And she said, “That’s a first-class idea! You write it!” So I went ahead and wrote it."

"I think women are foolish to pretend they are equal to men — they are far superior and always have been."

"Reason, when it is refined into logic, has something to offer but only in terms of itself and depends for its effect and use on the nature of the premise. That useful argument as to how many angels can stand on the point of a needle would turn into nothing without the concept of angels. I took a further step into my new world. I formulated what I had felt against a mass of reasonable evidence and saw that to explain the near infinite mysteries of life by scholastic Darwinism, by the doctrine of natural selection, was like looking at a sunset and saying "Someone has struck a match". As for Freud, the reductionism of his system made me remember the refrain out of Marianna in Moated Grande — "He cometh not, she said, she said I am aweary aweary, O God that I were dead!". This was my mind, not his, and I had a right to it.... We question free will, doubt it, dismiss it, experience it. We declare our own triviality on a small speck of dirt circling a small star at the rim of one countless galaxies and ignore the heroic insolence of the declaration. We have diminished the world of God and man in a universe ablaze with all the glories that contradict that diminution. Of man and God. We have come to it, have we not? I believe in God; and you may think to yourselves — here is a man who has left a procession and gone off by himself only to end with another gasfilled image he towns round with him at the end of the rope. You would be right of course. I suffer those varying levels or intensities of belief which are, it seems, the human condition. Despite the letters I still get from people who believe me to be still alive and who are deceived by the air of confident authority that seems to stand behind that first book, Lord of the Flies, nevertheless like everyone else I have had to rely on memories of moments, bet on what once seemed a certainty but may now be an outsider, remember in faith what I cannot recreate."

"The writer probably knows what he meant when he wrote a book, but he should immediately forget what he meant when he's written it."

"I don’t like the word "allegorical", I don’t like the word "symbolic", the word I really like is "mythic" and people always think that means "full of lies" when what it really means is full of a truth that cannot be told in any other way but a story."

"It seems to me that we do live in two worlds. There is is this physical one, which is coherent, and there is a spiritual one, which to the average man, with his flashes of religious experience, if you like to call them that — that world is very often incoherent. This experience of having two worlds to live in all the time, or… not all the time, occasionally, is a vital one and is what living is like."

"Aren't there any grownups at all?" "I don't think so." The fair boy said this solemnly; but then the delight of a realized ambition overcame him. In the middle of the scar he stood on his head and grinned at the reversed fat boy. "No grownups!"

""Aren't you going to swim?" Piggy shook his head. "I can't swim. I wasn't allowed. My asthma—" "Sucks to your ass-mar!" Piggy bore this with a kind of humble patience."

""We can use this to call the others. Have a meeting. They’ll come when they hear us—" He beamed at Ralph. "That was what you meant, didn't you? That's why you got the conch out of the water." Ralph pushed back his fair hair. "How did your friend blow the conch?" "He kind of spat," said Piggy. "My auntie wouldn't let me blow on account of my asthma. He said you blew from down here." Piggy laid a hand on his jutting abdomen. "You try, Ralph. You'll call the others." Doubtfully, Ralph laid the small end of the shell against his mouth and blew. There came a rushing sound from its mouth but nothing more. Ralph wiped the salt water off his lips and tried again, but the shell remained silent. "He kind of spat." Ralph pursed his lips and squirted air into the shell, which emitted a low, farting noise. This amused both boys so much that Ralph went on squirting for some minutes, between bouts of laughter. "He blew from down here." Ralph grasped the idea and hit the shell with air from his diaphragm. Immediately the thing sounded. A deep, harsh note boomed under the palms, spread through the intricacies of the forest and echoed back from the pink granite of the mountain. Clouds of birds rose from the treetops, and something squealed and ran in the undergrowth."

""You couldn't have a beastie, a snake-thing, on an island this size," Ralph explained kindly. "You only get them in big countries, like Africa, or India." Murmur; and the grave nodding of heads. "He says the beastie came in the dark." "Then he couldn't see it!" Laughter and cheers. "Did you hear that? Says he saw the thing in the dark—" "He still says he saw the beastie. It came and went away again an' came back and wanted to eat him." "He was dreaming." Laughing, Ralph looked for confirmation round the ring of faces. The older boys agreed; but here and there among the little ones was the doubt that required more than rational assurance. "He must have had a nightmare. Stumbling about among all those creepers." More grave nodding. They knew about nightmares. "He says he saw the beastie, the snake-thing, and will it come back tonight?" "But there isn't a beastie!" "He says in the morning it turned into them things like ropes in the trees and hung in the branches. He says will it come back again tonight?" "But there isn't a beastie!" There was no laughter at all now and more grave watching. Ralph pushed both hands through his hair and looked at the little boy in mixed amusement and exasperation."

"Ralph waved the conch. "Shut up! Wait! Listen!" He went on in the silence, borne on in his triumph. "There’s another thing. We can help them to find us. If a ship comes near the island they may not notice us. So we must make smoke on top of the mountain. We must make a fire." "A fire! Make a fire!" At once half the boys were on their feet. Jack clamored among them, the conch forgotten. "Come on! Follow me!" The space under the palm trees was full of noise and movement. Ralph was on his feet too, shouting for quiet, but no one heard him. All at once the crowd swayed toward the island and was gone— following Jack. Even the tiny children went and did their best among the leaves and broken branches. Ralph was left, holding the conch, with no one but Piggy."

"How can you expect to be rescued if you don’t put first things first and act proper?"

"The chant was audible but at that distance still wordless. Behind Jack walked the twins, carrying a great stake on their shoulders. The gutted carcass of a pig swung from the stake, swinging heavily as the twins toiled over the uneven ground. The pig's head hung down with gaping neck and seemed to search for something on the ground. At last the words of the chant floated up to them, across the bowl of blackened wood and ashes. "Kill the pig! Cut her throat! Spill the blood!" Yet as the words became audible, the procession reached the steepest part of the mountain, and in a minute or two the chant had died away."

"His mind was crowded with memories; memories of the knowledge that had come to them when they closed in on the struggling pig, knowledge that they had outwitted a living thing, imposed their will upon it, taken away its life like a long satisfying drink."

"Jack stood up as he said this, the bloodied knife in his hand. The two boys faced each other. There was the brilliant world of hunting, tactics, fierce exhilaration, skill; and there was the world of longing and baffled common-sense."

"The rules!" shouted Ralph, "you're breaking the rules!" "Who cares?" Ralph summoned his wits. "Because the rules are the only thing we've got!" But Jack was shouting against him. "Bollocks to the rules! We're strong — we hunt! If there's a beast, we'll hunt it down! We'll close in and beat and beat and beat — !"

"I'm scared of him," said Piggy, "and that's why I know him. If you're scared of someone you hate him but you can't stop thinking about him. You kid yourself he's alright really, an' then when you see him again; it's like asthma an' you can't breathe. I tell you what. He hates you too, Ralph —" "Me? Why me?" "I dunno. You got him over the fire; an' you're chief an' he isn't." "But he's Jack Merridew!" "I been in bed so much I done some thinking. I know about people. I know about me. And him. He can't hurt you: but if you're standing out of the way he'd hurt the next thing. And that's me." "Piggy's right, Ralph. There's you and Jack. Go on being chief."

"However Simon thought of the beast, there rose before his inward sight the picture of a human at once heroic and sick."

""You want a pig," said Roger, "like in a real hunt." "Or someone to pretend," said Jack. "You could get someone to dress up as a pig and then he could act — you know, pretend to knock me over and all that —" "You want a real pig," said Robert, still caressing his rump, "because you've got to kill him." "Use a littlun," said Jack, and everybody laughed."

"Jack was on top of the sow, stabbing downward with his knife. Roger found a lodgment for his point and began to push till he was leaning his whole weight. The spear moved forward inch by inch and the terrified squealing became a high-pitched scream. Then Jack found the throat and the hot blood spouted over his hands. The sow collapsed under them and they were heavy and fulfilled upon her. The butterflies still danced, preoccupied in the center of the clearing."

"He paused and stood up, looking at the shadows under the trees. His voice was lower when he spoke again. "But we'll leave part of the kill for …" He knelt down again and was busy with his knife. The boys crowded round him. He spoke over his shoulder to Roger. "Sharpen a stick at both ends." Presently he stood up, holding the dripping sow's head in his hands. "Where's that stick?" "Here." "Ram one end in the earth. Oh — it's rock. Jam it in that crack. There." Jack held the head and jammed the soft throat down on the pointed end of the stick which pierced through into the mouth. He stood back and the head hung there, a little blood dribbling down the stick." Instinctively the boys drew back too; and the forest was very still. They listened, and the loudest noise was the buzzing of the flies over the spilled guts.""

"Simon's head was tilted slightly up. His eyes could not break away and the Lord of the Flies hung in space before him. "What are you doing out here all alone? Aren't you afraid of me?" Simon shook. "There isn't anyone to help you. Only me. And I'm the Beast." Simon's mouth labored, brought forth audible words. "Pig's head on a stick." "Fancy thinking the Beast was something you could hunt and kill! You knew, didn't you?" said the head. For a moment or two the forest and all the other dimly appreciated places echoed with the parody of laughter. "You knew, didn't you? I'm part of you? Close, close, close! I'm the reason why it’s no go? Why things are what they are?""

"Kill the beast! Cut his throat! Spill his blood! Do him in!"

"Ralph heard the great rock long before he saw it. He was aware of a jolt in the earth that came to him through the soles of his feet, and the breaking sound of stones at the top of the cliff. Then the monstrous red thing bounded across the neck and he flung himself flat while the tribe shrieked. The rock struck Piggy a glancing blow from chin to knee; the conch exploded into a thousand white fragments and ceased to exist. Piggy, saying nothing, with no time for even a grunt, travelled through the air sideways from the rock, turning over as he went. The rock bounded twice and was lost in the forest. Piggy fell forty feet and landed on his back across that square, red rock in the sea. His head opened and stuff came out and turned red. Piggy's arms and legs twitched a bit, like a pig's after it has been killed. Then the sea breathed again in a long, slow sigh, the water boiled white and pink over the rock; and when it went, sucking back again, the body of Piggy was gone. This time the silence was complete. Ralph's lips formed a word but no sound came. Suddenly Jack bounded out from the tribe and began screaming wildly. "See? See? That's what you'll get! I meant that! There isn't a tribe for you any more! The conch is gone —" He ran forward, stooping. "I'm Chief!""

"What was the sensible thing to do? There was no Piggy to talk sense. There was no solemn assembly for debate nor dignity of the conch."

"His voice rose under the black smoke before the burning wreckage of the island; and infected by that emotion, the other little boys began to shake and sob too. And in the middle of them, with filthy body, matted hair, and unwiped nose, Ralph wept for the end of innocence, the darkness of man's heart, and the fall through the air of the true, wise friend called Piggy."

"I will tell you what man is. He is a freak, an ejected foetus robbed of his natural development, thrown out into the world with a naked covering of parchment, with too little room for his teeth and a soft bulging skull like a bubble. But nature stirs a pudding there..."

"Sleep is when all unsorted stuff comes as from a dustbin upset in a high wind."

"The overall intention may be stated simply enough. Before the Second World War I believed in the perfectibility of social man; that a correct structure of society would produce goodwill; and that therefore you could remove all social ills by a reorganisation of society. It is possible that today I believe something of the same again; but after the war I did not because I was unable to. I had discovered what one man could do to another... I am thinking of the vileness beyond all words that went on, year after year, in the totalitarian states. It is bad enough to say that so many Jews were exterminated in this way and that, so many people liquidated — lovely, elegant word — but there were things done during that period from which I still have to avert my mind less I should be physically sick. They were not done by the headhunters of New Guinea or by some primitive tribe in the Amazon. They were done, skillfully, coldly, by educated men, doctors, lawyers, by men with a tradition of civilization behind them, to beings of their own kind. ...anyone who moved through those years without understanding that man produces evil as a bee produces honey, must have been blind or wrong in the head. ...How did... idealist... socialism turn into Stalinism? How could the political and philosophical idealism of Germany produce... the rule of Adolf Hitler? My own conviction... men were putting the cart before the horse. They were looking at the system rather than the people. ...man’s capacity for greed, his innate cruelty and selfishness was being hidden behind a ...pair of political pants. I believed then, that man was sick — not exceptional man, but average man. ...that the condition of man was to be a morally diseased creation and that the best job I could do ...was to trace the connection between his diseased nature and the international mess he gets himself into. To many... this will seem trite, obvious, and familiar in theological terms. Man is a fallen being. He is gripped by . His nature is sinful and his state is perilous. I accept the theology and admit the triteness; but what is trite is true; and a truism can become more than a truism when it is a belief passionately held. ...I can say here in America what I should not like to say at home; which is that I condemn and detest my country's faults precisely because I am so proud of her many virtues. One of our faults is to believe that evil is somewhere else and inherent in another nation. My book was to say: you think that now the war is over and an evil thing destroyed, you are safe because you are naturally kind and decent. But I know why the thing rose in Germany. I know it could happen in any country. It could happen here."

"Words may, through the devotion, the skill, the passion, and the luck of writers prove to be the most powerful thing in the world. They may move men to speak to each other because some of those words somewhere express not just what the writer is thinking but what a huge segment of the world is thinking. They may allow man to speak to man, the man in the street to speak to his fellow until a ripple becomes a tide running through every nation — of commonsense, of simple healthy caution, a tide that rulers and negotiators cannot ignore so that nation does truly speak unto nation. Then there is hope that we may learn to be temperate, provident, taking no more from nature's treasury than is our due. It may be by books, stories, poetry, lectures we who have the ear of mankind can move man a little nearer the perilous safety of a warless and provident world. It cannot be done by the mechanical constructs of overt propaganda. I cannot do it myself, cannot now create stories which would help to make man aware of what he is doing; but there are others who can, many others. There always have been. We need more humanity, more care, more love. There are those who expect a political system to produce that; and others who expect the love to produce the system. My own faith is that the truth of the future lies between the two and we shall behave humanly and a bit humanely, stumbling along, haphazardly generous and gallant, foolishly and meanly wise until the rape of our planet is seen to be the preposterous folly that it is. For we are a marvel of creation. I think in particular of one of the most extraordinary women, dead now these five hundred years, Juliana of Norwich. She was caught up in the spirit and shown a thing that might lie in the palm of her hand and in the bigness of a nut. She was told it was the world. She was told of the strange and wonderful and awful things that would happen there. At the last, a voice told her that all things should be well and all manner of things should be well and all things should be very well. Now we, if not in the spirit, have been caught up to see our earth, our mother, Gaia Mater, set like a jewel in space. We have no excuse now for supposing her riches inexhaustible nor the area we have to live on limitless because unbounded. We are the children of that great blue white jewel. Through our mother we are part of the solar system and part through that of the whole universe. In the blazing poetry of the fact we are children of the stars."

"While it may be proper to praise the idea of a laureate the man himself may very well remember what his laurels will hide and that not only baldness. In a sentence he must remember not to take himself with unbecoming seriousness. Fortunately some spirit or other — I do not presume to put a name to it — ensured that I should remember my smallness in the scheme of things. The very day after I learned that I was the laureate for literature for 1983 I drove into a country town and parked my car where I should not. I only left the car for a few minutes but when I came back there was a ticket taped to the window. A traffic warden, a lady of a minatory aspect, stood by the car. She pointed to a notice on the wall. "Can't you read?" she said. Sheepishly I got into my car and drove very slowly round the corner. There on the pavement I saw two county policemen. I stopped opposite them and took my parking ticket out of its plastic envelope. They crossed to me. I asked if, as I had pressing business, I could go straight to the Town Hall and pay my fine on the spot. "No, sir," said the senior policeman, "I'm afraid you can't do that." He smiled the fond smile that such policemen reserve for those people who are clearly harmless if a bit silly. He indicated a rectangle on the ticket that had the words 'name and address of sender' printed above it. "You should write your name and address in that place," he said. "You make out a cheque for ten pounds, making it payable to the Clerk to the Justices at this address written here. Then you write the same address on the outside of the envelope, stick a sixteen penny stamp in the top right hand corner of the envelope, then post it. And may we congratulate you on winning the Nobel Prize for Literature.""

"Beautifully written, tragic and provocative."

"I have just had a wonderful pre-read of The Spire and it is a wonderful book. I also congratulate you. The last part – anyhow after the Visitor's part – went away from me, but even then the sense of human individuals was maintained. And all through – and this is its great (literary) merit – there is the sense of weight – stone weight. I have only once come across it before in a novel called The Nebuly Coat (author's name forgotten) but there it is only incidental – the central pillars groan to each other despairingly in the night – but in The Spire it's continuous. But how I do deplore Christianity. A Hindu or Egyptian building wouldn't have created half that trouble or been so riddled by that sense of sin."

"[The Inheritors is] a prose quite astounding in its poetic clarity...the most astonishing and original tour de force I have seen since I first reviewed a novel. Mr Golding is a genius."

"I was … unprepared for what I found between the covers of Lord of the Flies: a perfect understanding of the sort of beings I and my friends were at twelve or thirteen, untouched by the usual softsoap and deodorant. Could we be good? Yes. Could we be kind? Yes again. Could we, at the turn of a moment, become little monsters? Indeed we could. And did. At least twice a day and far more frequently on summer vacations, when we were often left to our own devices. Golding harnessed his unsentimental view of boyhood to a story of adventure and swiftly mounting suspense. To the twelve-year-old boy I was, the idea of roaming an uninhabited tropical island without parental supervision at first seemed liberating, almost heavenly. By the time the boy with the birthmark on his face (the first littleun to raise the possibility of a beast on the island) disappeared, my sense of liberation had become tinged with unease. And by the time the badly ill – and perhaps visionary – Simon confronts the severed and fly-blown head of the sow, which has been stuck on a pole, I was in terror. … there was nothing scholarly or analytical about my first reading of Lord of the Flies. It was, so far as I can remember, the first book with hands – strong ones that reached out of the pages and seized me by the throat. It said to me, ‘This is not just entertainment; it’s life or death.’ … By the time I reached the last seventy pages of Lord of the Flies I understood not only that some of the boys might die, but that some would die. It was inevitable. I only hoped it wouldn’t be Ralph, with whom I identified so passionately that I was in a cold sweat as I turned the pages. No teacher needed to tell me that Ralph embodied the values of civilization and that Jack’s embrace of savagery and sacrifice represented the ease with which those values could be swept away; it was evident even to a child. Especially to a child, who had witnessed (and participated in) many acts of casual schoolyard bullyragging. ...I finished the last half of Lord of the Flies in a single afternoon, my eyes wide, my heart pounding, not thinking, just inhaling. But I’ve been thinking about it ever since, for fifty years and more. My rule of thumb as a writer and a reader – largely formed by Lord of the Flies – is feel it first, think about it later. Analyse all you want, but first dig the experience. What I keep coming back to is Golding saying, ‘Wouldn’t it be a good idea to write a story about some boys … showing how they would really behave.’ It was a good idea. A very good idea that produced a very good novel, one as exciting, relevant and thought-provoking now as it was when Golding published it in 1954."

"To me it [Pincher Martin] belongs to a class of reading that I deplore, which looks at nothing except what I call the underbelly of the human body, and it sees nothing but the nasty side of it, the horrid side of it."

"A splendid work of imagination... his vision is true, sad and superbly conveyed."

"[Golding is] the most original and imaginatively exciting novelist we have today...enthralling...a many-dimensional and astonishing book."

"The way you have sounded the universal elements in this horror strikes me as masterly."

"I found the tone of the book singularly attractive. It is highly individual yet profoundly modest; it has an unusual, slightly angular candour, full of painful knowledge and a beautiful humanity; it couldn't be pretentious if it tried... [E]ven the slightest piece bears the mark of his rare, austere mind, his remarkable imagination... Even these occasional essays are enough to remind us that, on his day, there is not, at the moment, a writer to touch him."

"Did you know that you use less than 1% of your brain? The good news is that mind mapping can help you to access the other 99%!"

"The mind map will change your life."

"The world is historically mentally illiterate."

"Even traditionally well educated and literate individuals are significantly restricted by the fact that they are able to use only a fraction of the biological and conceptual thinking tools which are available (the mind map)"

"Normal linear note taking and writing will put you into a semi-hypnotic trance, while mind mapping will greatly enhance your left and right brain cognitive skills."

"As knowledge of the alphabet and its permutations and combinations is to traditional literacy, and as a knowledge of numbers and their permutations and combinations is to mathematics, so a knowledge of the biological and conceptual alphabets of the brain and its apparently infinite permutations and combinations is to mental literacy."

"The human brain has left and right brain symmetry with its own nature and can process information which initially appears to have no pattern or order. However, the brain has the ability to process visual information much more efficiently."

"The old linear pattern of thinking by reading and describing from left to right, top to bottom has many problems in organizing information coming from eyes, ears, etc. For example, the ability to read and understand the context of a book is different from memorizing them simply as sentences."

"During the renaissances in thinking led by Shakespeare and Goethe, the first new development in memory techniques for 1,700 years appeared: the Major System. This was the first system that enabled the user to transfer easily and instantaneously from numbers to letters, thus creating the opportunity for a system that could stretch from zero to an infinite number, and which allowed the user to translate any word into its own special number, and any number into its own special letter. This multiplied the opportunity for developing memory techniques 100-fold."

"“So that’s that,” Miriam said. “We have a plan.” “You have a shared delusion,” I said."

"We all project our petty lives upon the universe."

"The secret of a Scientist is not what he knows. It’s what he asks."

"The essential condition for life is the existence of sharp energy gradients."

"“Hunger,” Hollerbach said. “The universal imperative.”"

"Self-doubt is part of being human...but the main thing is to get on with the business of survival."

"But you are a scientist, Michael Poole; and the skill of a scientist is in asking the right question."

"It’s all a bit anarchic, I suppose, but it’s also highly effective. Flexible, responsive, mobile, heuristic, with intelligence distributed to the lowest level...A bit like an ideal human society, I suppose; free individuals seeking out ways to advance the common good."

"“It was a ploy, Jaar. I was trying to manipulate you, to get you to fight, to make you do what I wanted you to do.” “I know that.” He smiled. “Of course I know that. But the motives behind your words don’t reduce their truth. Don’t you see that?”"

"If this was the basis of the faith of the Friends, then no wonder the Friends were so remote, so intense—so careless of their everyday lives, of the pain and death of others. History as it existed was nothing more than a shabby prototype of the global optimization to come, when the Ultimate Observer discarded all inferior worldlines. And no wonder then, he thought, the Friends were so leached of humanity. Their mystical vision had removed all significance from their own lives—the only lives they could experience, whatever the truth of their philosophy—and it had rendered them deeply flawed, less than human. He opened his eyes and studied Shira. He saw again the patient intensity which resided inside this fragile girl—and he saw now how damaged she was by her philosophy. She was not fully alive, and perhaps never could be; he pitied her, he realized."

"“That’s the trouble with living so damned long,” Michael said. “Soured relationships last for ever.”"

"Human consciousness was an artificial thing. Once humans had believed that gods animated their souls, fighting their battles in the guise of humans. Later they had evolved the idea of the self-aware, self-directed consciousness. Now Michael saw that it had all been no more than an idea, a model, an illusion behind which to hide. He, the last man, need no longer cling to such outmoded comforts. There was no cognition, he realized. There was only perception."

"Mind you, flatulence was one skill he had bettered as he had got older."

"Bzya touched his shoulder. “But that’s why you and I are here, old man. To keep the world away from boys like Farr and Cris—to give them a place that seems as stable and eternal as your parents did when you were a child—until they are old enough to cope with the truth.”"

"“But Parz was better than nothing: it offered stability, regulation, a framework to live in. People gripe about their tithes—and nobody’s going to pretend that the Committee gets it right all the time—but most of us would prefer taxes to living wild. With all respect to you, my friend.” He bit into his cake. “And that’s still true today; as true as it ever was.”"

"Why should it be so? It was as if humans built such places as this with the sole purpose of finding ways to dominate each other. Muub listened to Adda’s clumsy explanation of this. “But it’s inevitable,” he said, his face neutral. “You have to have organization—hierarchy—if you are to run the complex, interlinking systems which sustain a society like the City with its hinterland. And only within such a society can man afford art, science, wisdom—even leisure of the most brutish sort, like these Games. And with hierarchies comes power.” He smiled at Adda, condescending once more. “People aren’t very noble, upfluxer. Look around you. Their darker side will find expression in any situation where they can best each other.”"

"You’re a damn fool, boy. I want you to know that now, in case I don’t get a chance to tell you later."

"“You know, in principle, why our world is as it is. Isn’t that sufficient? Is it really necessary for you to understand every detail?” But if I don’t understand, Morrow thought sourly, then you can control me. Arbitrarily. And that’s what I find hard to accept."

"Try to remember this lesson. It might keep you alive a little longer. The most precious thing to a human being is a mind-set: more precious than one’s own life, even. Human history has taught us that lesson time and again, with its endless parade of wars—human sacrifices en masse—thousands of deaths over the most trivial of differences of religious interpretation."

"“No,” Morrow said. “I can’t accept that. I don’t always agree with the Planners. But they aren’t killers.” “You think not?” Uvarov laughed again. “The survivalists—your ‘Planners’—are psychotic. Of course. As I am. And you. We are a fundamentally flawed species. Most of humanity, for most of its history, has been driven by a series of mass psychotic delusions. The labels changed, but the nature of the delusions barely varied...”"

"“But that’s insane,” Morrow protested. Uvarov hissed, “No one ever said it wasn’t. We’re human beings. What do you expect?”"

"She tried, sometimes, to remember how it had been to be young. Or even, not quite so old."

"Understanding is the key to turning anything from a threat into an opportunity."

"Empty. Barren. These were the true conditions of the Universe, she thought; life, and variety, and energy, were isolated aberrations."

"It was too anthropomorphic to consider the lifecycle of a star as some analogy of human birth, life and death. A star was a construct of physical processes; the evolution it went through was simply a search for equilibrium stages between changing, opposing forces. There was no life or death involved, no loss or gain: just process. Why shouldn’t it be beautiful?"

"Maybe it’s time we humans abandoned our species-specific chauvinism—our petty outrage that the Universe has unfolded in a way that doesn’t suit us."

"Maybe we should gather a few more facts before wasting our time speculating."

"The river of time flowed unmarked, towards the endless seas of timelike infinity."

"Time stretches like a lazy leopard when it wants to."

"I’ve made myself a rich man. You shouldn’t assume that makes me a fool."

"Paul closed his eyes, hoping to make the incomprehensible Universe disappear into the vacuum from which it had sprung."

"There was no cognition he realized. There was only perception."

"The last of the Qax had come sliding through the interstices of space and now hovered with him over the frigid surface of the star. Human and Qax, huddled around the chill proton star, did not attempt to communicate. There was nothing more to say. The river of time flowed, unmarked, towards the endless seas of timelike infinity."

"Like all the works of man, I saw, even these great structures were transient chimeras, destined to impermanence compared to the chthonian patience of the land."

"I was struck by how ignorant we humans are, or make ourselves, of the passage of time itself. How brief our lives are!—and how meaningless the events which assail our little selves, when seen against the perspective of the great plastic sweep of History. We are less than mayflies, helpless in the face of the unbending forces of geology and evolution—forces which mold inexorably, and yet so slowly that, day to day, we are not even aware of their existence!"

"My fear was gone, to be replaced by a numbing sense of tedium: it is remarkable how rapidly the human mind can accommodate the most remarkable of changed circumstances."

"One might imagine that, in any conflict between rational humans and religious humans, the rational ought to win. After all, it is rationality that invented gunpowder! And yet—at least up to our nineteenth century—the religious tendency has generally won out, and natural selection operated, leaving us with a population of religiously-inclined sheep—it has sometimes seemed to me—capable of being deluded by any smooth-tongued preacher. The paradox is explained because religion provides a goal for men to fight for. The religious man will soak some bit of “sacred” land with his blood, sacrificing far more than the land’s intrinsic economic or other value."

"I have always been distrustful of personal power—for I have met not one man wise enough to be entrusted with it."

"Men thought of war—always the next one—as a great cleansing, as the last war that ever need to be fought. But it was not so, I could see now: men fought wars because of the legacy of the brute inside them, and any justification was a mere rationalization supplied by our oversized brains."

"For what goal is there for intelligent creatures, but to gather and store all available information?"

"Your flexibility of mind is impressive, for a man of your evolutionary era."

"Cause and Effect, when Time Machines are about, are rather awkward concepts."

"The hugeness of time, and the littleness of man and his achievements, quite crushed me; and my own, petty concerns seemed of absurd insignificance. The story of Humanity seemed trivial, a flash-lamp moment lost in the dark, mindless halls of Eternity."

"It was a striking demonstration of how geomorphology, the shape of the landscape, dominates human geography."

"You can observe for yourself the degradation of the air and water around us. The earth has a limited capacity to absorb the waste products of human industry, and with enough development, the planet could even be rendered uninhabitable."

"“No. You are wrong. These structures are alive.” “What?” “By any reasonable definition of the word. They can reproduce themselves. They can manipulate the external world, creating local conditions of increased order. They have internal states which can change independently of external inputs; they have memories which can be accessed at will…All these are characteristics of Life, and Mind."

"“You see, a species cannot survive for long if it continues to carry around the freight of antique motivations that you bear. No offense.” “None taken,” I said drily. “I mean, of course, territoriality, aggression, the violent settlement of disputes… Imperialist designs and the like become unimaginable when technology advances past a certain point.”"

"Information—its gathering, interpretation and storage—is the ultimate goal of all intelligent life."

"There’s nothing an entrepreneur likes more than the sound of the word free."

"Malenfant had moved his corporation here, out of New York, five years ago. A good place for business, he said. God bless Nevada. Distract the marks with gambling toys and virtual titties while you pick their pockets."

"I think we’ve all become desensitized to the state of our world. We live in a closed economy, an economy of limits. Grain yields globally have been falling since 1984, fishing yields since 1990. And yet the human population continues to grow. This is the stark reality of the years to come."

"It seems to me our best hope for getting through the next century or so is to reach some kind of steady state: recycle as much as possible; try to minimize the impact of industry on the planet; try to stabilize the population numbers. For the last five to ten years I have, in my small way, been working toward exactly that goal, that new order. I don’t see that any responsible politician has a choice. I must say I entered politics with rather higher hopes of the future than I enjoy now."

"But even the steady state, our best-hope future, may not be achievable without space. Without power and materials from space we are doomed to shuffle a known—in fact diminishing—stockpile of resources around the planet. Some players get rich; others get poor. But it’s not even a zero-sum game; in the long term we are all losers."

"Emma trying to figure that for herself. But, like most probability problems, the answer was counterintuitive."

"“I don’t believe this for a second,” Emma said flatly. “It is impossible to prove, but hard to refute,” said Cornelius."

"If you have kids you’re a slave to your genes. Just a conduit from past to future, from the primeval ocean to galactic empire."

"This remains a place of grinding poverty. Misguided aid efforts had flooded the area with cheap Western clothes, and local crooks had use them to undercut and wipe out the textile factories that had once kept everyone employed."

"From the air Illinois was a vast emptiness studded by lost-looking little towns."

"In engineering, experience gained is directly proportional to the amount of equipment ruined."

"“The only advantage of e-therapists,” Maura murmured, “is that their horseshit is cheaper than humans’.”"

"All the tabloid-fed hysteria, the religious ravings, the pompous and hostile commentaries, made no sense, of course. If to abandon ten or a thousand sentient squid was a crime, so was abandoning one. But when, she thought sourly, had sense and rationality been a predominant element in public debate on science and technology?"

"It seems to me that age, growing old, is a war between wisdom and bitterness. I’m not sure how I’ll come out of that war myself, assuming I get so far. Maybe some things are more important than life itself. But what?"

"Since 1970 or thereabouts going to space has not been part of our national agenda. NASA has kept complete control over space. But since 1970 NASA has produced paper, not spaceships."

"Anyhow, she knew when she looked into her heart she’d never really wanted kids anyhow. She’d seen how kids dropped from the sky and exploded people’s lives like squalling neutron bombs. She was honest enough to admit she was too selfish for that; her life, her only life, was her own."

"The future, it seemed, was turning out to be one damn thing after another."

"It seems to me that the human race simply isn’t advanced enough yet to be able to trust any subset of itself with the power to run the lives of the rest."

"I did not enter politics to be involved in this kind of operation. But who did? And I have learned that leadership is, more often than not, the art of choosing the least worst among evils."

"To some extent the human race today seems to react as a single organism to great events. After all, we live in a wired world. Memes—information, ideas, fears, and hopes—spread around the media and online information channels literally at light speed. It may be that this mass reaction is the greatest single danger facing us."

"It was a war that was inevitable because it was a war that everybody wanted."

"Everyone was used to official manipulation of the truth—to zhilu weima, to point at a deer and call it a horse, as the expression went."

"It is of course a truism that all logically possible universes must exist."

"“Have you studied history, Anna?” “Yes. The information is limited, the interpretation is partial. But it is interesting.”"

"Almost all of history was a carefully constructed mythology for use as propaganda or nation building."

"The immediate future, regardless of Carter, was as dangerous as it had ever been. And the temptation many people seemed to feel to sacrifice their freedom to stern utopians who promised to order that future for them was growing stronger."

"There was a great wave of extinctions that, ultimately, couldn’t be stopped. How bad was it? Well, Oona, we don’t really know. We didn’t even get as far as counting all the species before destroying them. Yes, that’s right; a lot of species must have died out before we even knew they were there. Shivery thought, isn’t it?"

"Well, the world may be heading for the iceberg, but the dead hand of old Darwin is still on the tiller. What am I talking about? Just this: if most people stop breeding, the handful of people who love kids and want to have them—people like me—are, within a generation or two, going to outnumber everyone else. Simple math. And that’s exactly what is happening."

"Maura pulled an elaborate face. “Don’t these people realize the cat is already out of the bag? You can’t control the public’s access to information anymore—and you certainly can’t control their response. Nor should you try, in my opinion.”"

"As an engineer, he knew that a bucket-load of philosophical principles wasn’t worth a grain of good hard fact."

"The law is a weapon of government, not a protection for the likes of you. Surely you understand that."

"Madeleine’s heart sank. Nemoto would be hard to deal with rationally. People with missions always were."

"She wondered if the gerontocrats—conservative, selfish, reclusive, obsessive—were responsible for a more general malaise that seemed to her to have afflicted this fast-forwarded world. There had been change—new fashions, gadgetry, terminology—but, it seemed to her, no progress. In science and art she could see no signs of meaningful innovation. The world’s nations evolved, but the various supranational structures had not changed for decades: the political institutions that wielded the power had ossified."

"After a time it became unbearable, the lesson blinding in its cruelty: but if the universe didn’t get you, other sentient beings would."

"The shortness of human lives, she thought. Our curse. Every generation thinks it is immortal, that it has been born into a world that has never changed, and will never change."

"Life seems to be emergent from the very fabric of the universe that contains us, hardwired into physical law. And so, I suppose, mind is emergent too."

"She laughed. “Guilt: the Catholic Church’s first patent.”"

"He dug into the ground until he came up with a stone the size of his thumbnail. “—if the universe was the size of this rock, then each star would be the size of a quark.”"

"Life, Cassiopeia said, was emergent everywhere. Planets were the crucible. Life curdled, took hold, evolved, in every nook and cranny it could find in the great nursery that was the Galaxy."

"When everybody else was snuggling at the drive-in, you used to lecture me on how space is a high frontier, a sky to be mined, a resource for humanity. But is that all there is? Is the sky really nothing more than an empty stage for mankind to strut and squabble?"

"The universe aged: indifferent, harsh, hostile and ultimately lethal."

"No organization was a rational place. Organizations were bear pits where people fought for their own projects, which might or might not have something to do with the organization’s supposed mission. The wise person accepted that, and found a way to get what she wanted in spite of it all."

"The main reason to exercise, he thought: It stops your brain working, lets your body remind you you’re still an animal. It was the only respite he got from being himself."

"A pinch of observation is worth a mountain of hypothesis."

"Only children chatter of an afterlife. We are nothing but transient dissipative structures. In your cherishing the bone dust of the dead you are seeking to deny the basic truth of existence: that when we die, we are gone."

"There were no cop cars cruising through that darkness, no watching choppers or surveillance satellites, nobody out there to help him—no law operating save the savagely impartial rule of nature. And yet every day he was struck by the strange orderliness of the place. Decaying animal corpses did not litter the ground, save for a handful of bleached bones here and there; it was rare to walk into so much as a heap of dung. There was death here, yes, there was blood and pain—but it was as if every creature, including the hominids, were a cog in some vaster machine, that served to sustain all their lives. And every creature, presumably unconsciously, accepted its place and the sacrifices that came with it. All say one species of hominid, it seemed: Homo sap himself, who was forever seeking to tear up the world around him."

"One must admire efficiency when one finds it, whatever one’s moral qualms."

"They talked further, an incoherent conversation of disconnected fragments, peppered by misunderstanding, suffused by mistrust."

"Superstition! A fatal flaw for a regime whose legitimacy comes entirely from religion."

"We must consider the possibility that the manifold of universes through which we wonder is in fact infinite."

"No wonder you can’t figure out the Fermi Paradox, Malenfant, if you don’t know your own wife’s dress size."

"But what would humans do, she mused, if they stumbled on a situation like this? Well they wouldn’t be satisfied with the generosity of Candyland. They’d breed until the caves were overflowing. The hunters would start ranging farther until all the animals in the area were eaten or driven away. Then agriculture would start, with everybody forced to bend their bodies to back-breaking toil, day after day. As the population exploded the forests would be cut back, the animals decimated. Then would come the famines and the wars."

"“We’d carve a place out of the wilderness—” “But there is no wilderness, Mane said. “Even without war, even if you found a space not already cultivated, you would be forced to occupy a region, delineated in space, time, and energy flow, already exploited by another portion of the ecology.” It took some time for Emma to figure that out. “Yes,” she said. “There is bound to be some environmental impact. But—” “Other species would find reduced living space. Diversity would fall. And so it would go on. Soon the world would be covered from pole to pole by humans, fighting over the diminishing resources.”"

"A lion takes only the last deer in the herd. She does not dream of having so many cubs that the plains would be full of nothing but lions. There are simple laws. Most species figure them out; you are the exception. An ecology of a single species is not viable. A diverse, stable world would provide for you."

"They see the universe as essentially bountiful, a generous motherland. We see the universe as an enemy nation, to be occupied and mastered."

"He walks on, across the hot crimson dust."

"Bex shrugged. “You think anybody’s going to listen to a bunch of scientists? No offense. But nobody has so far.”"

"If you were part of a group there was always the chance that the predator would take the next guy, not you. It was a cold-blooded lottery that paid off often enough to be worthwhile adapting for. But there were disadvantages to group living: mainly, if there were large numbers of you, there was increased competition for food. As that competition resolved itself, the inevitable result was social complexity—and the size of the adapids’ brains had increased so that they were capable of handling that complexity. Then, of course, they were forced to become even more efficient at searching for food to fuel those big brains. It was the way of the future. As primate societies became ever more complex, a kind of cognitive arms race would continue, increasing smartness fueled by increasing social complications."

"There was no design in this: no sense of improvement, of purpose. All that was happening was that each organism was struggling to preserve itself, its offspring, and its kin. But as the environment slowly changed, so through relentless selection did the species that inhabited it. It was not a process fueled by life, but by death: the elimination of the less well adapted, the endless culling of inappropriate possibilities. But the potential of an unseen future was no consolation to those who lived through the relentless culling."

"The rodents’ vast litters incidentally offered up much raw material to the blind sculptors of natural selection; their evolutionary rate was ferocious."

"On the longest of timescales, over millions of years, the workings of chance defied human intuition. Humans were equipped with a subjective consciousness of risk and improbability suitable for creatures with a lifespan of less than a century or so. Event that came much less frequently than that—such as asteroid impacts—were place, in human minds, in the category not of rare, but of never. But the impacts happened even so, and to a creature with a lifespan of, say, ten million years, would not have seemed so improbable at all. Given enough time even such unlikely events as ocean crossings from Africa to South America would inevitably occur, over and again, and would shape the destiny of life."

"With his eland meat Brow was able to reinforce his political position among the men—and buy access to the women, which was ultimately the only purpose of his endless battle for dominance."

"There were other ways for primates to live, other kinds of societies that could be imagined. But once the pattern had been set, it was all but impossible to break."

"Relentless Pleistocene selection was shaping everything that would make up humanity. Even love was a by-product of evolution. Love, and the pain of loss."

"If you were capable of thinking of an object from more than one point of view, you could imagine it doing all sorts of things. For Mother, consciousness was becoming more than just a tool for lying."

"The emergent humans were still animals, still bound by natural law. No innovation in the way they lived would have taken root if it had not given them an adaptive advantage in the endless struggle to survive. An ability to believe in things that weren’t true was a powerful tool."

"A growing belief that behind every event lay intention—be it an evil thought in the mind of another, or the benevolent whim of a god in the sky—was perhaps inevitable in creatures with an innate understanding of causality. If you were smart enough to make multicomponent tools, you eventually came to believe in gods, the end of all causal chains. There would be costs, of course. In the future, to serve their new gods and shamans, the people would have to sacrifice much: time, wealth, even the right to have children. Sometimes they would even have to lay down their lives. But the payback was that they no longer had to be afraid of dying."

"In this marginal land accurate information was at a premium; to know the land was to prosper, not to know it meant starvation, and experts were a lot more valuable than bosses."

"Her story was a creation myth, a legend already more than twenty thousand years old. Such tales—which said that Jahna’s people were the pinnacle of creation, that theirs was the only right way, and that all others were less than human—taught the people to care passionately about themselves, their kin, and a few treasured ideals. But to the exclusion of all other humans, let alone such non-people as the Old Man’s kind."

"It (i. e., agriculture) was the most profound revolution in hominid living since Homo erectus had left the forest and committed themselves to the savannah. Compared to this phase shift, the advances of the future—even genetic engineering—were details. There would never be so significant a change again, not until humans themselves disappeared from the planet."

"But even if it is true, even if we are governed by the legacy of an animal past, then it is up to us to behave as if it were not so."

"In the last centuries of the empire, educational standards and literacy had fallen. In the dulled heads of the masses, distracted by cheap food and the barbaric spectacles of the coliseums, the values on which Rome had been founded and the ancient rationalism of the Greeks had been replaced by mysticism and superstition. It was—Honorius had explained to his pupil—as if a whole culture was losing its mind. People were forgetting how to think, and soon they would forget they had forgotten. And, to Honorius’s thinking, Christianity only exacerbated that problem. “You know, Augustine warned us that belief in the old myths was fading—even a century and a half ago, as the dogma of the Christians took root. And with the loss of the myths, so vanishes the learning of a thousand years, which are codified in those myths, and the monolithic dogmas of the Church will snuff out rational inquiry for ten more centuries. The light is fading, Athalric.”"

"The fault is all ours. We have become overwhelming. About one in twenty of all the people who have ever existed is alive today, compared to just one in a thousand of other species. As a result we are depleting the earth. But even now the question is still asked: Does it really matter? So we lose a few cute mammals, and a lot of bugs nobody ever heard of. So what? We’re still here. Yes, we are. But the ecosystem is like a vast life-support machine. It is built on the interaction of species on all scales of life, from the humblest fungi filaments that sustain the roots of plants to the tremendous global cycles of water, oxygen, and carbon dioxide. Darwin’s entangled bank, indeed. How does the machine stay stable? We don’t know. Which are its most important components? We don’t know. How much of it can we take out safely? We don’t know that either. Even if we could identify and save the species that are critical for our survival, we wouldn’t know which species they depend on in turn. But if we keep on our present course, we will soon find out the limits of robustness. I may be biased, but I believe it will matter a great deal if we were to die by our own foolishness. Because we bring to the world something that no other creature in all its long history has had, and that is conscious purpose. We can think our way out of this. So my question is—consciously, purposefully, what are we going to do?"

"What makes you think anybody with power will listen to a bunch of scientists? They never have before."

"As the natural systems of the planet broke down, humans would discover conclusively that they were still, after all, just animals in an ecosystem; and as it died back, so did they."

"“You aren’t doing much for morale, Sidewise.” Sidewise shot back, “And what about my morale? It does me no damn good to ignore what’s blindingly obvious all around us.”"

"Nothing mankind had done in its short and bloody history had made the slightest bit of difference to this patient geographical realignment. Meanwhile the Earth, left to its own devices, had deployed a variety of healing mechanisms, physical, chemical, biological, and geological, to recover from the devastating interventions of its human inhabitants. Air pollutants had been broken up by sunlight and dispersed. Bog ore had absorbed much metallic waste. Vegetation had recolonized abandoned landscapes, roots breaking up concrete and asphalt, overgrowing ditches and canals. Erosion by wind and water had caused the final collapse of the last structures, washing it all into sand. Meanwhile the relentless processes of variation and selection had worked to fill an empty world."

"For the genes it made sense, of course. Otherwise it would not have happened."

"Life had always been chancy. And now life had found ways of surviving the ultimate extinction event. In new oceans and on strange lands, evolution had begun again. But it had nothing to do with mankind."

"Anyhow, that’s our story. And I think, in my glimpses of the great encompassing mechanism that has shaped us all, I’ve seen a little of the numinous. That’s enough of God for me."

"Ussher’s intense and obsessive project seems very odd to the eyes of a modern scientist. After all he had deduced the age of the Earth without looking at a scrap of physical evidence—not a single rock."

"Francis Bacon, who died in the seventeenth century, argued strongly that philosophy and theology should be kept separate, and that we should concentrate our studies on the local problems and the interconnections between material and efficient causes. Final-cause analysis was just a distraction: ‘Inquiry into final causes is sterile, and, like a virgin consecrated to God, produces nothing.’"

"Buffon’s work created a great furore, of course. The theologians at the Sorbonne condemned him, and Buffon dutifully retracted. But he wasn’t sincere: ‘It is better to be humble than hanged.’"

"‘He set no great value on money, or, perhaps, to speak properly, he set on it no more than its true value.’"

"In his reliance on evidence, preferably obtained at first hand, Hutton was showing the way to the geological methods of the future."

"Despite his friendship with Adam Smith, he believed in government intervention in agriculture, as it was too important to be left to market forces and chance: ‘The husbandman maintains the nation in all its ease, its affluence and its splendour,’ he wrote. But farmers too had a responsibility for the public good. Rotation of crops, ensuring equal acreages of different crops at any given time, would help keep prices stable."

"Hutton became very critical of a system where appointments depended not on merit but on the support of those in power. Of one possible opening for Watt he wrote, ‘I think it only needs to have a man properly bestir himself but that is what few political people do unless to serve themselves.’"

"His overriding lesson for thinkers like Hutton was that scientists, even those occupied by an apparently ‘concrete’ discipline like geology, need to be careful not just about what they claim to know but also about how they claim to know it. Human reason is a fragile thing and prone to be overthrown by suggestibility."

"‘If, in pursuing this object, we employ our skill in research, not in forming vain conjectures; and if data are to be found, on which Science may form just conclusions, we should not long remain in ignorance with respect to the natural history of this Earth, a subject on which hitherto opinion only, and not evidence, has decided. For in no subject is there naturally less defect of evidence, although philosophers, led by prejudice, or misguided by false theory, have neglected to employ that light by which they should have seen the system of the world.’"

"‘In matters of science, curiosity gratified begets not indolence, but new desires.’"

"The mind seemed to grow giddy by looking so far into the abyss of time; and while we listened with earnestness and admiration to the philosopher who was now unfolding to us the order and series of these wonderful events, we became sensible how much farther reason may sometimes go than imagination can venture to follow."

"Darwin had found a way in which a species could be shaped to fit its environment—not by divine intervention, not by mind, but through the steady, relentless working of natural law. Just like the Huttonian prescription for the Earth, it was a Newtonian scheme for life. For better or worse, Darwin transformed our view of our place in the universe. Humans too are not the outcome of a divine design, but simply products of the relentless workings of natural laws, just like rivers and mountains, beetles and whales."

"Humans and their petty doings come and go, but the geology endures."

"...Why Nimrod? Why that name?" Ramrod straight, he looked down at her. "I guess you skipped Bible studies at school. Genesis 10, verses 8 to 10: 'And Cush begat Nimrod: he began to be a mighty one in the earth... And the beginning of his kingdom was Babel, and Erech, and Accad, and-" "Babel?" "It was only generations after the flood of Noah. Chapter 11, verse 4. 'And they said, Go to, let us build us a city and a tower, whose top may reach unto heaven.'" "But God struck them down when they built the tower." "Yes. But why? 11, 6. 'Now nothing will be restrained from them, which they have imagined to do.' That's what God said about mankind. He feared us, and so He struck us down. We have that verse up on the wall on big banners, to motivate the workforce. 'Nothing will be restrained from them, which they have imagined to do.'" "Wow," Thandie said. "You're challenging God?" "Why the hell not?"

"She was doing well with her schooling, scoring high in mathematics, sciences and deductive abilities, as well as in physical prowess and leadership skills. Her father had been paradoxically pleased when she had been flagged up with a warning about having introvert tendencies. “All great scientists are introverts,” he said. “All great engineers too, come to that. The sign of a strong, independent mind.”"

"It was always the same with engineers, Stef had observed; nothing made them happier than to be given a well-defined and achievable task, and to be left alone to get on with it."

"If you were anywhere near the center of human affairs, even to the extent that she was, your predominant emotion had to be disappointment at the way in which an age when opportunities for humanity had never been greater, old flaws—territorialism, combativeness, reluctance to transcend cultural barriers, a sheer inability simply to see things from the other guy’s point of view—looked set to bring the sky crashing down on all their heads."

"I know the military. The sooner they can kick a problem upstairs the happier they will be."

"Ah, Mardina. Evidently you entirely lack imagination. You’ll go far in the Navy."

"We underestimated the vindictiveness of mankind. Their retrospective tribunals. Their visiting of punishments on the children of the perpetrators. They never forgave us."

"Let me face bare-handed a dozen highly trained and fully armed gladiators, each with a personal grudge against me, than a lawyer with a single pointed question."

"In the hearts of a hundred billion worlds Across a trillion dying realities in a lethal multiverse— In the chthonic silence— All that could have been done had been done. In peace and satisfaction, minds diffuse and antique submitted to the End Time."

"[F]olks would better off dipping their heads in a bucket of liquid [nitrogen] and battering them against a tree very very hard than reading Baxter's Titan. It would not surprise me if reading that book causes birth defects."

"As I've often said, I'm a fan of hard SF. No, it's more like I am addicted to it, even the stepped-on 20 times and cut with powered milk and rat-poison sort of hard SF. This gets us to Stephen Baxter's Mayflower II, published last year in a limited edition from PS Publishing. In one of the great tragedies of publishing, it was not a limited enough edition and so I have read it."

"It is our duty never to speak ill of others, you know; least of all when we know that to do so will be the cause of much pain and trouble."

"No, no; women, old or young, should never have to think about money."

"The thought, however, of his girls having to work for money was so utterly repulsive to him that he could never seriously dwell upon it."

"The insult was thrown out with a peculiarly reckless air; it astounded the hearer, who sat for an instant with staring eyes and lips apart; then the blood rushed to his cheeks."

"To be at other people's orders brings out all the bad in me."

"It is the mind which creates the world around us, and even though we stand side by side in the same meadow, my eyes will never see what is beheld by yours, my heart will never stir to the emotions with which yours is touched."

"It is because nations tend towards stupidity and baseness that mankind moves so slowly; it is because individuals have a capacity for better things that it moves at all."

"'A man who comes to be hanged,' pursued Jasper, impartially, 'has the satisfaction of knowing that he has brought society to its last resource. He is a man of such fatal importance that nothing will serve against him but the supreme effort of law. In a way, you know, that is success.'"

"I am learning my business. Literature nowadays is a trade. Putting aside men of genius, who may succeed by mere cosmic force, your successful man of letters is your skilful tradesman. He thinks first and foremost of the markets; when one kind of goods begins to go off slackly, he is ready with something new and appetising. He knows perfectly all the possible sources of income. Whatever he has to sell he'll get payment for it from all sorts of various quarters; none of your unpractical selling for a lump sum to a middleman who will make six distinct profits."

"People have got that ancient prejudice so firmly rooted in their heads — that one mustn't write save at I the dictation of the Holy Spirit. I tell you, writing is a business."

"I maintain that we people of brains are justified in supplying the mob with the food it likes. We are not geniuses, and if we sit down in a spirit of long-eared gravity we shall produce only commonplace stuff. Let us use our wits to earn money, and make the best we can of our lives. If only I had the skill, I would produce novels out-trashing the trashiest that ever sold fifty thousand copies. But it needs skill, mind you; and to deny it is a gross error of the literary pedants. To please the vulgar you must, one way or another, incarnate the genius of vulgarity."

"Women, he held, had never been treated with elementary justice. To worship them was no less unfair than to hold them in contempt. The honest man, in our day, should regard a woman without the least bias of sexual prejudice; should view her simply as a fellow-being, who, according to circumstances, might or not be on his own plane. Away with all empty show and form, those relics of barbarism known as chivalry! He wished to discontinue even the habit of hat-doffing in female presence. Was not civility preserved between man and man without such idle form? Why not, then, between man and woman? Unable, as yet, to go the entire length of his principles in every-day life, he endeavoured, at all events, to cultivate in his intercourse with women a frankness of speech, a directness of bearing, beyond the usual. He shook hands as with one of his own sex, spine uncrooked; he greeted them with level voice, not as one who addresses a thing afraid of sound. To a girl or matron whom he liked, he said, in tone if not in phrase, "Let us be comrades." In his opinion this tended notably to the purifying of the social atmosphere. It was the introduction of simple honesty into relations commonly marked — and corrupted — by every form of disingenuousness. Moreover, it was the great first step to that reconstruction of society at large which every thinker saw to be imperative and imminent. But Constance Bride knew nothing of this, and in her ignorance could not but misinterpret the young man's demeanor. She felt it to be brusque; she imagined it to imply a purposed oblivion of things in the past."

"Now he was indifferent to all "questions" save that prime solicitude of the human race, how to hold its own against the hostile forces everywhere leagued against it. Life was a perpetual struggle, and, let dreamers say what they might, could never be anything else; he, for one, perceived no right that he had to claim exemption from the doom of labour. Had he felt an impulse to any other kind of work, well and good, he would have turned to it; but nothing whatever called to him with imperative voice save this task of tilling his own acres. It might not always satisfy him; he took no vow of one sole vocation; he had no desire to let his mind rust whilst his hands grew horny. Enough that for the present he had an aim which he saw as a reality."

"Old companion, yet old enemy! How many a time have I taken it up, loathing the necessity, heavy in head and heart, my hand shaking,my eyes sickdazzled! How I dreaded the white page I had to foul with ink! Above all, on days such as this, when the blue eyes of Spring laughed from between rosy clouds, when the sunlight shimmered upon my table and made me long, long all but to madness, for the scent of the flowering earth, for the green of hillside larches, for the singing of the skylark above the downs. There was a time— it seems further away than childhood — when I took up my pen with eagerness; if my hand trembled it was with hope. But a hope that fooled me, for never a page of my writing deserved to live. I can say that now without bitterness. It was youthful error, and only the force of circumstance prolonged it. The world has done me no injustice; thank Heaven I have grown wise enough not to rail at it for this! And why should any man who writes, even if he writes things immortal, nurse anger at the world's neglect? Who asked him to publish? Who promised him a hearing? Who has broken faith with him? If my shoemaker turn me out an excellent pair of boots, and I, in some mood of cantankerous unreason, throw them back upon his hands, the man has just cause of complaint. But your poem, your novel, who bargained with you for it? If it is honest journeywork, yet lacks purchasers, at most you may call yourself a hapless tradesman. If it come from on high, with what decency do you fret and fume because it is not paid for in heavy cash? For the work of man's mind there is one test, and one alone, the judgment of generations yet unborn. If you have written a great book, the world to come will know of it. But you don't care for posthumous glory. You want to enjoy fame in a comfortable armchair. Ah, that is quite another thing. Have the courage of your desire. Admit yourself a merchant, and protest to gods and men that the merchandise you offer is of better quality than much which sells for a high price. You may be right, and indeed it is hard upon you that Fashion does not turn to your stall."

"This writer, who is horribly perspicacious and vigorous, demonstrates the certainty of a great European war, and regards it with the peculiar satisfaction excited by such things in a certain order of mind. His phrases about "dire calamity" and so on mean nothing; the whole tenor of his writing proves that he represents, and consciously, one of the forces which go to bring war about; his part in the business is a fluent irresponsibility, which casts scorn on all who reluct at the "inevitable." Persistent prophecy is a familiar way of assuring the event."

"For the man sound in body and serene of mind there is no such thing as bad weather; every sky has its beauty, and storms which whip the blood do but make it pulse more vigorously."

"Time is money — says the vulgarest saw known to any age or people. Turn it round about, and you get a precious truth —money is time. I think of it on these dark, mist-blinded mornings, as I come down to find a glorious fire crackling and leaping in my study. Suppose I were so poor that I could not afford that heartsome blaze, how different the whole day would be! Have I not lost many and many a day of my life for lack of the material comfort which was necessary to put my mind in tune? Money is time. With money I buy for cheerful use the hours which otherwise would not in any sense be mine; nay, which would make me their miserable bondsman. Money is time, and, heaven be thanked, there needs so little of it for this sort of purchase. He who has overmuch is wont to be as badly off in regard to the true use of money, as he who has not enough. What are we doing all our lives but purchasing, or trying to purchase, time? And most of us, having grasped it with one hand, throw it away with the other."

"Gissing, whose work Henry James admired, said that in all character there sits a mind, and that the mind of the dullest is not dull because, at its lowest, it will at least reflect the social dilemma."

"As a matter of derivation, Mr Gissing, in his earlier essays in fiction, owed more to Dickens than to any realistic novelist. ... The inspiration was indirect. Mr Gissing had not the master-faculty of 'Martin Chuzzlewit,' and he did not counterfeit it. But in studying the works of Dickens, he appears to have seen how much of the real gloom had been left out of the picture of the London populace; how much what was eccentric and humorous had been insisted upon, and how much what was joyless, and yet equally representative, had been omitted; and this darker and more unrelieved side of lower London life Mr Gissing determined to describe."

"When I admit neglect of Gissing, They say I don't know what I'm missing. Until their arguments are subtler, I think I'll stick to Samuel Butler."

"Consciousness is an illusion constructed by the memes."

"Memetics appears to have a lot of implications that we humans are machines, which people have never liked. Of course we're machines, we're biological machines. But people don't like that. Free will and consciousness is an illusion, and the self is a complex of memes. People don't like that. My view is that if these things are true it doesn't matter if we like them or not."

"Parapsychology seems to be growing further away from the progress and excitement of the rest of consciousness studies."

"If everyone understood evolution, then the tyranny of religious memes would be weakened, and we little humans might find a better way to live in this pointless universe."

"The other key to my failures seemed to be belief. I was told that I didn’t get results because I didn’t believe strongly enough in psi, because I didn’t have an open mind!"

"The way I really think is more like this "I am a scientist. I think the way to the truth is by investigation. I suspect that telepathy, clairvoyance, psychokinesis and life after death do not exist because I have been looking in vain for them for 25 years. I have been wrong lots of times before and am not afraid of it"."

"Where I kick myself is where I think I actually contributed to the myth of the intelligence services being very good."

"In every war zone that I've been in, there has been a reality and then there has been the public perception of why the war was being fought. In every crisis, in every confrontation that has come my way, the issues have been far more complex than the public has been allowed to know."

"Every writer wants to be believed. But every writer knows he is spurious; every fiction writer would rather be credible than authentic."

"I use the furniture of espionage to amuse the reader, to make the reader listen to me, because most people like to read about intrigue and spies. I hope to provide a metaphor for the average reader's daily life. Most of us live in a slightly conspiratorial relationship with our employer and perhaps with our marriage. I think what gives my works whatever universality they have is that they use the metaphysical secret world to describe some realities of the overt world."

"America has entered one of its periods of historical madness, but this is the worst I can remember: worse than McCarthyism, worse than the Bay of Pigs and in the long term potentially more disastrous than the Vietnam War. The reaction to 9/11 is beyond anything Osama bin Laden could have hoped for in his nastiest dreams. As in McCarthy times, the freedoms that have made America the envy of the world are being systematically eroded. The combination of compliant US media and vested corporate interests is once more ensuring that a debate that should be ringing out in every town square is confined to the loftier columns of the East Coast press."

"What the hell do you think spies are? Model philosophers measuring everything they do against the word of God or Karl Marx? They’re not. They’re just a bunch of seedy, squalid bastards like me, little men, drunkards, queers, henpecked husbands, civil servants, playing cowboys and Indians to brighten their rotten little lives. Do you think they sit like monks in a cell, balancing right against wrong? (from a clip from the film adaptation of The Spy Who Came in from the Cold, starring Richard Burton as Alec Leamas, an alcoholic cynical British spy)"

"Why was London the only capital in the world that lost its personality at night? Smiley, as he pulled his coat more closely about him, could think of nowhere, from Los Angeles to Berne, which so readily gave up its daily struggle for identity."

"Chic, that’s what he is—a barmaid’s dream of a real gentleman."

"The State is a dream, too, a symbol of nothing at all, an emptiness, a mind without a body, a game played with clouds in the sky. But States make war, don’t they, and imprison people?"

"He knew how intelligent men could be broken by the stupidity of their superiors."

"He had the nerve not to drink in a University where you proved your manhood by being drunk most of your first year."

"Can’t you see it’s the same? The same guns, the same children dying in the streets? Only the dream has changed, the blood is the same colour."

"I shall have to wear the special grin I reserve for bearing really disastrous tidings."

"He hated the Press as he hated advertising and television, he hated mass-media, the relentless persuasion of the twentieth century. Everything he admired or loved had been the product of intense individualism."

"I thought it would be valuable to record the events—even if they did not take place."

"He was one of those world-builders who seem to do nothing but destroy: that’s all."

"He caught the midnight plane to Zurich. It was a beautiful night, and through the small window beside him he watched the grey wing, motionless against the starlit sky, a glimpse of eternity between two worlds. The vision soothed him, calmed his fears and his doubts, made him fatalistic towards the inscrutable purpose of the universe. It all seemed to matter so little—the pathetic quest for love, or the return to solitude."

"I used to regard a road sweeper as a person inferior to myself. Now, I rather doubt it. Something is dirty, he makes it clean, and the state of the world is advanced. But I—what have I done? Entrenched a ruling class which is distinguished by neither talent, culture, nor wit; kept alive for one more generation the distinctions of a dead age."

"It was from us they learnt the secret of life: that we grow old without growing wise. They realised that nothing happened when we grew up: no blinding light on the road to Damascus, no sudden feeling of maturity."

"I used to think it was clever to confuse comedy with tragedy. Now I wish I could distinguish them."

"Such an effort being with people—on stage all the time."

"“The value of intelligence depends on its breeding.” That was John Landsbury’s favorite dictum. Until you know the pedigree of the information you cannot evaluate a report. Yes, that was what he used to say: “We are not democratic. We close the door on intelligence without parentage.”"

"It was no use relating reports to probability when there was no quantum of knowledge from which to start."

"But so many men learnt strength during the war, learnt terrible things, and put aside their knowledge with a shudder when it ended."

"Carne isn’t a school. It’s a sanatorium for intellectual lepers. The symptoms began when we came down from University; a gradual putrefaction of our intellectual extremities. From day to day our minds die, our spirits atrophy and rot. We watch the process in one another, hoping to forget it in ourselves."

"“Look,” he said. “We talk academic here, you know, wear academic dress and hold high table dinners in the Common Room; we have long graces in Latin that none of us can translate. We go to the Abbey and the wives sit in the hencoop in their awful hats. But it’s a charade. It means nothing."

"“These small, out-of-the-way villages are pretty strange places,” he concluded. “Often only three or four families, all so inbred you can no more sort them out than a barnful of cats. That’s where your village idiots come from. They call it the Devil’s Mark. I call it incest.”"

"It was a peculiarity of Smiley’s character that throughout the whole of his clandestine work he had never managed to reconcile the means to the end. A stringent critic of his own motives, he had discovered after long observation that he tended to be less a creature of intellect than his tastes and habits might suggest; once in the war he had been described by his superiors as possessing the cunning of Satan and the conscience of a virgin, which seemed to him not wholly unjust."

"Obscurity was his nature, as well as his profession. The byways of espionage are not populated by the brash and colourful adventurers of fiction. A man who, like Smiley, has lived and worked for years among his country’s enemies learns only one prayer: that he may never, never be noticed. Assimilation is his highest aim, he learns to love the crowds who pass him in the street without a glance; he clings to them for his anonymity and his safety."

"Was she really so angry when Stella refused to take part in the rat race of gentility?"

"Smiley was not opposed to social distinctions but he liked to make his own."

"“I don’t know,” Cardew replied evenly. “And when I don’t know, I usually keep quiet.”"

"John Lansbury had remarked upon it: “You have sales resistance to the dramatic, Brim; the rare gift of contempt for what is urgent. I know of a dozen people who would pay you five thousand a year for telling them every day that what is important is seldom urgent. Urgent equals ephemeral, and ephemeral equals unimportant.”"

"You can’t experiment with tradition."

"He had come to the end of the chase, and was already sickened by the kill."

"I read a story once about a poet who bathed himself in cold fountains so that he could recognise his own existence in the contrast."

"Intelligence work has one moral law—it is justified by results."

"“Thus we do disagreeable things, but we are defensive. That, I think, is still fair. We do disagreeable things so that ordinary people here and elsewhere can sleep safely in their beds at night. Is that too romantic? Of course, we occasionally do very wicked things”; he grinned like a schoolboy. “And in weighing up the moralities, we rather go in for dishonest comparisons; after all, you can’t compare the ideals of one side with the methods of the other, can you, now?”"

"I would say that since the war, our methods—ours and those of the opposition—have become much the same. I mean you can’t be less ruthless than the opposition simply because your government’s policy is benevolent, can you now?"

"“Alec, what do you believe in? Don’t laugh—tell me.” She waited and at last he said: “I believe an eleven bus will take me to Hammersmith. I don’t believe it’s driven by Father Christmas.”"

"I should have guessed you’d never have the guts to do your own dirty work, Fiedler. It’s typical of your rotten little half-country and your squalid little Service that you get big uncle to do your pimping for you. You are not a country at all, you’re not a government, you’re a fifth-rate dictatorship of political neurotics."

"He possessed, however, that persistent inquisitiveness which for journalists and lawyers is an end in itself."

"If they do not know what they want, how can they be so certain they are right?"

"“It is not fashionable to quote Stalin but he said once, ‘half a million liquidated is a statistic, but one man killed in a traffic accident is a national tragedy.’ He was laughing, you see, at the bourgeois sensitivities of the mass. He was a cynic. But what he meant is still true: a movement which protects itself against counter-revolution can hardly stop at the exploitation—or the elimination, Leamas—of a few individuals. It is all one, we have never pretended to be wholly just in the process of rationalising society. Some Roman said it, didn’t he, in the Christian Bible—it is expedient that one man should die for the benefit of many.” “I expect so,” Leamas replied wearily. “Then what do you think? What is your philosophy?” “I just think the whole lot of you are bastards,” said Leamas savagely."

"A man who lives apart, not to others but alone, is exposed to obvious psychological dangers. In itself, the practice of deception is not particularly exacting; it is a matter of experience, of professional expertise, it is a facility most of us can acquire."

"I am afraid that as a nation we tend to over-organise. Abroad that passes for efficiency."

"Sometimes she thought Alec was right—you believed in things because you needed to; what you believed in had no value of its own, no function."

"The English! The rich have eaten your future and your poor have given them the food—that’s what’s happened to the English."

"“And this is a prison for spies?” Liz persisted. “It is a prison for those who fail to recognize Socialist reality; for those who think they have the right to err; for those who slow down the march. Traitors,” she concluded briefly. “But what have they done?” “We cannot build communism without doing away with individualism. You cannot plan a great building if some swine builds his sty on your site.”"

"“Then the people in this prison are intellectuals?” The woman smiled. “Yes,” she said, “they are reactionaries who call themselves progressive: they defend the individual against the state. Do you know what Khrushchev said about the counter-revolution in Hungary?” Liz shook her head. She must show interest, she must make the woman talk. “He said it would never have happened if a couple of writers had been shot in time.”"

"What do you think spies are: priests, saints, and martyrs? They’re a squalid procession of vain fools, traitors too, yes; pansies, sadists and drunkards, people who play cowboys and Indians to brighten their rotten lives. Do you think they sit like monks in London balancing the rights and wrongs? I’d have killed Mundt if I could, I hate his guts; but not now. It so happens that they need him. They need him so that the great moronic mass that you admire can sleep soundly in their beds at night. They need him for the safety of ordinary, crummy people like you and me."

"“This is a war,” Leamas replied. “It’s graphic and unpleasant because it’s fought on a tiny scale, at close range; fought with a wastage of innocent life sometimes, I admit. But it’s nothing, nothing at all besides other wars—the last or the next.”"

"A desk is a dangerous place from which to watch the world."

"Tessa Quayle: Sir, I’ve just got one question. I just wondered: Whose map is Britain using when it completely ignores the United Nations and decides to invade Iraq? Or do you think it’s more diplomatic to bend the will of a superpower and politely take part in Vietnam the sequel? Justin Quayle: Well, I can’t speak for Sir Bernard. Tessa Quayle: Oh, I thought that’s why you were here. Justin Quayle: I mean, diplomats have to go where they’re sent. Tessa Quayle: So do Labradors. Justin Quayle: Ouch. Well, I think that, no, Sir Bernard would no doubt argue that when peaceful means are exhausted, then - Tessa Quayle: Exhausted? Mr. Quayle, they’re not exactly exhausted, are they? I mean, they’re just — they’re just — no, they are just lying in the way of the tanks. No, let’s face it: We’ve taken 60 years to build up this international organization called the United Nations, which is meant to avoid wars, and now we just blow it up because our car is running out of petrol."

"[She] reports that [the company] recently donated fifty million dollars to a major U.S. teaching hospital, plus salaries and expenses for three top clinicians and six research assistants. Corruption of university Common Room affiliations is even easier: professorial chairs, biotech labs, research foundations, etc. 'Unbought scientific opinion is increasingly hard to find.'"

"America has entered one of its periods of historical madness, but this is the worst I can remember: worse than McCarthyism, worse than the Bay of Pigs and in the long term potentially more disastrous than the Vietnam War."

"The reaction to 9/11 is beyond anything Osama bin Laden could have hoped for in his nastiest dreams. As in McCarthy times, the freedoms that have made America the envy of the world are being systematically eroded. The combination of compliant US media and vested corporate interests is once more ensuring that a debate that should be ringing out in every town square is confined to the loftier columns of the East Coast press."

"The imminent war was planned years before bin Laden struck, but it was he who made it possible. Without bin Laden, the Bush junta would still be trying to explain such tricky matters as how it came to be elected in the first place; Enron; its shameless favouring of the already-too-rich; its reckless disregard for the world’s poor, the ecology and a raft of unilaterally abrogated international treaties. They might also have to be telling us why they support Israel in its continuing disregard for UN resolutions."

"Savages...are by nature rash. They have no middle gear. The middle gear of any man is self-discipline."

"Luck's just another word for destiny...either you make your own or you're screwed."

"If you're in a hole, don't dig, they say."

"When you assimilate, you choose."

"Elections are a Western jerk-off."

"Why is it that so many men of small stature have more courage than men of size?"

"Peace, gentlemen, it is well known, does not come of its own accord, and neither does freedom. Peace has enemies. Peace must be won by the sword."

"The friends of my friends are my friends."

"Never trade a secret, you'll always get the short end of the bargain."

"We were both hybrids: I by birth, he by education. We had both taken too many steps away from the country that had borne us to belong anywhere with ease."

"No problem exists in isolation, one must first reduce it to its basic components, then tackle each component in turn."

"A good man knows when to sacrifice himself, Brother Michael liked to say. A bad man survives but loses his soul."

"Nothing in life... even a few broken bones, is without its reward."

"The fact that you can only do a little is no excuse for doing nothing."

"It was the other music that he was hearing: the feeling that, while she was telling him one story, he was listening to a different one, and so was she."

"'Findley was not quite a character, thank you!' Frau Ellenberger retorted furiously. 'He wasn't a character at all. Mr Findley was assembled entirely from characteristics stolen from other people!'"

"There are some Arabs who think that the Germans did the right thing by the Jews. This makes it easy to recruit Arab terrorist."

"There is a big difference between fighting the cold war and fighting radical Islam. The rules have changed and we haven't."

"We were not faced (in the cold war) in a conflict with people who are prepared to die for their cause. We weren't in conflict with people whose idea is to kill as many as they could."

"In the war on terror we did everything wrong that we could have done."

"You can't make war against terror. Terror is a technique of battle. It's a tactic that has been employed since time immemorial. You can conduct clandestine action against terrorists, and that must be done."

"To operate an intelligence network against the Islamist terror is terribly difficult because they don't have a central command and control center such as we would understand. Therefore you cannot penetrate at the top and find out what will happen on the ground."

"Because we are so unfamiliar with the motivation of the people we are dealing with, we are more afraid of them than we need to be."

"On one hand we go like hell for every terror cell we can find, we penetrate it, we destroy it. On the other hand, there is a much bigger need for a political solution."

"In recent years, Union Bank of California, American Express Bank International, BankAtlantic and Wachovia have all been caught moving huge sums of drug money, but no one went to jail. The banks just admitted to criminal conduct and paid the government a cut of their profits."

"Those critics don’t read their own newspapers, and nor perhaps have they noticed that a former head of MI5, our security service, who was translated to the House of Lords, was recently denied the senior post on a security committee on account of her connections with oligarchs in the Ukraine... supposedly connected with criminal conspiracy."

"If I could generalize about my work in intelligence in those days, for better or worse, we counted ourselves an elite with a very considerable responsibility: to speak truth to power, like good journalists, that whatever we came upon, however offensive it was to those in power, we told it straight."

"What I fear I have seen in the run-up to the Iraq War in this country is the politicization of intelligence to fit the political intentions of our masters. And to my mind, that was a terrible moment in the history, the visible history, of intelligence work in this country, where the intelligence service itself became effectively co-author and signatory to the so-called dodgy dossier, which — on the strength of which Colin Powell was able to present a dire picture of the threat from Iraq, which turned out to be untrue."

"I can’t understand that Blair has an afterlife at all. It seems to me that any politician who takes his country to war under false pretenses has committed the ultimate sin. I think that a war in which we refuse to accept the body count of those that we kill is also a war of which we should be ashamed. We’ve always got to be careful of that. I think that — I wasn’t speaking as a prophet, I was just speaking as an angry citizen, I suppose. I think it’s true that we’ve caused irreparable damage in the Middle East. I think we shall pay for it for a long time."

"If people knew basically, for example, what we had done in Iran when we ousted Mosaddegh through the CIA and the Secret Service here across the way and installed the Shah and trained his ghastly secret police force in all the black arts, the SAVAC, if people understood the extent to which we had humiliated Iran, then they would understand the later developments in Iran and Iran’s posture now. If people would look at the map and see the extent to which Iran is encircled by nuclear powers, they wouldn’t take it perhaps quite so seriously that Iran is seeking to arm itself with — if it is — with nuclear weapons."

"I remain terrified of the capacity of the media, the capacity of spin doctors, here and abroad, particularly the United States media, to perpetuate false lies, perpetuate lies."

"I’d have asked him [Tony Blair] about his faith, because we were told, when journalists asked about Blair’s faith, the reply was, “We don’t do God here.” Well, of course, he does do God, and he reports that his actions have been put before God and confirmed, as if somehow God has signed a chit for him."

"And the second question I would ask him... Have you ever seen what happens when a grenade goes off in a school? Do you really know what you’re doing when you order shock and awe? Are you prepared to kneel beside a dying soldier and tell him why he went to Iraq, or why he went to any war?"

"I think that if anything has happened to Europe since 1945 that defines it, it is collectively Europeans do not believe in war anymore, until it comes as an absolute last resort, and then they’re going to do it rather badly. The United States, I think, still sees war as a necessary part of its existence.."

"I was at odds with the whole notion of a preemptive strike. And I think many Europeans have that in common, of course with very many Americans, too, feel the same. So I would have tried to challenge him in that area."

"The tragedy of Congo is almost — it is appalling. It isn’t really — it isn’t the Congo’s fault even. Congo has become the battleground for other people’s wars, repeatedly. Congo is cursed with amazing mineral resources — diamonds, coltan, now, I believe, up in the northeast of Congo, oil even. God help them, because without any civil society to function, they have been exploited, not simply in terms of boy soldiers, awful gang wars that sweep through the jungle, mass rape as a military weapon, they’ve been subjected to every hell on Earth, these poor people."

"And meanwhile, don’t think that Africans are disposed to corruption where we are not, so to speak. Actually, most of the corruption that has taken place in Congo on a vast scale is Western-driven."

"There are something like 80 or 90 “airlines” — in quotes — registered in Congo, and these simply belong to tiny exploitative companies that harness boy soldiers and kids to dig out the diamonds or the coltan, whatever it may be, and ship it out of Congo without paying duty or anything of that sort. Without paying royalties to anyone is theft. And Congo is being exploited by everybody on account of these reasons, in addition to providing the battleground for other people’s wars."

"The legendary British author John le Carré has died at the age of 89. In the lead-up to the Iraq invasion, John le Carré was a fierce critic of President George W. Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair. In January 2003, he published a widely read essay called “The United States of America Has Gone Mad.” He died on December 12th at the age of 89. Le Carré was a master writer of spy novels, in a career that spanned more than half a century. He worked in the British Secret Service from the late 1950s until the early '60s, at the height of the Cold War, which was the topic of his early novels. His third novel, The Spy Who Came in from the Cold, became an international best-seller. Le Carré's gritty depiction of the realities of the spy world contrasted sharply with the characters in Ian Fleming’s James Bond series. John le Carré continued writing, expanding with a series featuring his British spymaster George Smiley, including the hit novel Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy. As the Cold War ended, John le Carré continued to write prolifically, shifting focus to the inequities of globalization, unchecked multinational corporate power, and the role national spy services play in protecting corporate interests. Perhaps best known among his many post-Cold War novels is The Constant Gardener, depicting a pharmaceutical company’s exploitation of unwitting Kenyans for dangerous, sometimes fatal, drug tests."

"To stay awake, I listened to audio-books, the longer the better-novels mostly (John le Carré and Toni Morrison were favorites)"

"All the novels depend for their critical esteem on the author’s dissection of the British class system, of which he is virulently satirical, just as Jane Austen and Charles Dickens were in novels that often gave the appearance of being about something else. It is the exquisite veneer of espionage fiction that sets le Carré apart from modern writers who are far more pretentious and obvious, even if it is they who win Booker Prizes. Unlike so many of those literary lions, le Carré is actually read, and not merely by critics and academics."

"It is this moral struggle, mainly between the inherent decency of the individual as opposed to the corruption any organization, be it the Circus, or a nation, or the school in A Murder of Quality, that places John le Carré at the very pinnacle of contemporary world literature."

"Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy (1979 TV series)"

"Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy (2011 film)"

"Smiley's People (1982 TV series)"

"Law, in its most general and comprehensive sense, signifies a rule of action; and is applied indiscriminately to all kinds of action, whether animate, or inanimate, rational or irrational. Thus we say, the laws of motion, of gravitation, of optics, or mechanics, as well as the laws of nature and of nations. And it is that rule of action, which is prescribed by some superior, and which the inferior is bound to obey."

"Man was formed for society and is neither capable of living alone, nor has the courage to do it."

"Man, considered as a creature, must necessarily be subject to the laws of his creator, for he is entirely a dependent being...This law of nature, being co-eval with mankind and dictated by God himself, is of course superior in obligation to any other. It is binding over all the globe, in all countries, and at all times: no human laws are of any validity, if contrary to this; and such of them as are valid derive all their force, and all their authority, mediately or immediately, from this original."

"If the parliament will positively enact a thing to be done which is unreasonable, I know of no power that can control it: and the examples usually alleged in support of this sense of the rule do none of them prove, that where the main object of a statute is unreasonable the judges are at liberty to reject it; for that were to set the judicial power above that of the legislature, which would be subversive of all government. But where some collateral matter arises out of the general words, and happens to be unreasonable; there the judges are in decency to conclude that this consequence was not foreseen by the parliament, and therefore they are at liberty to expound the statute by equity, and only quoad hoc disregard it."

"The absolute rights of man, considered as a free agent, endowed with discernment to know good from evil, and with power of choosing those measures which appear to him to be most desirable, are usually summed up in one general appellation, and denominated the natural liberty of mankind. This natural liberty consists properly in a power of acting as one thinks fit, without any restraint or control, unless by the law of nature: being a right inherent in us by birth, and one of the gifts of God to man at his creation, when he endowed him with the faculty of freewill. But every man, when he enters into society, gives up a part of his natural liberty, as the price of so valuable a purchase; and, in consideration of receiving the advantages of mutual commerce, obliges himself to conform to those laws, which the community has thought proper to establish."

"Of great importance to the public is the preservation of this personal liberty; for if once it were left in the power of any the highest magistrate to imprison arbitrarily whomever he or his officers thought proper, (as in France it is daily practised by the crown,) there would soon be an end of all other rights and immunities. Some have thought that unjust attacks, even upon life or property, at the arbitrary will of the magistrate, are less dangerous to the commonwealth than such as are made upon the personal liberty of the subject. To bereave a man of life, or by violence to confiscate his estate, without accusation or trial, would be so gross and notorious an act of despotism, as must at once convey the alarm of tyranny throughout the whole kingdom; but confinement of the person, by secretly hurrying him to jail, where his sufferings are unknown or forgotten, is a less public, a less striking, and therefore a more dangerous engine of arbitrary government."

"So great moreover is the regard of the law for private property, that it will not authorize the least violation of it; no, not even for the general good of the whole community. If a new road, for instance, were to be made through the grounds of a private person, it might perhaps be extensively beneficial to the public; but the law permits no man, or set of men, to do this without consent of the owner of the land. In vain may it be urged, that the good of the individual ought to yield to that of the community; for it would be dangerous to allow any private man, or even any public tribunal, to be the judge of this common good, and to decide whether it be expedient or no. Besides, the public good is in nothing more essentially interested, than in the protection of every individual's private rights, as modelled by the municipal law. In this, and similar cases the legislature alone can, and indeed frequently does, interpose, and compel the individual to acquiesce. But how does it interpose and compel? Not by absolutely stripping the subject of his property in an arbitrary manner; but by giving him a full indemnification and equivalent for the injury thereby sustained."

"What they do, no authority upon earth can undo."

"In this distinct and separate existence of the judicial power, in a peculiar body of men, nominated indeed, but not removable at pleasure, by the crown, consists one main preservative of the public liberty; which cannot subsist long in any state, unless the administration of common justice be in some degree separated both from the legislative and the also from the executive power. Were it joined with the legislative, the life, liberty, and property of the subject would be in the hands of arbitrary judges, whose decisions would be then regulated only by their own opinions, and not by any fundamental principles of law; which, though legislators may depart from, yet judges are bound to observe. Were it joined with the executive, this union might soon be an overbalance for the legislative. For which reason... effectual care is taken to remove all judicial power out of the hands of the king's privy council; who, as then was evident from recent instances might soon be inclined to pronounce that for law, which was most agreeable to the prince or his officers. Nothing therefore is to be more avoided, in a free constitution, than uniting the provinces of a judge and a minister of state."

"The royal navy of England hath ever been its greatest defense and ornament; it is its ancient and natural strength; the floating bulwark of our island."

"Time whereof the memory of man runneth not to the contrary."

"There is nothing which so generally strikes the imagination, and engages the affections of mankind, as the right of property; or that sole and despotic dominion which one man claims and exercises over the external things of the world, in total exclusion of the right of any other individual in the universe. And yet there are very few, that will give themselves the trouble to consider the original and foundation of this right."

"That the king can do no wrong, is a necessary and fundamental principle of the English constitution."

"All the several pleas and excuses, which protect the committer of a forbidden act from the punishment which is otherwise annexed thereto, may be reduced to this single consideration, the want or defect of will. An involuntary act, as it has no claim to merit, so neither can it induce any guilt: the concurrence of the will, when it has its choice either to do or to avoid the fact in question, being the only thing that renders human actions either praiseworthy or culpable. Indeed, to make a complete crime, cognizable by human laws, there must be both a will and an act."

"Of crimes injurious to the persons of private subjects, the most principal and important is the offense of taking away that life, which is the immediate gift of the great creator; and which therefore no man can be entitled to deprive himself or another of, but in some manner either expressly commanded in, or evidently deducible from, those laws which the creator has given us; the divine laws, I mean, of either nature or revelation."

"The founders of the English laws have with excellent forecast contrived, that no man should be called to answer to the king for any capital crime, unless upon the preparatory accusation of twelve or more of his fellow subjects, the grand jury: and that the truth of every accusation, whether preferred in the shape of indictment, information, or appeal, should afterwards be confirmed by the unanimous suffrage of twelve of his equals and neighbours, indifferently chosen, and superior to all suspicion. So that the liberties of England cannot but subsist, so long as this palladium remains sacred and inviolate, not only from all open attacks, (which none will be so hardy as to make) but also from all secret machinations, which may sap and undermine it; by introducing new and arbitrary methods of trial, by justices of the peace, commissioners of the revenue, and courts of conscience. And however convenient these may appear at first, (as doubtless all arbitrary powers, well executed, are the most convenient) yet let it be again remembered, that delays, and little inconveniences in the forms of justice, are the price that all free nations must pay for their liberty in more substantial matters; that these inroads upon this sacred bulwark of the nation are fundamentally opposite to the spirit of our constitution; and that, though begun in trifles, the precedent may gradually increase and spread, to the utter disuse of juries in questions of the most momentous concern."

"It is better that ten guilty persons escape, than that one innocent suffer."

"In the history of American institutions, no other book — except the Bible — has played so great a role as Blackstone's Commentaries on the Laws of England. Before the American Revolution, according to Edmund Burke, it had sold nearly as many copies in the colonies as in England. Even without Blackstone, the Americans surely would have fought their Revolution and doubtless would have preserved English institutions in America. But the convenient appearance of the Commentaries within the decade before the Declaration of Independence made it much easier for Americans to see what they were preserving; and made it feasible to perpetuate those institutions in remote villages without trained lawyers or law libraries. From Blackstone we can learn even more about what the American colonists were defending than by reading the violent tracts of Thomas Paine."

"I say...upon this point, what JUDGE BLACKSTONE says; and that is, that the right to resist oppression always exists, but that those who compose the nation at any given time must be left to judge for themselves when oppression has arrived at a pitch to justify the exercise of such right."

"He was the greatest exponent of the common law that we have ever had... To this we owe his immortal Commentaries on the Laws of England. In four books. They were the product of his lectures over a period of twelve years. The work was at once acclaimed as a classic by lawyers and by men of letters. It has remained a classic ever since. I have an early edition in my library. I refer to it constantly when I want to know what the law was in his day. I am always amazed at the breadth of his knowledge, the research which he did, the style of his prose, and his statement of principles. It is the greatest law-book that we have ever had."

"As a judge he showed himself most workmanlike, and it would be hard to find any decision in which he failed to attain a high standard. He was certainly outstanding among his colleagues, who, though sound lawyers, did not rise above mediocrity, and were at any rate overshadowed by their contemporaries in the Court of King's Bench."

"It can be said with confidence that he showed a very firm grasp of every branch of law which he was called upon to handle. No problem found him wanting in anxious consideration and sensible conclusion. If there were few diamonds in his judicial necklace, at least there were no gewgaws."

"We are no admirers of the political doctrines laid down in Blackstone's Commentaries. But if we consider that those Commentaries were read with great applause in the very schools where, seventy or eighty years before, books had been publicly burned by order of the University of Oxford for containing the damnable doctrine that the English monarchy is limited and mixed, we cannot deny that a salutary change had taken place."

"My good lord, till of late I could never, with any satisfaction to myself, answer that question; but, since the publication of Mr. Blackstone's Commentaries I can never be at a loss. There your son will find analytical reasoning diffused in a pleasing and perspicuous style. There he may imbibe imperceptibly the first principles on which our excellent laws are founded, and THERE he may become acquainted with an uncouth crabbed author, Coke upon Littleton, who has disappointed and disheartened many a Tyro, but who cannot fail to please in a modern dress."

"Blackstone's declaration respecting the civil death of married women haunted many other outstanding leaders in the woman movement of the middle period. Although Matilda Joslyn Gage tried to meet it by a curious display of logic, she regarded it as a statement of the law. "After marriage," she declared in 1852, "the husband and wife are considered as one person in law, which I hold to be false from the very laws applicable to married parties. Were it so, the act of one would be as binding as the act of the other;...were it so, a woman could not legally be a man's inferior. Such a thing would be a veritable impossibility. One-half of a person cannot be made the protection or direction of the other half. Blackstone says 'a woman may indeed be attorney for her husband, for that implies no separation from, but rather a representation of, her lord. And a husband may also bequeath anything to his wife by will; for it cannot take effect till the coverture is determined by his death." After stating at considerable length the reasons showing their unity, the learned commentator proceeds to cut the knot, and show they are not one, but are considered as two persons, one superior, the one inferior, and not only so, but the inferior in the eye of the law as acting from compulsion"...At the Woman's Rights Convention held in Syracuse the following year, 1853, Mrs. Gage recurred to the subject and spoke as if equity and legislation had made no changes in the "disabilities" of married women at common law. She affirmed that "the legal disabilities of women" are numerous; that they are only known to those who bear them; that they "are acknowledged by Kent, Story, and many other legal authorities." Without directing attention to those pages of Kent and Story which set forth at length the equitable principles by which common-law rules could be and often were nullified, Mrs. Gage went on with her oration: "A wife has no management in the joint earnings of herself and her husband; they are entirely under control of the husband, who is obliged to furnish the wife merely the common necessaries of life; all that she receives beyond these is looked upon by the law as a favor, and not held as her right. A mother is denied the custody of her own child; a most barbarous and unjust law, which robs her of the child placed in her care by the great Creator himself. A widow is allowed the use merely of one-third of the real estate left at the husband's death; and when her minor children have grown up she must surrender the personal property, even to the family Bible, and the pictures of her dear children. In view of such laws the women engaged in this movement ask that the wife shall be made heir to the husband to the same extent that he is now her heir...."The present law of divorce is very unjust; the husband, whether the innocent or the guilty party, retaining all the wife's property, has also the control of the children unless by special decree of the court they are assigned to the mother." For the gentle Quaker, Lucretia Mott, one of the most persuasive American women of her time, Blackstone was no less an unquestioned authority than he was for Mrs. Stanton and Mrs. Gage. After hearing Richard H. Dana deliver a lecture in 1849 ridiculing "the new demand of American womanhood for civil and political rights," Mrs. Mott also delivered a lecture, in reply to the Boston orator."

"The fact still remains, that Blackstone first rescued the law of England from chaos. He did, and did exceedingly well, for the end of the eighteenth century, what Coke tried to do, and did exceedingly ill, about 150 years before; that is to say, he gave an account of the law as a whole, capable of being studied, not only without disgust, but with interest and profit. If we except the Commentaries of Chancellor Kent, which were suggested by Blackstone, I should doubt whether any work intended to describe the whole of the law of any country possessed anything like the same merits. His arrangement of the subject is, I think, defective, for reasons which have often been given, but a better work of the kind has not yet been written, and, with all its defects, the literary skill with which a problem of extraordinary difficulty has been dealt with is astonishing."

"The practice of physic is jostled by quacks on the one side, and by science on the other."

"There is nothing so captivating as new knowledge."

"Truth in all its kinds is most difficult to win; and truth in medicine is the most difficult of all."

"Beware of language, for it is often a great cheat."

"The diagnosis of disease is often easy, often difficult, and often impossible."

"We should always presume the disease to be curable, until its own nature prove it otherwise."

"Fortunate, indeed, is the man who takes exactly the right measure of himself, and holds a just balance between what he can acquire and what he can use, be it great or be it small!"

"Common sense is in medicine the master workman."

"It takes as much time and trouble to pull down a falsehood as to build up a truth."

"Faith and knowledge lean largely upon each other in the practice of medicine."

"It is no easy task to pick one's way from truth to truth through besetting errors."

"It would be a great thing to understand pain in all its meanings."

"It is the great mystery of life itself which is at the bottom of all the mysterious language we are obliged to employ concerning it."

"People in general have no notion of the sort and amount of evidence often needed to prove the simplest matter of fact."

"Poisons and medicine are oftentimes the same substance given with different intents."

"Perfect health, like perfect beauty, is a rare thing; and so, it seems, is perfect disease."

"All political decisions are taken under great pressure, and if a treaty serves its turn for ten or twenty years, the wisdom of its framers is sufficiently confirmed."

"It is easier for eight or nine elderly men to feel their way towards unanimity if they are not compelled to conduct their converging maneuvers under the microscopes and telescopes of the press, but are permitted to shuffle about a little in slippers."

"I can see … only one safe rule for the historian: that he should recognize in the development of human destinies the play of the contingent and the unforeseen."

"Purity of race does not exist. Europe is a continent of energetic mongrels."

"Politics is the art of human happiness."

"Balfour's interest in the Zionist cause exceeded the bounds of duty."

"[W]hen anti-Semitism is everywhere, it is nowhere. And when every anti-Zionist is an anti-Semite, we no longer know how to recognize the real thing--the concept of anti-Semitism loses its significance."

"People of goodwill who support the Palestinians resent being falsely accused of being anti-Semites."

"My highest ambition, and what I hope to do as far as I can, is to make my history the very reverse of Gibbon in this respect,—that whereas the whole spirit of his work, from its low morality, is hostile to religion, without speaking directly against it, so my greatest desire would be, in my History, by its high morals and its general tone, to be of use to the cause, without actually bringing it forward."

"With regard to reforms at Rugby, give me credit, I must beg of you, for a most sincere desire to make it a place of Christian education. At the same time, my object will be, if possible, to form Christian men, for Christian boys I can scarcely hope to make."

"If one might wish for impossibilities, I might then wish that my children might be well versed in physical science, but in due subordination to the fulness and freshness of their knowledge on moral subjects. ... [R]ather than have it the principal thing in my son's mind, I would gladly have him think that the sun went round the earth, and that the stars were so many spangles set in the bright blue firmament. Surely the one thing needful for a Christian and an Englishman to study is Christian and moral and political philosophy."

"I do not often venture to talk to you about public affairs, but surely you will agree with me in deprecating this war with China, which really seems to me so wicked as to be a national sin of the greatest possible magnitude, and it distresses me very deeply. Cannot any thing be done by petition or otherwise to awaken men's minds to the dreadful guilt we are incurring? I really do not remember, in any history, of a war undertaken with such combined injustice and baseness. Ordinary wars of conquest are to me far less wicked, than to go to war in order to maintain smuggling, and that smuggling consisting in the introduction of a demoralizing drug, which the government of China wishes to keep out, and which we, for the lucre of gain, want to introduce by force; and in this quarrel are going to burn and slay in the pride of our supposed superiority."

"Real knowledge, like every thing else of the highest value, is not to be obtained easily. It must be worked for, — studied for, — thought for, — and, more than all, it must be prayed for."

"As of rioting, the old Roman way of dealing with that is always the right one; flog the rank and file, and fling the ring-leaders from the Tarpeian rock."

"The distinction between Christianity and all other systems of religion consists largely in this, that in these other, men are found seeking after God, while Christianity is God seeking after man."

"Over the evolution of the public school Dr Thomas Arnold, Headmaster of Rugby from 1827 until his death in 1841, exercised a decisive influence. Arnold himself expressed in his own stormy personality all the moral obsessions and emotional fervour of early Victorian evangelicalism. Arnold's Rugby was the most important and influential of the schools that served as prototypes for the numerous new public schools that opened between 1840 and 1900 to cater for the swelling middle classes. Arnold more than any other individual gave late Victorian English education both its concern with moral conduct and its distinctive mark of romanticism. Religion for Arnold, as for the rest of his generation, meant "...what the Gospel teaches us to mean by it, it is nothing less than a system directing and influencing our conduct, principles and feelings..." It followed that the first purpose of education was to inculcate Christian morality. "It is not necessary", he wrote, "that this should be a school of three hundred, or one hundred, or fifty boys; but it is necessary that it should be a school of Christian gentlemen." Christian morality was thus very much more important than, for example, scientific knowledge... Arnold went so far as to resign from the governing body of the new London University because religion was not to be a compulsory examination subject: "... An University that conceived of education as not involving in it principles of moral truths would be an evil.""

"Arnold's own interpretation of the human past was no less immaculately ideal – a counterpart of the Middle Ages as seen in the vision of the Pre-Raphaelites. While he was writing a history of Rome, he could refer to the Romans as a people "whose distinguishing quality was their love of institutions and order, and their reverence for law". It was an unbalanced conclusion to draw from a history replete with violence and disorder. Arnold's treatment of historical personages is less a consideration of a man's ability than a judgement of moral character. Marius was "the lowest of democrats", Sulla "the most sincere of aristocrats". This is to foreshadow a common British trait in the twentieth century. It was indeed Arnold's purpose in writing his history of Rome to demolish Gibbon, and all the hated scepticism, cynicism and worldliness of the eighteenth century... Arnold was equally a prototype of a common later British attitude to world affairs. He strikes a very modern note over the Opium War with China in 1840 in a letter to a friend."

"I [found], on going to the university, that...the tone of young men...was universally irreligious. A religious undergraduate was very rare, very much laughed at when he appeared; and I think I may confidently say, hardly to be found among public-school men... A most singular and striking change has come over our public schools—a change too great for any person to appreciate adequately, who has not known them in both these times. This change is undoubtedly part of a general improvement of our generation in respect of piety and reverence, but I am sure that to Dr. Arnold's personal earnest simplicity of purpose, strength of character, power of influence, and piety...the carrying of this improvement into our schools is mainly attributable. He was the first. It soon began to be a matter of observation to us in the university that his pupils brought quite a different character with them to Oxford than that which we knew elsewhere. I do not speak of opinions; but his pupils were thoughtful, manly minded, conscious of duty and obligation."

"In the mid-nineteenth century the [public] schools underwent extensive reforms, championed by Dr Thomas Arnold, headmaster of Rugby, who expanded their curriculum to include mathematics, modern languages and history, and who placed organised sport and evangelical Christianity at the centre of their social ethos. Thereafter, the public schools provided a model for secondary education in England, and one that was loved and resented in equal measure."

"His testimonials were few in number, and most of them couched in general language, but all speaking strongly of his qualifications. Amongst them was a letter from Dr. Hawkins, now Provost of Oriel, in which it was predicted that, if Mr. Arnold were elected to the head-mastership of Rugby, he would change the face of education all through the public schools of England."

"[H]e was quite incapable of enjoying any book or poem if he disapproved of the author's principles or even if he thought that the author was half-hearted in his support of righteousness. Molière gave him no pleasure and he was troubled by Shakespeare's apparent inability to create good men."

"Our own tung should be written cleane and pure, vnmixt and vnmangled with borrowing of other tunges."

"Birthless and deathless and changeless remainaineth the spirit forever; Death hath not touched it at all, dead though the house of it seems!"

"He who died at Azan sends This to comfort all his friends:— Faithful friends! It lies I know Pale and white and cold as snow; And ye say, 'Abdallah’s dead!' Weeping at the feet and head. I can see your falling tears, I can hear your sighs and prayers; Yet I smile and whisper this: I am not the thing you kiss. Cease your tears and let it lie; It was mine—it is not I."

"We are the voices of the wandering wind, Which moan for rest and rest can never find; Lo! as the wind is, so is mortal life, A moan, a sigh, a sob, a storm, a strife."

"The Buddhas who have been and who shall be, of these am I and what they did, I do."

"Below the highest sphere four Regents sit Who rule our world, and under them are zones Nearer, but high, where saintliest spirits dead Wait thrice ten thousand years, then live again; And on Lord Buddha, waiting in that sky, Came for our sakes the five sure signs of birth So that the Devas knew the signs, and said "Buddha will go again to help the World." "Yea!" spake He, "now I go to help the World. This last of many times; for birth and death End hence for me and those who learn my Law. I will go down among the Sakyas, Under the southward snows of Himalay, Where pious people live and a just King.""

"Now, when our Lord was come to eighteen years, The King commanded that there should be built Three stately houses, one of hewn square beams With cedar lining, warm for winter days; One of veined marbles, cool for summer heat; And one of burned bricks, with blue tiles bedecked, Pleasant at seed-time, when the champaks bud-- Subha, Suramma, Ramma, were their names. Delicious gardens round about them bloomed, Streams wandered wild and musky thickets stretched, With many a bright pavilion and fair lawn In midst of which Siddartha strayed at will, Some new delight provided every hour; And happy hours he knew, for life was rich, With youthful blood at quickest; yet still came The shadows of his meditation back, As the lake's silver dulls with driving clouds."

"Like everything the British poet Edwin Arnold wrote, The Light of Asia was quickly written: a poem in eight books of about five hundred lines each, mostly in blank verse, composed over a period of several months when Arnold was busy with other concerns. Immediately upon its publication in the summer of 1879, the poem began to sell copies and win attention. It was a life of Siddhartha Gautama, told from the point of view of “an Indian Buddhist” (so read the title page) in high English style. The immediate sensation surrounding The Light of Asia was remarkable: for some time on both sides of the Atlantic, newspapers and dining rooms were charged with discussion about the Buddha, his teaching, and Arnold’s presentation of Buddhism. The book’s success was also sustained. By 1885 the authorized English version had gone through thirty editions. Pirated editions, which went for as little as three cents in the U.S., make a count of the book’s circulation impossible, but it has been estimated at a million copies (not far short of Huckleberry Finn). After thirty years it had become one of the undisputed bestsellers of Victorian England and America, had been translated into a number of languages (German, Dutch, French, Czech, Italian, Swedish, Esperanto), and had inspired a stage version and even an opera."

"Arnold’s great project was a blank verse poem based loosely on the Lalitavistara Sutra. It ran for forty-one thousand words and was composed in eight volumes and published in 1879 as the Light of Asia: the Great Renunciation. The Light of Asia was an instant success and would capture the English speaking imagination. It would be reprinted numerous times in England and the United States. The best estimate I could find was sixty editions in England and another eighty in the US. The Light has also been translated into many languages, including Hindi. But, most importantly, it is generally credited as the first book to bring the life and teachings of Gautama Siddhartha broadly to the attention of the English speaking public."

"Literature is mostly about having sex and not much about having children. Life is the other way round."

"Four times, under our educational rules, the human pack is shuffled and cut – at eleven-plus, sixteen-plus, eighteen-plus and twenty-plus – and happy is he who comes top of the deck on each occasion, but especially the last. This is called Finals, the very name of which implies that nothing of importance can happen after it."

"Looking around at the faces of his colleagues in the Senior Common Room he felt reassured: not a Lineament of Gratified Desire to be seen."

"I'm a bit of a deconstructionist myself. It's kind of exciting – the last intellectual thrill left. Like sawing through the branch you're sitting on."

"Language is the net that holds thought trapped within a particular culture. But if one could only strike the ball with sufficient force, with perfect timing, it would perhaps break through the netting, continue on its course, never fall to earth, but go into orbit around the world."

"That's the attraction of the conference circuit: it's a way of converting work into play, combining professionalism with tourism, and all at someone else's expense. Write a paper and see the world! I'm Jane Austen – fly me!"

"I respect a man who can recognize a quotation. It's a dying art."

"The legendary missionary journey of St. Paul, which led to the foundation of the British church, presupposes the existence of a Jewish community - always the initial object of his propaganda - even before the capture of Jerusalem by Titus in the year 70."

"Abraham ibn Ezra, that restless, versatile Spaniard who wrote on almost every subject which could interest the medieval mind"

"The alembic of English tolerance has operated by now on the newer arrivals as well. Their sons have taken part in English life, contributed to English achievement, striven for England's betterment, shed their blood in England's wars."

"Ghostwritten’s secret agenda is to offer up eight different answers to the question, "Why do things happen?" so it has the right to monkey about with time and history. number9dreams’s secret agenda is to offer eight different answers to the question, "In what space does the mind operate?""

"What do I miss? Second-hand bookshops where I can find things I had no idea I wanted. AbeBooks helps, but it doesn't have that smell."

"What is this thing, "imagination?" A muscle that can be "forced" or "stretched"? Or something immune to the ethos of ganbaru [grit it out, or strive for one's best]? Like the relativist's view of light, it is both wave and particle, depending on what you want it to be. The verb "to imagine" is both active and passive, as in "Steve imagined his future," and "Such a future was never imagined." So, I work on my novel by imagining the world of 18th-century Nagasaki and its people and their fears and desires, as an act of will, and a lot of will is involved, believe me. However, I could ganbaru until I'm blue in the face. If my imagination doesn't work "passively" or even "intransitively," at its own behest rather than mine, and come up with cliche-demolishing twists of phrase and turns of plot and happy accidents and unexpected reactions from characters, then the book will be sterile. Well-written with luck, and even intelligent, but sterile. (...) Imagination is what makes art fertile."

"As long as you can Houdini your way out of the Sisyphean constraints then originality happens."

"Right now I’m working on a book set in the thirty years on either side of 2010, but I shouldn’t give too many details or the next thing you know it’s on Wikipedia and if I change my mind and decide to recast King Lear in a pond of frogs and toads I’ll just give a hardworking Wikipedian an extra headache."

"Perhaps the best answer is that the writer that I am has been shaped by the stammering kid that I was, and that although my stammer didn’t make me write, it did, in part, inform and influence the writer I became. It’s true that stammerers can become more adept at sentence construction. Synonyms aren’t always neatly interchangeable. Sometimes choosing word B over word A requires you to construct a different sentence to house it—and quickly, too, before your listener smells the stammering rat."

"I have always preferred maps to books. They don't answer you back."

"The most malicious god is the god of the counted chicken."

"Lunatics are writers whose works write them."

"Whoever dies with the most stuff wins."

"The body is the outermost layer of the mind."

"Courage is the highest quality for a soldier, but technology is a fine substitute."

"Never compose anything unless the not composing of it becomes a positive nuisance to you."

"Always ask for advice but never take it."

"If nobody likes your work, you have to go on just for the sake of the work. And you're in no danger of letting the public make you repeat yourself. Every artist ought to pray that he may not be "a success". If he's a failure he stands a good chance of concentrating upon the best work of which he's capable."

"One of the advantages of being over forty is that one begins to learn the difference between knowing and realising."

"Music, being identical with heaven, isn't a thing of momentary thrills, or even hourly ones. It's a condition of eternity."

"The enormity of the universe revealed by science cannot readily be grasped by the human brain, but the music of The Planets enables the mind to acquire some comprehension of the vastness of space where rational understanding fails."

"Our rulers (both here and in Great Britain) will now have leisure to attend to every part of our American polity; and, among other things, to the state of Indians: … they have been looked upon as untamed and untameable monsters; whom, like the devoted nations around Judea, it was a kind of religion with white men to exterminate. We have treated them with a rigour and severity equally unsuitable to the genius of our government, and the mild spirit of our religion."

"Territory we do not want; having, it is probable, already more than we well know how to manage. Instead therefore of countenancing that vagrant and unsettled way of life which has become habitual to so many of our people; and that very general passion they have to be for ever running back in quest of fresh lands; a practice not more unpropitious to all agricultural improvements, than likely to keep us involved in Indian wars; let us enlarge our empire by the civilization of the Indians; who already have a better title to any of our un-located lands, than we can possibly give any new comers"

"Were an impartial and competent observer of the state of society in these middle colonies asked, whence it happens that Virginia and Maryland (which were the first planted, and which are superior to many colonies and inferior to none, in point of natural advantage) are still so exceedingly behind most of the other British trans-Atlantic possessions in all those improvements which bring credit and consequence to a country? - he would answer - They are so, because they are cultivated by slaves. … Some loss and inconvenience would, no doubt, arise from the general abolition of slavery in these colonies: but were it done gradually, with judgement, and with good temper, I have never yet seen it satisfactorily proved that such inconvenience would either be great or lasting. … If ever these colonies, now filled with slaves, be improved to their utmost capacity, an essential part of the improvement must be the abolition of slavery. Such a change would hardly be more to the advantage of the slaves, than it would be to their owners."

"[Boucher admits that the use of slavery in the British colonies is better regulated than in other countries, but notes that:] "it is surely worse in this, that here, in one sense, it never can end. An African slave, even when made free, supposing him to be possessed even of talents and of virtue, can never, in these colonies, be quite on terms of equality with a free white man.""

"[In a later footnote, he explains further:] "children can never be upbraided with their having had a felon for a father: whereas the descendants of a white person, married to a black one, would, for many generations, by their complexion, proclaim their origin. Accordingly, though many mulattoes and people of colour have obtained wealth, I remember no instance, in any European colony, of their having obtained rank.""

"In one essential point, I fear, we are all deficient: they are nowhere sufficiently instructed. I am far from recommending it to you, at once to set them all free; because to do so would be an heavy loss to you, and probably no gain to them: but I do entreat you to make them some amends for the drudgery of their bodies by cultivating their minds. … though they still continue to be your slaves, they shall be delivered from the bondage of corruption into the glorious liberty of the children of God."

"It is surprising what improper and indecent contentions these popular elections occasioned. I have oftener than once known half-a-dozen candidates all trying for a vacant parish, and preaching alternately, to give their electors an opportunity of determining what they liked best. Voice and action, as is remarked in a very humorous pamphlet respecting London lectureships, almost constantly carried it. … Preachers and ministers so elected, continuing still in some degree dependent on the people, continued also chiefly to cultivate those arts by which their favour had first been gained. Their sermons were light, flippant, and ordinary; but their manner of preaching was pleasing and popular."

"As for lawyers, they seemed to grow up spontaneously; many of the first name and note in that profession were men without any education, and totally illiterate. Such a state of society was peculiar, and could not but have peculiar effects; for no other body of men, nor all the other bodies of men put together, had half so much influence as the lawyers...."

"That the people of America should be severed from Great Britain, even your fellow Congressionalists from the North would not be hardy enough yet to avow; but that this will certainly follow from the measures you have been induced by them to adopt, is obvious to every man who is permitted yet to think for himself. … see ye not that after some few years of civil broils all the fair settlements in the middle and southern colonies will be seized on by our more enterprising and restless fellow-colonists of the North? At first and for a while perhaps they may be contented to be the Dutch of America, i.e. to be our carriers and fishmongers, for which no doubt, as their sensible historian [Edmund Burke] has observed, they seem to be destined by their situation, soil, and climate: but had so sagacious an observer foreseen that a time might come when all North America should be independent, he would, it is probable, have added to his other remark, that those his Northern brethren would then become also the Goths and Vandals of America."

"The soul of man is larger than the sky, Deeper than ocean, or the abysmal dark Of the unfathomed center. Like that ark, Which in its sacred hold uplifted high, O'er the drowned hills, the human family, And stock reserved of every living kind, So, in the compass of the single mind, The seeds and pregnant forms in essence lie, That make all worlds. Great poet, 'twas thy art To know thyself, and in thyself to be Whate'er Love, Hate, Ambition, Destiny, Or the firm, fatal purpose of the Heart Can make of Man. Yet thou wert still the same, Serene of thought, unhurt by thy own flame."

"On this hapless earth There ’s small sincerity of mirth, And laughter oft is but an art To drown the outcry of the heart."

"She is not fair to outward view As many maidens be; Her loveliness I never knew Until she smiled on me: Oh! then I saw her eye was bright, A well of love, a spring of light."

"Her very frowns are fairer far Than smiles of other maidens are."

"Our love was nature; and the peace that floated On the white mist, and dwelt upon the hills, To sweet accord subdued our wayward wills: One soul was ours, one mind, one heart devoted, That, wisely doating, ask'd not why it doated. And ours the unknown joy, which knowing kills. But now I find how dear thou wert to me; That man is more than half of nature's treasure, Of that fair beauty which no eye can see, Of that sweet music which no ear can measure; And now the streams may sing for other's pleasure, The hills sleep on in their eternity."

"Lightly tripping o'er the land, Deftly skimming o'er the main, Scarce our fairy wings bedewing With the frothy mantling brine, Scarce our silver feet acquainting With the verdure-vested ground; Now like swallows o'er a river Gliding low with quivering pinion, Now aloft in ether sailing "Leisurely as summer cloud;" Rising now, anon descending, Swift and bright as shooting stars, Thus we travel glad and free."

"Sweet were change, If but a change of tortures! But to grow A motionless rock, fast as my strong prison, Age after age, till circling suns outnumber The sands upon the tide-worn beach! No hope, Or that sad mockery of hope that fools With dull despair, spanning the infinite! Torment unmeasurable!"

"Never till this day Did life disturb the dense eternity Of joyless quiet; never skylark's song, Or storm-bird's prescient scream, or eaglet's cry, Made vital the gross fog. The very light Is but an alien that can find no welcome"

"Hard I strove To put away my immortality, Till my collected spirits swell'd my heart Almost to bursting; but the strife is past. It is a fearful thing to be a god, And, like a god, endure a mortal's pain; To be a show for earth and wondering heaven To gaze and shudder at! But I will live, That Jove may know there is a deathless soul Who ne'er will be his subject. Yes, 'tis past. The stedfast Fates confess my absolute will,— Their own co-equal."

"Now, we are agreed, I and my destinies. The total world, — Above, below, whate'er is seen or known, And all that men, and all that gods enact, Hopes, fears, imaginations, purposes; With joy, and pain, and every pulse that beats In the great body of the universe, I give to the eternal sisterhood, To make my peace withal! And cast this husk, This hated, mangled, and dishonour'd carcase Into the balance; so have I redeem'd My proper birthright, even the changeless mind, The imperishable essence uncontroll'd."

"The mighty Jove did love us. Did? He does. There is a spell of unresisted power In wonder-working weak simplicity, Because it is not fear'd."

"We have winning wiles and witcheries, Such incantations as thy sterner wit Did never dream of. Time hath been ere now That Jove hath listen'd to our minstrelsy. Till wrath would seem to drop out of his soul Like a forgotten thing."

"True, thy fault is great, But we are many that will plead for thee; We and our sisters, dwellers in the streams That murmur blithely to the joyous mood, And dolefully to sadness. Not a nook In darkest woods but some of us are there, To watch the flowers, that else would die unseen."

"Where'er ye sojourn, and whatever names Ye are or shall be called; fairies, or sylphs, Nymphs of the wood or mountain, flood or field: Live ye in peace, and long may ye be free To follow your good minds."

"Are we not bold to bid a god repent; To break upon his slumbers with our prayers; To watch him day and night; to wear him out With endless supplication? Perhaps to beg His kind attention to a pleasant tale; To cheat him into pity, and conclude Each story with Prometheus?"

"Gentle powers, forbear! Twere worse than all my miseries foreseen Should my huge wreck suck down the friendly skiffs That proffer'd aid. Oh! would that Jupiter Had hurl'd me to the deep of Erebus, Where neither god nor man might pity me."

"Now shall I become a common tale, A ruin'd fragment of a worn-out world; Unchanging record of unceasing change. Eternal landmark to the tide of time. Swift generations, that forget each other, Shall still keep up the memory of my shame Till I am grown an unbelieved fable."

"Horsed upon hippogriffs, the hags of night Shall come to visit me; and once an age Some desperate wight, or wizard, gaunt and grey, Shall seek this spot by help of hidden lore, To ask of things forgotten or to come. But who, beholding me, shall dare defy The wrath of Jove? Since vain is wisdom's boast, And impotent the knowledge that o'erleaps The dusky bourne of time. Twere better far That gods should quaff their nectar merrily, And men sing out the day like grasshoppers, So may they haply lull the watchful thunder."

"Go your way. Forget Prometheus, And all the woe that he is doom'd to bear; By his own choice this vile estate preferring To ignorant bliss and unfelt slavery."

"Jove is not one half so merciless As thou art to thyself. But fare thee well; Our love is all as stubborn as thy pride, And swift as firm."

"What were Jove himself If pity had not been? Was not he once A hapless babe, condemn'd to die ere born?"

"He grew, and grew, A star-bright sign of fated empery; And all conspiring omens led him on To lofty purpose and pre-eminence. The mountain eagles, towering in their pride, Stoop'd at his beck and flock'd about his path, Like the small birds by wintry famine tamed; Or with their dusky and expansive wings Shaded and fann'd him as he slept at noon. The lightnings danced before him sportively, And shone innocuous as the pale cold moon In the clear blue of his celestial eye."

"The glad sons of the deliver'd earth Shall yearly raise their multitudinous voice, Hymning great Jove, the God of Liberty! Then he grew proud, yet gentle in his pride, And full of tears, which well became his youth, As showers do spring. For he was quickly moved, And joy'd to hear sad stories that we told Of what we saw on earth, of death and woe, And all the waste of time. Then would he swear That he would conquer time; that in his reign It never should be winter; he would have No pain, no growing old, no death at all. And that the pretty damsels, whom we said He must not love, for they would die and leave him, Should evermore be young and beautiful; Or, if they must go, they should come again, Like as the flowers did. Thus he used to prate, Till we almost believed him."

"Aye, ye were blest with folly. Who may tell What strange conceits upon the earth were sown And gender'd by the fond garrulity Of your aereal music? Scatter'd notes, Half heard, half fancied by the erring sense Of man, on which they fell like downy seeds Sown by autumnal winds, grew up, and teem'd With plenteous madness."

"There is a dark foreboding in thy speech; Thine eyes flash fearfully a moody joy That augurs a new downfall. Whence arise These desperate hopes, that seem to make thee fond Of lowest misery?"

"I know it all — All ye would ask. But ne'er shall hope be mine Till the dread secret works its fatal will In daylight visible, with wrath and scorn, And ceaseless memory of forgotten things. Then Jove shall learn what all his sulphurous bolts, Soul-piercing torments, earthquakes, fiery plagues, Disease, and loathsome, black deformity, And all confounding shame, shall ne'er persuade My voice to utter."

"Ye patient fields, rejoice! The blessing that ye pray for silently Is come at last; for ye shall no more fade, Nor see your flow'rets droop like famishing babes Upon your comfortless breasts."

"With all your music, loud and lustily, With every dainty joy of sight and smell, Prepare a banquet meet to entertain The Lord of Thunder, that hath set you free From old oppression."

"Thou breeze, That mak'st an organ of the mighty sea, Obedient to thy wilful phantasies, Provoke him not to scorn; but soft and low, As pious maid awakes her aged sire, On tiptoe stealing, whisper in his ear The tidings of the young god's victory."

"Oh, where is man— That mortal god, that hath no mortal kin Or like on earth? Shall Nature's orator— The interpreter of all her mystic strains — Shall he be mute in Nature's jubilee?"

"Mortal! fear no more,— The reign is past of ancient violence; And Jove hath sworn that time shall not deface, Nor death destroy, nor mutability Perplex the truth of love."

"Love's great artillery."

"’Tis love, not years or limbs that can Make the martyr, or the man."

"Souls are not Spaniards too; one friendly flood Of baptism blends them all into a blood. Christ's faith makes but one body of all souls, And love's that body's soul; no law controls Our free traffic for heav'n; we may maintain Peace, sure, with piety, though it come from Spain. What soul soe'er, in any language, can Speak heav'n like hers is my soul's countryman. Oh, 'tis not Spanish, but 'tis heav'n she speaks! 'Tis heaven that lies in ambush there, and breaks From thence into the wond'ring reader's breast, Who feels his warm heart hatched into a nest Of little eagles and young loves, whose high Flights scorn the lazy dust and things that die."

"If I were lost in misery What was it to Thy heaven and thee? What was it to Thy precious blood If my foul heart called for a flood? What if my faithless soul and I Would needs fall in With guilt and sin, What did the lamb that He should die? What did the lamb that He should need, When the wolf sins, Himself to bleed?"

"Let hearts and lippes speak lowd; and say Hail, door of life: and sourse of day! The door was shutt, the fountain seal'd; Yet Light was seen and Life reveald. The door was shutt, yet let in day, The fountain seald, yet life found way."

"The conscious water saw its God and blushed."

"Now though the blow that snatcht him hence, Stopt the Mouth of Eloquence, Though she be dumb e'r since his Death, Not us'd to speak but in his Breath; Yet if at least she not denies, The sad Language of our Eyes, We are contented: for then this Language none more fluent is. Nothing speaks our Grief so well As to speak nothing: Come then tell Thy mind in Tears who e'r thou be, That ow'st a Name to Misery: Eyes are Vocal, Tears have Tongues, And there be words not made with Lungs; Sententious showers, O let them fall, Their cadence is Rhetorical. Here's a Theme will drink th' expence Of all thy watry Eloquence; Weep then, onely be exprest Thus much, He's Dead, and Weep the rest."

"A happy soul, that all the way To heaven hath a summer’s day."

"The modest front of this small floor, Believe me, reader, can say more Than many a braver marble can,— “Here lies a truly honest man!”"

"Thou water turn'st to wine, fair friend of life; Thy foe, to cross the sweet arts of Thy reign, Distils from thence the tears of wrath and strife, And so turns wine to water back again."

"Whoe’er she be, That not impossible she, That shall command my heart and me."

"Where’er she lie, Locked up from mortal eye, In shady leaves of destiny."

"Days that need borrow No part of their good morrow From a fore-spent night of sorrow."

"Life that dares send A challenge to his end, And when it comes, say, Welcome, friend!"

"Sydneian showers Of sweet discourse, whose powers Can crown old Winter’s head with flowers."

"It is, of course, the great forest of Epping that givs an air of serenity and tranquillity to a piece of England the Industrial Age might so easily have spoiled."

"The Venetian Bridge and the fine cliff walks are a handsome background for a wealth of entertainment which most visitors find irresistible."

"Beyond are greens where pink chestnuts, may trees and copper beeches flaunt themselves gaily."

"A narrow-minded nonconformist."

"They told me, Heraclitus, they told me you were dead, They brought me bitter news to hear and bitter tears to shed."

"Still are thy pleasant voices, thy nightingales, awake; For Death, he taketh all away, but them he cannot take."

"Because men are men, social institutions - property rights and the organisation of industry, and the system of public health and education – should be planned...to emphasise and strengthen, not the class differences which divide but the common humanity which unites them."

"The wage-earner is as much entitled as the property-owner to claim equitable consideration for his established expectations...and that workmen have precisely the same right to be satisfied that organization is efficient, and management up to date, as management has that workmen are earning their wages."

"Democracy is unstable as a political system as long as it remains a political system and nothing more, instead of being, as it should be, not only a form of government but a type of society, and a manner of life which is in harmony with that type. To make it a type of society requires an advance along two lines. It involves, in the first place, the resolute elimination of all forms of special privilege which favour some groups and depress other, whether their source be differences of environment, of education, or of pecuniary income. It involves, in the second place, the conversion of economic power, now often an irresponsible tyrant, into a servant of society, working within clearly defined limits and accountable for its actions to a public authority."

"...To abolish all advantages and disabilities which have their source, not in differences of personal quality, but in disparities of wealth, opportunity, social position, and economic power. It is , in short . . . a classless society, which does not mean a society without differentiated groups, but one in which varieties of individual endowment , not contrasts of property, income and access to education, are the basis of differentiation."

"An erring colleague is not an Amalkite to be smitten hip and thigh."

"Transference from the primary school to higher education should depend solely upon whether it is likely to be for the benefit of the children concerned."

"In England it is not ungentlemanly to steal halfpennies from children, and industrial interests, it may be assumed, will oppose any reform which interferes with the supply of cheap juvenile labour."

"In place... of "elementary" education for nine-tenths of the children and "secondary" education for the exceptionally fortunate or the exceptionally able, we need to envisage education as two stages in a single course which will embrace the whole development of childhood and adolescence up to sixteen, and obliterate the vulgar irrelevances of class inequality and economic pressure in a new educational synthesis."

"The number both of pupils and school places in 1922 is... all too small. But, inadequate as they are, they represent something like an educational revolution compared with the almost complete absence of public provision which existed prior to 1902."

"The full comedy of the situation was revealed in 1900, when, nearly a century after France and Germany had laid the foundations of a public system of secondary education, the Court of Appeal virtually decided that there was no Public Authority in England with legal power to establish and maintain secondary schools."

"England has not yet imitated the example set by America and by most of the British Dominions in making public secondary education free."

"Even before 1918 we had traveled far from the doctrine of 1870, that "elementary" education was the education of a special class which would obtain no other — what the Committee of Council called in 1839 education "suited to the condition of workmen and servants" — and secondary education that of their masters."

"The primary school is like the rope which the Indian juggler throws into the air to end in vacancy; that while in the United States some twenty-eight per cent, of the children entering the primary schools pass to high schools, in England the percentage passing from elementary to secondary schools is less than ten."

"Apart from the children of the well-to-do, who receive secondary education almost as a matter of course, and whose parents appear usually, though quite mistakenly, to believe that they pay the whole cost of it, secondary education is still commonly regarded as a "privilege" to be conceded only to the exceptionally brilliant or fortunate."

"It is still possible for the largest education authority in the country to propose to erect inequality of educational opportunity into a principle of public policy by solemnly suggesting, with much parade of philosophical arguments, that the interests of the community require that the children of well-to-do parents, who pay fees, should be admitted to public secondary schools on easier intellectual terms than the children of poor parents who can enter them only with free places, and that the children who are so contemptible as to be unable to afford secondary education without assistance in the form of maintenance allowances shall not be admitted unless they reach a higher intellectual standard still!"

"They would very strongly advise that in selecting children for higher education care should be taken to avoid creating, as was done, for example, in India, a large class of persons whose education is unsuitable for the employment they eventually enter."

"Defined by its purpose, its [education's] main aim is not to impart the specialized technique of any particular trade or profession, but to develop the faculties which, because they are the attribute of man, are not peculiar to any particular class or profession of men, and to build up the interests which, while they may become the basis of specialization at a later stage, have a value extending beyond their utility for any particular vocation, because they are the condition of a rational and responsible life in society."

"Its desire is that what is weak in the higher education of the country should be strengthened, and that what is already excellent should be made accessible to all."

"Labour can claim with some confidence that it is both voicing the demands of nearly all enlightened educationalists and working for the only organization of education which will enable the community to make the best use of the most precious of its natural resources — the endowments of its children."

"The organization of education on lines of class, which, though qualified in the last twenty years, has characterized the English system of public education since its very inception, has been at once a symptom, an effect, and a cause of the control of the lives of the mass of men and women by a privileged minority. The very assumption on which it is based, that all that the child of the workers needs is "elementary education" — as though the mass of the people, like anthropoid apes, had fewer convolutions in their brains than the rich — is in itself a piece of insolence."

"Those who have hitherto governed the nation, believing, and believing with justice, that ignorance and docility go hand in hand, have taken care to ration the education of the workers in doses small enough to be innocuous to the established order."

"Practically, the Church was an immense vested interest, implicated to the hilt in the economic fabric, especially on the side of agriculture and land tenure. Itself the greatest of landowners, it could no more quarrel with the feudal structure than the Ecclesiastical Commission, the largest of mineral owners today, can lead a crusade against royalties."

"If preachers have not yet overtly identified themselves with the view of the natural man, expressed by an eighteenth-century writer in the words, "trade is one thing and religion is another," they imply a not very different conclusion by their silence as to the possibility of collisions between them. The characteristic doctrine was one, in fact, which left little room for religious teaching as to economic morality, because it anticipated the theory, later epitomized by Adam Smith in his famous reference to the invisible hand, which saw in economic self-interest the operation of a providential plan. ..."

"In every human soul there is a socialist and an individualist, an authoritarian and a fanatic for liberty, as in each there is a Catholic and a Protestant. The same is true of the mass movements in which men marshal themselves for common action."

"There was in Puritanism an element which was conservative and traditionalist, and an element which was revolutionary; a collectivism which grasped at an iron discipline, and an individualism which spurned the savorless mess of human ordinances; a sober prudence which would garner the fruits of this world, and a divine recklessness which would make all things new."

"Virtues are often conquered by vices, but their rout is most complete when it is inflicted by other virtues, more militant, more efficient, or more congenial."

"Too often, contemning the external order as unspiritual, [the Puritan] has made it, and ultimately himself, less spiritual by reason of his contempt."

"Convinced that character is all and circumstances nothing, [the Puritan] sees in the poverty of those who fall by the way, not a misfortune to be pitied and relieved, but a moral failing to be condemned, and in riches, not an object of suspicion … but the blessing which rewards the triumph of energy and will."

"What in Calvin had been a qualified concession to practical exigencies appeared in some of his later followers as a frank idealization of the life of the trader, as the service of God and the training-ground of the soul. Discarding the suspicion of economic motives, which had been as characteristic of the reformers as of medieval theologians, Puritanism in its later phases added a halo of ethical sanctification to the appeal of economic expediency, and offered a moral creed, in which the duties of religion and the calls of business ended their long estrangement in an unanticipated reconciliation."

"Laborare est orare. [To work is to pray.] By the Puritan moralist the ancient maxim is repeated with a new and intenser significance. The labor which he idealizes is not simply a requirement imposed by nature, or a punishment for the sin of Adam. It is itself a kind of ascetic discipline, more rigorous than that demanded of any order of mendicants—a discipline imposed by the will of God, and to be undergone, not in solitude, but in the punctual discharge of secular duties. It is not merely an economic means, to be laid aside when physical needs have been satisfied. It is a spiritual end, for in it alone can the soul find health, and it must be continued as an ethical duty long after it has ceased to be a material necessity."

"By a kind of happy pre-established harmony, such as a later age discovered between the needs of society and the self-interest of the individual, success in business is in itself almost a sign of spiritual grace, for it is a proof that a man has laboured faithfully in his vocation."

"To countless generations of religious thinkers, the fundamental maxim of Christian social ethics had seemed to be expressed in the words of St. Paul to Timothy: "Having food and raiment, let us be therewith content. For the love of money is the root of all evil." Now, while, as always, the world battered at the gate, a new standard was raised within the citadel by its own defenders. The garrison had discovered that the invading host of economic appetites was, not an enemy, but an ally. Not sufficiency to the needs of daily life, but limitless increase and expansion, became the goal of the Christian's efforts."

"The shrewd, calculating commercialism which tries all human relations by pecuniary standards, the acquisitiveness which cannot rest while there are competitors to be conquered or profits to be won, the love of social power and hunger for economic gain—these irrepressible appetites had evoked from time immemorial the warnings and denunciations of saints and sages. Plunged in the cleansing waters of later Puritanism, the qualities which less enlightened ages had denounced as social vices emerged as economic virtues. They emerged as moral virtues as well. For the world exists not to be enjoyed, but to be conquered. Only its conqueror deserves the name of Christian. For such a philosophy, the question, "What shall it profit a man?" carries no sting. In winning the world, he wins the salvation of his own soul as well."

"A society which reverences the attainment of riches as the supreme felicity will naturally be disposed to regard the poor as damned in the next world, if only to justify itself for making their life a hell in this."

"It is probable that democracy owes more to Nonconformity than to any other single movement."

"The foundation of democracy is the sense of spiritual independence which nerves the individual to stand alone against the powers of this world."

"Mankind may wring her secrets from nature, and use their knowledge to destroy themselves."

"The certainties of one age are the problems of the next."

"Freedom for the pike is death for the minnow."

"Tawney held out hopes of a better world to come, and he possessed a quality that impressed all who met him: purity of heart."

"I read R.H. Tawney's book, The Attack, which is a series of pieces written over the course of his life... Reading it, I realised that the right wing of the Labour Party, that is to say the Croslands and the Hattersleys, have really stolen Tawney and made him their apostle, whereas when you actually read what he had written you find he was an intensely radical man. I have been asked to write a preface for the new issue, and I intend to try to get him reinstated as the spokesman for the mainstream, democratic, Christian socialist left... The more I read Tawney, the more I become convinced that his words would be helpful and comforting to us now and would assist in preventing the so-called Social Democrats from breaking away from the Labour Party."

"It was the quality of life, not the quantity of possessions, that was the justification for him of a socialist programme. He showed his dedication to this ideal not only in his writing but also in his life, and it seems to me that in raising the question of the quality of life, as a corollary of the overwhelming change in sheer quantity brought about by the Industrial Revolution, Mr Thompson is restoring as a genuine concern of economic historians the spirit of what I understand the Tawney tradition to be."

"With great regret I am coming to think increasingly that there is not a single work which Tawney wrote which can be trusted. I think that in all his work he was so dominated by his preconceptions, unconsciously (well, partly unconsciously), that everything he wrote was written to a propaganda purpose. And the result has been very drastic. People won't believe this, but when the historian comes to write – if an historian still comes to write – an intellectual history of the early twentieth century, Tawney will be one of the figures he will really have to concern himself with. Not Toynbee, whose influence is neither here nor there (not in this country at any rate). Not Maitland, who carried very little influence in the public mind, even indirectly. But Tawney, who wrote for a purpose – wrote beautifully, and wrote history which was in great parts – I am looking for a polite word – in great parts mistaken. And it was mistaken because he meant it to be so, though he didn't know this. He was proving a point."

"Tawney's Socialism...derived from a Christian inspiration. Tawney's Socialism, thanks no doubt to his memories of the First World War, comprised a full-blooded defence of the way Britain must be physically defended... Tawney's Socialism was also inextricably soldered with his democratic faith; the two together so that no one could ever put them asunder. Tawney's Socialism could not be traced solely to William Morris...but Morris's ideas and idealism were woven into the rich pattern of his political faith... His writings were read and loved – it is not too much to say – by one generation of Socialists after another."

"I always think of him as the Democratic Socialist par excellence."

"The entrenched left cannot identify with Tawney in honesty for several reasons: The patriotic old wounded soldier from the Somme was always contemptuous of those of us who were in CND, and he strongly supported Gaitskell's "fight, fight and fight again" speech; Tawney never accepted that conference decisions should overrule the judgment of the Parliamentary Labour Party or individual conscience... He did not accept majorities based on what he considered the total non-democracy of the block vote... The right would hesitate to vote for Tawney's ghost because his commitment to Clause 4, to extensive public ownership, to his philosophical attack on the sanctity of private property... The ghost of Tawney, the whole Tawney, would shake them all."

"Tawney the politician barred the way to Tawney the scholar. Time which he might given to studying history was devoted instead to the Fabian Society and the Labour Party, and he tended to see the world past and present in terms of socialist dogma. Hence his wholly untrue picture of early capitalism as cruel and greedy, destructive alike of social welfare and true spiritual values. No one would wish to deny that Tawney was a great man, but this greatness caused him to lead whole generations of history students into grievous error."

"Service, not profit, should be the motive force of economic activity, Tawney declared in The Acquisitive Society; and Tawney's doctrine was repeated, with varying degrees of eloquence and emphasis, from a thousand Labour platforms. This doctrine is, of course, inherently at variance with the basic assumptions of Keynesian economics, one of which is that the profit motive is the engine of economic progress."

"More important...was the evidence that the "passion of labour...to make the world a better place for the people who inhabit it" was reciprocated by many outside the movement. They found their justification in R. H. Tawney's Acquisitive Society, published in 1920. This was a persuasive indictment, blandly self-confident and witty, of the system in which industry was not directed to the service of the community and in which the rights of property existed quite apart from any contemporary justification. The system was not merely unjust but morally wrong and socially absurd."

"That same manne, that renneth awaye, Maye again fight, an other daye."

"For Myrth prolongeth lyfe, and causeth health."

"I am sorie God made me so comely."

"Wowers never speede well, that have a false harte."

"Since I went no grasse hath growne on my hele."

"Gay love, God save it, so soone hotte, so soone colde."

"Yea, Custance, better (they say) a bad excuse than none."

"In the sect – fairly large and yet unusually choice – of Austenians or Janites, there would probably be found partisans of the claim to primacy of almost every one of the novels."

"[It] is the unbroken testimony of all history that alcoholic liquors have been used by the strongest, wisest, handsomest, and in every way best races of all times."

"But dinner is dinner, a meal at which not so much to eat — it becomes difficult to eat much at it as you grow older — as to drink, to talk, to flirt, to discuss, to rejoice "at the closing of the day". I do not think anything serious should be done after it, as nothing should before breakfast."

"Let us also once more rejoice in, and thank God for, the fact that we know nothing about Homer, and practically nothing about Shakespeare."

"The Book of History is the Bible of Irony."

"We shall not busy ourselves with what men ought to have admired, what they ought to have written, what they ought to have thought, but with what they did think, write, admire."

"Oratory is, after all, the prose literature of the savage."

"Criticism is the endeavour to find, to know, to love, to recommend, not only the best, but all the good, that has been known and thought and written in the world."

"I wish that I could save myself constant repetition by printing across the dog's-ear place of these pages the warning, "Never judge a critic by your agreement with his likes and dislikes.”"

"So, then, there abide these three, Aristotle, Longinus, and Coleridge."

"Historians may lie, but History cannot."

"Nothing is more curious than the almost savage hostility that Humour excites in those who lack it."

"Majorities are generally wrong, if only in their reasons for being right."

"When people cannot write good literature it is perhaps natural that they should lay down rules how good literature should be written."

"There is not one of you whose actions do not operate on the actions of others — operate, we mean, in the way of example. He would be insignificant who could only destroy his own soul; but you are all, alas! of importance enough to help also to destroy the souls of others. ...Ye cannot live for yourselves; a thousand fibres connect you with your fellow-men, and along those fibres, as along sympathetic threads, run your actions as causes, and return to you as effects."

"An uneducated population may be degraded; a population educated, but not in righteousness, will be ungovernable. The one may be slaves, the other must be tyrants."

"As revelation is the great strengthener of reason, the march of mind which leaves the Bible in the rear, is an advance, like that of our first parents in Paradise, towards knowledge, but, at the same time, towards death."

"We glory most in the fact, that Scripture so commends itself to the conscience, and experience so bears out the Bible, that the gospel can go the round of the world, and carry with it, in all its travel, its own mighty credentials."

"There is truth in Jesus which is terrible, as well as truth that is soothing; terrible, for He shall be Judge as well as Saviour; and ye cannot face Him, ye cannot stand before Him, unless ye now give ear to His invitation."

"If hope be fixed on Christ as the Rock of Ages, a rock rent, if we may use the expression, on purpose that there might be a holding-place for the anchors of a perishing world, it may well come to pass that we enjoy a calm as we journey through life, and draw near the grave."

"O that we may all be living in such a state of preparedness, that, when summoned to depart, we may ascend the summit whence faith looks forth on all that Jesus hath suffered and done, and exclaiming, " We have waited for Thy salvation, O Lord," lie down with Moses on Pisgah, to awake with Moses in paradise."

"Faith — saving faith — whatever other definition may be framed — is best described as that act of the soul by which the whole man is given over to the guardianship of the Mediator. He who thus resigns himself to Jesus avouches two things: first, his belief that he needs a protector; secondly, his belief that Christ is just that protector which his necessities require."

"Able to save to the uttermost, "Lord to whom shall we go; Thou hast the words of eternal life?" Thou who hast abolished death, upon whom else shall we suspend our immortality?"

"In proportion as we " grow in grace and in the knowledge of Christ," we shall grow in the desire that the Redeemer's sovereignty may be more widely and visibly extended."

"Then re-united to the friends with whom vve took sweet counsel upon earth, we shall recount our toil, only to heighten our ecstasy; and call to mind the toil and the din of war, oniy that, with a more bounding throb and a richer song, we may fee! and celebrate the wonders of redemption."

"If it be heaven toward which we journey, it will be holiness in which we delight; for if we cannot now rejoice in having God for our portion, where is our meetness for a world in which God is to be all in all forever and forever?"

"Ye will not pray; ye will not shun temptation; ye will not renounce known sin; ye will not fight against evil habits! Are ye stronger than God? Can ye contend with the Eternal One? Have ye the nerve which shall not tremble, and the flesh which shall not quiver, and the soul which shall not quail, when the sheet of fire is round the globe, and thousand times ten thousand angels line the sky, and call to judgment?"

"God is summoning you. Angels are summoning you. The myriads who have gone before are summoning you. We are surrounded by a "great cloud of witnesses." The battlements of the sky seem thronged with those who have fought the good fight of faith. They bend down from the eminence, and bid us ascend, through the one Mediator, to the same lofty dwelling."

"Indifference, if let alone, will produce obduracy; and obduracy, if let alone, will produce torment."

"Glorious transformation! glorious translation! I seem already to behold the wondrous scene. The sea and the land have given up their dead! the quickened myriads have been judged according to their works. And now, an innumerable company, out of all nations and tribes and tongues, ascend with the Mediator towards the kingdom of His Father. Can it be that these, who were born children of earth, who were long enemies to God by wicked works, are to enter the bright scenes of paradise? Yes, He who leads them has washed them in His blood; He who leads them has sanctified them by His Spirit."

"The mysteries of the Bible should teach us, at one and the same time, our nothingness and our greatness; producing humility, and animating hope. I bow before these mysteries. I knew that I should find them, and I pretend not to remove them. But whilst I thus prostrate myself, it is with deep gladness and exultation of spirit. God would not have hinted the mystery, had He not hereafter designed to explain it. And, therefore, are my thoughts on a far-off home, and rich things are around me, and the voices of many harpers, and the shinings of bright constellations, and the clusters of the cherub and the seraph; and a whisper, which seems not of this earth, is circulating through the soul, " Now we see through a glass darkly, but then face to face; now I know in part, but then shall I know even as also I am known.""

"The Bible tells me explicitly that Christ was God; and it tells me, as explicitly that Christ was man. It does not go on to state the modus or manner of the union. I stop, therefore, where the Bible stops. I bow before a God-man as my Mediator, but I own as inscrutable the mysteries of His person."

"We know, and we feel, that the vast business of our redemption, arranged in the councils of the far-back eternity, and acted out amid the wonderings and throbbings of the universe, could not have been that stupendous transaction which gave God glory by giving sinners safety, if the inspired account brought its dimensions within the compass of a human arithmetic, or denned its issues by the lines of a human demarcation."

"Praise is the best auxiliary to prayer; and he who most bears in mind what has been done for him by God will be most emboldened to supplicate fresh gifts from above."

"Let reason count the stars, weigh the mountains, fathom the depths — the employment becomes her, and the success is glorious. But when the question is, "How shall man be just with God?" reason must be silent, revelation must speak; and he who will not hear it assimilates himself to the first deist, Cain; he may not kill a brother, he certainly destroys himself."

"The Scriptural doctrine in regard to repentance is not, that a man must repent in order to his being qualified to go to Christ; it is rather, that he must go to Christ in order to his being able to repent. From Him comes the grace of contrition as well as the cleansing of expiation."

"And is not this a great salvation, great in its simplicity, great in its comprehensiveness, which thus meets the every necessity of the guilty and helpless; and which, arranged for creatures whom it finds in the lowest degradation, leaves them not till elevated to the very summit of dignity?"

"I learn the depth to which I have sunk from the length of the chain let down to up-draw me. I ascertain the mightiness of the ruin by examining the machinery for restoration."

"1914 showed the disaster which followed when hundreds of millions of people gave the old responses to the old stimuli. Soldiers, and later civilians, saw that 'Honour', 'Courage', 'Patriotism', as they understood them, led to cruelty, lying, and blood-lust on a scale so gigantic that the foundations of civilisation were threatened."

"The politician manufactures a language - a vocabulary and a rhetoric - which, if you accept it as wholly adequate, leads inevitably to the answers he wants and to the actions he wants. But the prior question is whether the language is adequate to the facts. And as the poet is concerned with making language do new work and finding out the implications of language, his answer is always : no ."

"Folly is built on pride, on pride and power, And power ends in weariness and duty: Even the hooded eagle cannot soar to heaven ."

"The poet is always concerned with achieving a balance between the inner and the outer world;it is his business to hold in a single thought reality and justice."

"A good work of art reveals something that is in reality.A new metaphor,a new myth,a new type of character,all these reveal a feature of reality for which we previously had no name."

"A church that exists in the midst of a non-Christian social order is liable to be influenced through assimilation or reaction by the false ideas of the age..The problem is to cast out the infection and to do this with proper humility.To stand aloof is no remedy,but a form of pride."

"No true work since the world began was ever wasted; no true life since the world began has ever failed. Oh, understand those two perverted words "failure" and "success." and measure them by the eternal, not by the earthly standard. When after thirty obscure, toilsome, unrecorded years in the shop of the village carpenter, one came forth to be preeminently the man of sorrows, to wander from city to city in homeless labors, and to expire in lonely agony upon the shameful cross — was that a failure? Nay, my brethren.it was the death of Him who lived that we might follow His footsteps, it was the life, it was the death of the Son of God."

"Fifty years ago, few would have believed that Dutch, and Russian, and Icelandic, and Greek, and Latin, and Persian, and Mahratti, and French, and English, were all indubitable developments from one and the same original tongue, and that the common ancestors of the nations who speak them were – in times that may almost be called historical – in times, at any rate, the reality of which can be rigidly tested by the microscope and the spectrum analysis of Philology – were living together as an undivided family in the same pastoral tents. In the present day, no one doubts the fact, except a few intrepid theologians."

"When we look at the table which is before us [showing the branches of the Indo- European language family], [ . . . ] it is but a concise statement of the astonishing truth, that we Europeans, together with the Persians and Hindoos, however wide may be the apparent and superficial differences between us, are, nevertheless, members of a close and common brotherhood in the great families of nations. First westward and northward, afterwards eastward and southward, the Aryans extended; they forgot the rock from whence they were hewn, and the hole of the pit whence they were digged: they became wholly ignorant of their mutual relationship; and when, in their various emigrations, they met each other – like the lion-whelps of a common lair – they met each other no longer as brothers but as foes: yet brothers they were; and now, at least, the science of language has restored to them the knowledge of this unsuspected truth."

"then, indeed, the Hindoos no less than ourselves would have recognized the bond of unity between us because of the common ancestors from whose loins we both alike are sprung, and we no less than they should have seen that in coming to Hindostan with our advanced civilization, we were returning home with splendid gifts to visit a member of one common family, and that the meeting between us was but the meeting of Esau and Jacob after long years of separation, – who met each other with mutual affection and the kiss of peace, although from the womb it had been prophesied respecting them that ‘the elder should serve the younger.’"

"General Systems Theory, as originally intended by Von Bertalanffy, is an ideal framework for the modeling of a business enterprise. Work, in its most civilized form should enrich, empower and emancipate. Thus we must continue to find ways to support work as a humanistic, not mechanistic endeavor. We must continue to seek out new models of business that support and enhance the individual as well as the collective whole. Given all this new technology, we need new institutions for handling it."

". There is after all, no point in claiming that the purpose of a system is to do what it constantly fails to do."

"If cybernetics is the science of control, management is the profession of control"

"Hence we may recognize the subject of management cybernetics — which is seen as a rich provider of models for doing OR."

"An internal combustion engine is 'clearly' a system ; we subscribe to this opinion because we know that the engine was designed precisely to be a system. It is, however, possible to envisage that someone (a Martian perhaps) totally devoid of engineering knowledge might at first regard the engine as a random collection of objects. If this someone is to draw the conclusion that the collection is coherent, forming a system, it will be necessary to begin by inspecting the relationships of the entities comprising the collection to each other. In declaring that a collection ought to be called a system, that is to say, we acknowledge relatedness. But everything is related to everything else. The philosopher Hegel enunciated a proposition called the Axiom of Internal Relations. This states that the relations by which terms are related are an integral part of the terms they relate. So the notion we have of any thing is enriched by the general connotation of the term which names it; and this connotation describes the relationship of the thing to other things... [There are three stages in the recognition of a system]... we acknowledge particular relationships which are obtrusive: this turns a mere collection into something that may be called an assemblage. Secondly, we detect a pattern in the set of relationships concerned: this turns an assemblage into a systematically arranged assemblage. Thirdly, we perceive a purpose served by this arrangement: and there is a system."

"Policy-making, decision-taking, and control: These are the three functions of management that have intellectual content."

"Too close a view may interfere with one's grasp of an overall problem or concept"

"The strategies that managers employ are at least as important as the facilities at their disposal."

"According to the science of cybernetics, which deals with the topic of control in every kind of system (mechanical, electronic, biological, human, economic, and so on), there is a natural law that governs the capacity of a control system to work. It says that the control must be capable of generating as much "variety" as the situation to be controlled."

"It is the concept of likelihood that a real understanding of probability resides, and we must learn how to measure it."

"A stochastic process is about the results of convolving probabilities-which is just what management is about, as well."

"The aim of management science is to display the best course of action in a given set of circumstances, and this must include all the circumstances."

"There is, then, a logical priority about the arrangements, and logic has nothing to do with time."

"Certain management policies-stretching of credit resources, for example-may lead to great progress in good conditions; but, like the Grand Prix car in comparison with the Land Rover, they may not be robust enough to survive when the going gets tough."

"The whole picture is complicated by the stockists and merchants who will try to exploit any shortages that may appear. The result is this. The feedback information from the industry's environment consists, first and foremost, of a forward order load. Much of this "demand for steel" will be bogus."

"A slowly moving queue does not move uniformly. Rather, waves of motion pass down the queue. The frequency and amplitude of these waves is inversely related to the speed at which the queue is served."

"It is terribly important to appreciate that some things remain obscure to the bitter end."

"Management problems are not respecters of the company organization, nor of the talents of the people appointed to solve them."

"The development of the Watt governor for steam engines, which adapted the power output of the engine automatically to the load by means of feedback, consolidated the first Industrial Revolution."

"The problem with managing either a business or a prison by periodic rather than continuous inspection is that the "variables" are likely to be seriously out of control before the discrepancy is noted."

"Clearly, if it is possible to have a self-regulating system that implicitly arranges its own stability, then this is of the keenest management interest."

"We have, over the centuries, devised a management structure for running things, whether firms or whole countries. This structure depends absolutely on the limitations of the human hand, eye, and brain. The discoveries of management cybernetics, coupled with the techniques of operational research and with the new technology of automation, make possible a new way of running things which is not so limited. Yet we insist on retaining the original structures and automating them. In so doing, we enshrine in steel, glass, and semiconductors those very limitations of hand, eye, and brain that the computer was invented precisely to transcend."

"The system of transportation is not coherent; it is not treated as integral. Roads compete with railroads and airlines in chaotic fashion, and at immense cost to the nation."

"It is my contention that Creativity is as important today in Education as Literacy and we should treat it with the same status."

"Human communities depend upon a diversity of talent, not a single conception of ability. At the heart of the challenge is to reconstitute our sense of ability and of intelligence."

"I saw a well-meaning policy statement that said ‘College begins in Kindergarten'. No it doesn’t, Kindergarten begins in Kindergarten. A friend of mine once said ‘A Three-Year old is not half a Six-Year old."

"We have sold ourselves into a fast-food model of education. And it’s impoverishing our spirits and our energies as much as fast food is depleting our physical bodies."

"If you’re doing something you love, an hour seems like 5 minutes. If you are doing something that doesn’t resonate with your spirit 5 minutes can seem like an hour. And the reason that so many people are opting out of Education is because it doesn't feed their spirit, it doesn't feed their energy or their passion."

"Whoever thought of the No Child Left Behind legislation and its title certainly understands irony because millions of our children are indeed being left behind. This standardized testing is making the job of teachers unnecessarily difficult, limiting the discretion of teachers to teach. School systems are imposing conformity instead of promoting creativity."

"For most of us the problem isn’t that we aim too high and fail - it’s just the opposite - we aim too low and succeed."

"Philosophy is an everlasting fire, sometimes damped down by setting itself limits, then flaring into new life as it consumes them. Every field of inquiry is limited, but philosophy has an essential relation to the question of limits, to its own limits."

"Language steps in where the angels of experience fear to tread."

"To recognize a difficulty is not to solve it."

"Philosophy is said to have taken the 'linguistic turn' in this century. One hundred years ago, a philosopher would think in terms of mind, spirit, experience, consciousness; now the by-word is language."

"To say that all philosophy is writing is, minimally, to say that it is never the transparent expression of thought."

"Like literature, philosophy is not distinguished from other subjects by a specific approach to a subject-matter independent of it. Chemistry deals with chemicals, biology with life and astronomy with very large, very distant objects. Philosophy can boast no such definite subject-matter."

"The educated man is the man who does not live in immediate intuition, but in his recollection so that little is new to him any longer."

"Philosophy in its very act is a process of translation!"

"After Hegel, philosophy confronts the possibility of its own death, and in some sense has to do so if it is to remain the most fundamental kind of thinking."

"The point is that philosophy is seen to have come full circle, and to have exhausted itself."

"Nietzsche's problem is how to be a philosopher once he has grasped the finitude of philosophy."

"To understand how indirect communication is possible we must grasp what it is about ordinary communication that is being changed."

"Dialogue never ends not for lack of time or opportunity but for essential reasons."

"Nietzsche would say my friends lacked ears."

"What I would like to show is that there is a vital dimension of their writing, which I call performative reflexivity, which if ignored or misunderstood will impede an adequate response to it."

"We are passengers, comprehended and displaced by metaphor."

"Rhythm includes metre, but metre is a relatively small part of rhythm."

"Good free verse is not at all easy to write, for there is no repetitive beat to lull the reader's critical faculty, much pattern and discipline is to be found in it, though the pattern of sounds and choice of exact words, gives it its beauty."

"I have had considerable experience in dealing with minds of low logical power, and have found that studies may be made so easy and mechanical as to render thought almost superfluous."

"That’s almost like the daft things you believe when you’re really little, like I use to believe I could fly. I believed it for years, but it had to be kept secret. I knew if I ever told anyone or showed it off to anyone, I’d lose the power. And if I doubted it, and tried it out just to see, I’d lose the power — so I didn’t. I believed in it. I knew I would be able to fly when there really was a need. Which, fortunately for me, there never was."

"I thought it was normal, that’s the thing. When you’re little you think everything is normal. If your mother had a pointed head and green ears you’d think it’s normal. Only when you grow up do you realise that not everybody is like that. Gradually you can even come to learn that the time you are living in is strange too, that it hasn’t always been like this. The more you feel uncomfortable and unconfident and want to find a way to be like everyone else and fit in, the more normality runs away from you because there isn’t any such thing. Or if there is, you have to find someone else who’ll agree with you what it is. Which I seem singularly unable to do."

"But naturally people fussed and objected like they always do when someone tries to do something positive."

"Every other method of resolving this difference of opinion has failed. We are reduced to violence, which is the last resort."

"“If you opt out, you don’t change anything.” “Why should I run round helping to get power for a group of idiots who’ll end up just as dangerous as the ones already in power?” You really don’t think anyone can make things better?” “No. What’s going to happen will happen.”"

"“Frankly Jess, on the grand scale—” “You can’t think on the grand scale. You have to think on the small scale. Otherwise no-one’d ever do anything.”"

"Wyrd is the unfolding of our personal destiny. It has sometimes been translated into modern English as "fate." But it is much deeper than that. It does not see our lives as "pre-determined." Rather, it is an all-encompassing view which connects us to all things, thoughts, emotions, events in the cosmos as if through the threads of an enormous, invisible but dynamic web. Today, scientists know intellectually that all things are interconnected. But the power of Wyrd is to realise this in our inner being, and to know how to use it to manifest our personal destiny. Today, through a deep connection with wyrd, we are inspired to see our lives in a new and empowering way. It restores our experience of the healing power of love, nature and creativity. It is about letting into our lives the guidance of an extended universe of spirit. It brings ancient wisdom together with modern science in the service of enhancing our lives, and the integrity of our human presence on the planet."

"Wyrd existed before the Gods and will exist after them. Yet wyrd lasts only for an instant, because it is the constant creation of the forces. Wyrd is itself, constant change, like the seasons, yet because it is created at every instant it is unchanging, like the still center of a whirlpool. The pattern of wyrd is like the grain in wood, or the flow of a stream, it is never repeated in exactly the same way. But the threads of wyrd pass through all things and we can open ourselves to its pattern by observing the ripples as it passes by."

"Nothing may happen without wyrd, for it is present in everything, but wyrd does not make things happen. Wyrd is created at every instant, and so wyrd is the happening."

"The threads of wyrd are a dimension of ourselves that we cannot grasp with words. We spin webs of words, yet wyrd slips through like the wind. The secrets of wyrd do not lie in our word-hoards, but are locked in the soul. We can only discern the shadows of reality with our words, whereas our souls are capable of encountering the realities of wyrd directly. This is why wyrd is accessible to the sorcerer: the sorcerer sees with his soul, not with eyes blinkered by the shape of words. Do not live your life searching around for answers in your word-hoard. You will find only words to rationalize your experience. Allow yourself to open to wyrd and it will cleanse, renew, change, and develop your casket of reason. Your word-hoard should serve your experience, not the reverse."

"Wyrd is too vast and too complex, for us to comprehend, for we are ourselves, part of wyrd and cannot stand back to observe it as if it were a separate force. Just as fisherman cannot see the full extent of the seas, so even a sorcerer cannot view the totality of wyrd."

"All our lives are locked together in the shimmering world of wyrd in which all things are enmeshed and connected to one another by the threads of wyrd. … The wyrd sisters spin the web of wyrd and weave the loom of life, they do not thereby determine it … the wyrd sisters simply express the will of wyrd. And so do we. We cannot control our lives, because we too are inseparable aspects of wyrd and express its will. But this is not the same as saying our life is determined. Rather, it is saying we live like an ocean voyager, trimming our sails to the winds and tides of wyrd as we skim across the waters of life. And cresting the waves of wyrd is something that happens at every instant. The pattern of life is not woven ahead of time, like cloth to be worn later as a tunic. Rather, life is woven at the very instant you live it."

"Feedback: It is the fundamental principle that underlies all self-regulating systems, not only machines but also the processes of life and the tides of human affairs."

"Already well known to engineers all over the world as a pioneer in the development of automatic control, it may well turn out that Gordon Brown will make a still deeper mark on the engineering development of this century."

"He is transported to that curious world of decibels and negative frequencies where filter experts live."

"Methods by which engineers stabilise their mechanisms suggest analogous possibilities for stabilising economic systems."

"When beliefs need some modification, We make it with much trepidation, For our world is then new, And things seem all askew, 'til we're used to the new formulation."

"The topic that I have attempted to explore is the usefulness of these notions of the engineer, about feeds-back, harmonic components and the like, in application to the analogous problems of economic fluctuation and economic regulation."

"The analysis of engineering systems and the understanding of economic structure have advanced since then, and the time is now more ripe to bring these topics into a potentially fruitful marriage."

"The ‘theory of control systems’ in engineering is now a well-developed subject, making use of some remarkably powerful concepts and methods of analysis, especially in relation to problems of stabilization and the prevention of unwanted oscillations."

"Consideration of a further possibility, namely that of constructing physical systems that are analogues of the economic system, and of observing and recording their behaviour."

"An economic system is not a linear system, and... this fact stands in the way of the determination of the parameters of the system by methods that presume linearity, and... it introduces great difficulties in the extrapolation from past behaviour for purposes of prediction."

"The nature of the instability of an unregulated free-enterprise system is only now beginning to be clearly understood. Perhaps the degree of understanding already attained ensures that the grosser shortcomings have gone for ever, and to that extent the conflict between Capitalism and Communism is about issues that belong to the past. It may now be too late. The gods must smile to note how different the state of the world might have been if the progress of economic thought of the last twenty years had been advanced by even ten years. The possibility of a stable economic life with full utilization of our resources is still not sufficiently assured, and it is extremely important that it should be so assured, and that the whole world should accept this as a fact. The work that is being done in econometrics is massive, and undaunted by mathematical difficulties, but it appears, at any rate as viewed from outside, to be unclear as to its aim."

"The striking parallel between the economic models that are currently under discussion and some engineering systems suggests the hope that in some way the rapid progress in the development of the theory and practice of automatic control in the world of engineering may contribute to the solution of the economic problems."

"It is possible that the major collaboration between economists and engineers is still to come, in the greater use of physical analogues and computers of the analogue type to avoid the difficulties of calculation. Apart from their major use as possible tools for economic regulation, physical analogues have a subsidiary use, for there are students of economics, as there are many students of engineering, who can better understand the significance of the somewhat formidable mathematics that tends to be used in this field, if they can first acquaint themselves with the types of behaviour in question as exhibited by physical objects that can be seen, felt, handled and experimented with. It may also be suggested that economists may find that what they have to say about economic policy will be very readily assimilated by one group of attentive pupils, namely the scientists, engineers and technicians of industry, if explanatory notions can be drawn from the theory of automatic control, which is now part of a normal engineering education. The aim of this essay has been to give explanations of system behaviour, and some approaches to its analysis, using geometrical construction and physical analogy where possible to clarify the implications of the more usual formal algebraic approach."

"The separate excitation of the dynamo corresponds with the independently determined investment in the economic model, and the total excitation with income. Perhaps in this electrical age, the conventional metaphor of ‘priming the pump’ might be dropped in favour of ‘exciting the dynamo’."

"Actual economic systems are constantly subjected to change and disturbances, which would result in irregularity."

"The writer, who as an engineer has spent most of his life in factories, is inclined to look at the basis for investment from a technological point of view... Consider … the class of industrial investments only... The situation is one of entrepreneurs and boards of directors considering, from time to time, various ’possibilities of investment’, such as extra lathes or looms, an extension to a factory, a venture in some completely new product, and so on. It is helpful to think of these ’opportunities for investment’ as existing, in a given situation, in great number and variety, whether they are at that moment under active consideration or not. When any such possibility is considered it is assessed in respect of ’expected profitability’. One may conveniently think of all possibilities of investment as ’quanta’ that can be placed in a schedule of small ranges of expected profitability according to these assessments. The placement of a given ’opportunity for investment’ on this schedule has some ’margin of uncertainty’ (a curious analogy with the case of the quanta of physics)."

"Simulators set up the required system of interdependences, usually between electrical potentials or voltages as variables, by means of valve-amplifiers and electrical networks. Since the voltage across a capacitance is proportional to the integral of a current, that across an inductance to the first derivative of a current, and that across a resistor to the current itself, it is possible to arrange a network of electrical elements, with amplifiers and feeds-back where necessary, so that a given linear differential equation is caused to relate an ’output’ voltage to an ’input’ voltage. Thus a given linear system of interdependences can be simulated, either directly or in any convenient transformation. If non-linear relationships are required there is no universally applicable simple device, but there do exist a great variety of non-linear elements with non-linear characteristics that are known and to some extent; adjustable. These include non-linear resistors... and the characteristic curves of thermionic valves, of rectifiers and discharge vessels and of magnetic materials. Limits may be set by the use of neon tubes that become conducting when a certain voltage is exceeded, or by relays, and so on"

"Once a full-employment policy has been adopted... the economic ’system’ just on that account is significantly different. Its equilibrium position has been shifted to a rising curve of trend close to and following the employment ceiling. The conditions of stability about this new level are radically different because the region of operation is now within the less flexible and sharply non-linear range of employment saturation"

"There are certain formal similarities between the problems of devising policies for economic stabilisation and those of designing automatic control systems. Methods have recently been developed by engineers for analysing the dynamic properties of quite complex models... [which] can also be used for the analysis of dynamic process models in economics... Professor Tustin’s book contains material of fundamental importance for all who are engaged in either theoretical or empirical studies of dynamic processes in economics. It throws new light on the possibilities and the difficulties of quantitative research in this field."

"Interest in the human-operator problem was stimulated by Prof. Arnold Tustin of the University of Birmingham, England, who suggested the application of the delay-line synthesizer to the study of some tracking records which he had brought with him from England. His experimental setup from which data were obtained consisted of a movable handle unit whose output was integrated once and then made to position a mechanical pointer. A second pointer, located next to the handle-driven pointer, was given an input motion consisting of a number of sinusoidal components of a nature sufficiently involved to prevent anticipation by an operator. The operator, upon noticing an error or difference between the two pointers, was required to move the handle in such a way as to reduce this error to a minimum value..."

"Two kinds of self-controlling machines exist: the regulators whose effect has a fixed value and the Servo-mechanisms whose effect has a value depending on the value of a variable which is the “control.” The idea is simple and reveals itself to be accurate. We have found it confirmed by the technical authority, Prof. Arnold Tustin, of the University of Birmingham, who during the war elaborated a system for the movement of gun turrets and naval guns. According to him, if a machine were entrusted with driving a car, it would be a regulator on a straight road and a servo on a winding one."

"During the early phase of World War II, Britain was challenged to refine the understanding of human control of tanks and aircraft. The first engineering-oriented manual control models were probably those of Prof. Arnold Tustin in the United Kingdom applied to tank-control, followed closely by models by J.P. North of Boulton- Paul Aircraft Co."

"Arnold Tustin (1899–1994) introduced the that bears his name to the control community to relate discrete-time and continuous-time systems."

"Arnold Tustin is best known for his contributions to control theory and its application to electrical machines. However, his interests were much wider than electrical engineering, for he was a polymath who brought a systems approach to each of the many areas that he investigated. In the modern jargon he thought ‘outside the box’ and in doing so championed the use of control systems theory beyond its traditional limits. His impact was such that, in addition to his engineering contributions, he is well known for his systems treatment of economics and to a lesser extent... biology."

"The BBC seems determined to do everything in its power to present promiscuity as normal. What I found most hypocritical was that ostensibly the abortion scenes were meant to show its horror: but there was no attempt to point out that normal clean living would obviate such a fearful thing."

"It is a deliberate affront to the people to whom it gave so much offence by its near pornography and calculated bias. It would seem the BBC are out to test whether they have managed to condition people into accepting now what they rebelled against last year."

"[Television] may teach self-interest rather than philanthropy, violence rather than gentleness, a disregard for human dignity rather than a respect for it. It may not always teach the truth but teach it does, and it is more than time that responsible people both within and outside the broadcasting professions said boldly what is so obvious in commonsense terms — we cannot understand what is happening in international, cultural, economic, political and social affairs without coming to grips with the way in which television influences virtually all our behavioural and thought processes."

"Till Death Us Do Part: "I doubt if many people would use 121 bloodies in half-an-hour." "Bad language coarsens the whole quality of our life. It normalises harsh, often indecent language, which despoils our communication.""

"Jackanory: "Completely irresponsible""

"Dr Who: "Contains some of the sickest, most horrible material""

"The natural repugnance which most people feel when homosexuality and lesbianism is mentioned can result in a harshness of attitude and thinking which is, at least, unhelpful and certainly as unchristian as the perverse practices which are condemned. But to go to the other extreme and elevate people suffering from such abnormalities into a norm for society not only threatens society but is dangerous to the individuals themselves, since it excludes them from the consideration of treatment."

"Scientific research shows that the human brain is formed at the age of three months of foetal life and that from that time on there is a continuous learning process at work — everything heard from them then on will be stored in the memory and will have its effect. [E. J.] Kallmann maintains that the primary homosexual is entirely precipitated by abnormal (in terms of moral as well as physical norms) sexual behaviour of parents during pregnancy or just after."

"[I]t is because one is aware that many psychiatrists do believe homosexuality to be an illness that one is so against the proselytising of the young which is so large a part of the work of the organised homosexuals."

"I always felt that Mary Whitehouse thought of Doctor Who as a children's programme, for little children, and it wasn't... so she was really coming at the show from the wrong starting-point."

"She was in some obvious senses narrow-minded. She believed with passion that she was promoting virtue and righteousness; but her overriding puritanism determined that her main focus was on sex, followed by bad language and violence. Odd: if she had reversed the order, she might have been more effective."

"Let us take inspiration from that admirable woman, Mary Whitehouse. I do not accept all her ideas, she will not accept all mine. Yet we can see in her a shining example of what one person can do single-handedly when inspired by faith and compassion. An unknown middle-aged woman, a schoolteacher in the Midlands, set out to protect adolescents against the permissiveness of our time. Look at the scale of the opposing forces. On the one side, the whole of the new establishment, with their sharp words and sneers poised. Against them stood this one middle-aged woman. Today, her name is a household word, made famous by the very assaults on her by her enemies. She has mobilised and given fresh hearts to many who see where this current fashion is leading. Her book, Who Does She Think She Is? took its title from the outraged cry of an acolyte of the new hierarchy, who asked how an unknown woman dare speak up against the BBC, the educators and false shepherds. We too can take courage from her, and dedicate ourselves to fighting back on issues which will decide the nation's future far more than economics, however important it remains."

"She'll be sadly missed, I imagine, but not by me."

"I was far from happy too about the way in which the programme handled Mrs Mary Whitehouse on the occasion of the publication of her book Cleaning Up TV. This was done by [[w:Bernard Braden|[Bernard] Braden]] telling his audience what he thought Mrs Whitehouse's creed was — "I thought she was against violence ... I thought she was for censorship" — and then by cutting to Mrs Whitehouse herself and getting a short edited quote which contradicted his assumption. Thus when Mrs Whitehouse declared she was against censorship we were not told that according to her own book she is for it if it were “the only way of preventing the gradual erosion of our Christian values and the character of the nation". ... And Judging by the evidence of her book she feels that we are getting perilously close to that state. In other words, by her own standards, we are not very far away from the need for the very censorship Mrs Whitehouse claims she is against."

"[The] flak from Mary Whitehouse...was quite unwarranted. I think the kind of person who would have been upset by Doctor Who would have been upset by anything."

"Hey you, Whitehouse / Ha ha, charade you are ... You're trying to keep our feelings off the street ... Mary, you're nearly a treat / But you're really a cry"

"There be three speciall notes necessary to be obserued in the framing of our accustomed English Ryme. The first is, that one meeter or verse be aunswerable to an other, in equall number of feete or syllables, or proportionable to the tune whereby it is to be reade or measured. The seconde, to place the words in such sorte as none of them be wrested contrary to the naturall inclination or affectation of the same, or more truely the true quantity thereof. The thyrd, to make them fall together mutually in Ryme, that is, in wordes of like sounde, but so as the wordes be not disordered for the Rymes sake, nor the sence hindered."

"Just as the light of the sun irradiates the organ of vision and things visible, enabling the former to see and the latter to be seen, so too the irradiation of a spiritual light brings the mind into relation with that which is intelligible."

"The consideration of lines, angles and figures is of the greatest utility since it is impossible for natural philosophy to be known without them... All causes of natural effects have to be given through lines, angles and figures, for otherwise it is impossible for the reason why (propter quid) to be known in them."

"Power from natural agents may go by a short line, and then in its activity greater... But if by a straight line then its action is stronger and better, as Aristotle says in Book V of the Physics, because nature operates in the shortest way possible. But the straight line is the shortest of all, as he says in the same place."

"This part of optics, when well understood, shows us how we may make things a very long distance off appear as if placed very close, and large near things appear very small, and how we may make small things placed at a distance appear any size we want, so that it may be possible for us to read the smallest letters at incredible distances, or to count sand, or seed, or any sort of minute objects."

"Every operation in nature is in the shortest, best ordered, briefest, and best possible way."

"The diligent investigator of natural phenomena can give the causes of all natural effects... by the rules and roots and foundations given from the power of geometry."

"The head is borne towards the heavens and has two lights, as it were the sun and moon."

"The first corporeal form, which some call corporeity, I hold to be light. For light of its own nature diffuses itself in all directions, so that from a point of light a sphere of light of any size may be instantly generated, provided an opaque body does not get in the way. Corporeity is what necessarily follows the extension of matter in three dimensions, since each of these, that is corporeity and matter, is a substance simple in itself and lacking all dimensions. But simple form in itself and in dimension lacking matter and dimension, it was impossible for it to become extended in every direction except by multiplying itself and suddenly diffusing itself in every direction and in its diffusion extending matter; since it is not possible for form to do without matter because it is not separable, nor can matter itself be purged of form. And, in fact, it is light, I suggest, of which this operation is part of the nature, namely, to multiply itself and instantaneously diffuse itself in every direction. Therefore, whatever it is that produces this operation is either light itself or something that produces this operation in so far as it participates in light, which produces it by its own nature. Corporeity is therefore either this light, or is what produces the operation in question and produces dimensions in matter in so far as it participates in this light itself and acts by virtue of this same light. But for the first form to produce dimensions in matter by virtue of a subsequent form is impossible. Therefore light is not the form succeeding this corporeity, but is this corporeity itself."

"One cause, in so far as it is one, is productive of only one effect. I do not rule out several efficient causes of which one is nearer and another more remote in the same order. Thus when I say simply 'animal', I do not exclude another substance or particular substance. Hence motion, in so far as it is one, is productive of only one effect. But motion is present in every body from an intrinsic principle which is called natural. Therefore an efficient cause simply proportional to the motion is present in all bodies. But nothing is present in common in every body except primitive matter and primitive form and magnitude, which necessarily follows from these two, and whatever is entailed by magnitude as such, as position and shape. But simply through magnitude a body does not receive motion, as is clear enough when Aristotle shows that everything that moves is divisible, not, therefore, simply because of magnitude or something entailed by magnitude is a body productive of motion. Nor is primitive matter productive of motion, because it is itself passive. It is therefore necessary that motion follow simply from the primitive form as from an efficient cause."

"I hold that the first form of a body is the first corporeal mover. But this is light, which as it multiplies itself and expands without the body of matter moving with it, makes its passage instantaneously through the transparent medium and is not motion but a state of change. But, indeed, when light is expanding itself in different directions it is incorporated with matter, if the body of matter extends with it, and it makes a rarefaction or augmentation of matter; for when light is itself charged with the body of matter, it produces condensation or rarefaction. So when light generates itself in one direction drawing matter with it, it produces local motion; and when light within matter is sent out and what is outside is sent in, it produces qualitative change. From this it is clear that corporeal motion is a multiplicative power of light, and this is a corporeal and natural appetite."

"I say that it is possible to have some knowledge without the help of the senses. For in the Divine Mind all knowledge exists from eternity, and not only is there in it certain knowledge of universals but also of all singulars. ...Similarly, intelligence receiving irradiation from the primary light see all knowable things, both universal and singulars, in the primary light itself. Moreover, the Divine Mind, in the reflection of its intelligence upon Itself, knows the very things which come after Itself, because it is itself their cause. Therefore, those who are without any senses have true knowledge."

"The highest part of the human soul, which is called the intelligence and which is not the act of any body and does not need for its proper operation a corporeal instrument—this intelligence, if it were not obscured and weighed down by the mass of the body, would itself have complete knowledge from the irradiation received from the superior light without the help of sense, just as it will have when the soul is drawn forth from the body, and as perhaps those people have who are free from the love and the imaginings of corporeal things."

"Because the purity of the eye of the soul is obscured and weighed down by the corrupt body, all the powers of this rational soul born in man are laid hold of by the mass of the body and cannot act and so in a way are asleep. Accordingly, when in the process of time the senses act through many interactions of sense with sensible things, the reasoning is awakened mixed with these very sensible things and is borne along in the senses to the sensible things as in a ship. But the functioning reason begins to divide and separately consider what in sense were confused. ...But the reasoning does not know this to be actually universal except after it has made this abstraction from many singulars, and has reached one and the same universal by its judgement taken from many singulars."

"The experimental universal is acquired by us, whose mind's eye is not purely spiritual, only through the help of the senses. For when the senses several times observe two singular occurrences, of which one is the cause of the other or is related to it in some other way, and they do not see the connection between them... And from this perception repeated again and again and stored in memory, and from the sensory knowledge from which the perception is built up, the functioning of the reasoning begins. The functioning reason therefore begins to wonder and to consider whether things really are as the sensible recollection says, and these two lead the reason to experiment... But when he has administered many times with the sure exclusion of all other things [that could be mistaken for the cause]... then there is formed in the reason this universal... and this is the way in which it comes from sensation to a universal experimental principle."

"That is better and more valuable which requires fewer, other circumstances being equal, just as that demonstration is better, other circumstances being equal, which necessitates the answering of a smaller number of questions for a perfect demonstration or requires a smaller number of suppositions and premises from which the demonstration proceeds. For if one thing were demonstrated from many and another thing from fewer equally known premisses, clearly that is better which is from fewer because it makes us know quickly, just as a universal demonstration is better than particular because it produces knowledge from fewer premises. Similarly in natural science, in moral science, and in metaphysics the best is that which needs no premisses and the better that which needs the fewer, other circumstances being equal."

"Ostensive demonstration is that which concludes directly to that which is in question. Reduction ad impossibile is that which, when something the opposite of that which is in question has been assumed, concludes with some other proposition directly to a known and manifest impossibility, from the opposite of which the investigator is led back to the original proposition in question. But there is a difference between ostensive demonstration and reduction ad impossibile, because the former proves from things prior in the order of nature but the latter from things posterior in the order of nature. When things prior in nature are better known in the intellect of the person making the demonstration the process is carried out ostensively; but when posterior things are better known to his intellect then the demonstration is carried out per impossibile... in demonstration carried out per impossibile the showing of the original thing in question is carried out by means of things posterior to it in the order of nature... And there is in the contrary, falsely supposed in predicate of subject, a connecting term by which something is implied to be which impossible in the nature of things."

"And since the proportions of the human voice and the gesticulations of the human body are regulated by the same modulation as that by which sound and the motion of other bodies are, musical thought is subalternated not only to the harmony of human voice and gesticulation, but also of instruments and of those whose delectation consist in motion or sound and with these the harmony of the celestial and non-celestial. And since the concordance of times and the composition and harmony of the lower world and of all things composed of four elements come from celestial motions, and, moreover, since it is necessary to find the harmony of causes in their effects, the study of music also extends to knowing the proportions of times and the constitution of the elements of the lower world, and even the composition of all the elements."

"Vacuum stands and remains a mathematical space. A cube placed in a vacuum would not displace anything, as it would displace air or water in a space already containing those fluids."

"In a vacuum which is imagined as infinite there cannot be local differences, both on account of its infinity, and also because of the fact that the vacuum, if it exists, would have no nature but a privation, and therefore it can have no natural differences."

"The space of the real physical world must be considered full, that is a plenum, because a vacuum could have no physical existence."

"The Greek and Hebrew he did not know sufficiently to translate them unassisted, but he had many assistants."

"One man alone had really known the sciences, namely, Robert, Bishop of Lincoln."

"Few have attained to consummate wisdom in the perfection of philosophy: Solomon attained to it, and Aristotle in relation to his times, and in a later age Avicenna, and in our own days the recently deceased Robert, Bishop of Lincoln, and Adam Marsh."

"No one really knew the sciences except the Lord Robert, Bishop of Lincoln, by reason of his length of life and experience, as well as of his studiousness and zeal. He knew mathematics and perspective, and there was nothing which he was unable to know; and at the same time he was sufficiently acquainted with languages to be able to understand the saints and the philosophers and the wise men of antiquity but his knowledge of languages was not such as to enable him to effect translations until the latter portion of his life..."

"There were found some famous men, such as Robert, Bishop of Lincoln, and Adam Marsh, and several others, who were aware that the power of mathematics is capable of unfolding the causes of all things, and of giving a sufficient explanation of human and divine phenomena; and the assurance of this fact is to be found in the writings of those great men, as, for instance, in their works on the impressions on the rainbow and the comets, on the generation of heat, on the investigation of geography, on the sphere, and on other questions appertaining both to theology and to natural philosophy."

"Robert Grosseteste... was born at the decisive moment when Greek and Arabic science became accessible in Latin versions."

"Robert became much interested in science and scientific method; and he showed particular attention to optics, which he regarded as the key to an understanding of the physical world. He was conscious of the dual approach by means of induction and deduction (resolution and composition); i.e., from the empirical knowledge one proceeds to probable general principles, and from these as premises one them derives conclusions which constitute verifications or falsifications of the principles. This approach to science was not that far removed from Aristotle..."

"I shall tell, as I have herdOf the byshop Saint Roberd;His tonaine is Grossteste,Of Lyncolne so seyth the geste:He loved moche to here the harpe,For mannes wit it makyth sharpe;Next hys chamber, besyde hys studyHys harper's chamber was fast the by.Many tymes, by nightes and dayes,He hadd solace of notes and layes.On asked hyme the reason whyHe had delyte in mynstrelsy;He answered hym in this manereWhy he held the harpe so dere:The virtu of the harpe, through skyll and ryght,Will destrye the fendy's myght;And to the cros, by gode skeyl,Ys the harpe lykened well."

"Grosseteste's contribution was to emphasize the importance of falsification in the search for true causes and to develop the method of verification and falsification into a systematic method of experimental procedure."

"The strategic act by which Grosseteste and his thirteenth- and fourteenth-century successors created modern experimental science was to unite the experimental habit of the practical arts with the rationalism of twelfth-century philosophy."

"Groesseteste appears to have been the first medieval writer to recognize and deal with the two fundamental methodological problems of induction and experimental verification and falsification which arose when the Greek conception of geometrical demonstration was applied to the world of experience. He appears to have been the first to set out a systematic and coherent theory of experimental investigation and rational explanation by which the Greek geometrical method was turned into modern experimental science. As far as is known, he and his successors were the first to use and exemplify such a theory in the details of original research into concrete problems."

"In its application to natural science Grosseteste based his method of verification and falsification on two assumptions about the nature of reality. (a) The first was the principle of the uniformity of nature, meaning that forms are always uniform in their operations. ...In support of this principle he quoted 'Aristotles II de Generat.: ...'the same cause, provided it remains in the same condition, cannot produce anything but the same effect.' (b) The second assumption Grosseteste made was that of the principle of economy, or lex parsimoniae. This he also derived from Aristotle, who stated it as a pragmatic principle."

"By this lux as the first corporeal form Grosseteste did not, of course, mean simply visible light. As an emanation or propagation of substance and power lux was the basis of all bodily magnitude and of all natural operations, of which the manifestation of visible light was only one. One of the most important functions of lux was to be the intermediary between spirit and matter. It was the instrument by which God produced the macrocosm of the universe, and the instrument by which the soul made contact with the physical body and the things of sense in the microcosm of man."

"[Grosseteste] far surpassed all the philosophers of his time, and outstripped all theologians in divine knowledge and doctrine. His most famous works remain to testify this to scholars of our day, and by virtue of his genius, which was wonderfully strengthened by divine grace, he might say 'I have more understanding than all my teachers.' But most of all did he excel in humility, simplicity, and sanctity, so that he passed his life in innocency, chastity, and purity."

"[Grosseteste is] excelling in merits, illustrious for holiness of life, like the morning star discerned through a gap in the clouds, like a candle not put under a bushel, but on a candlestick, that all may see the light."

"In the thirteenth century Robert Grosseteste wrote a book on the rainbow that began an outburst of European speculation parallel to the equally rich Arab work."

"Robert Grosseteste affirmed and refined Aristotle's inductive-deductive method, which he termed the Method of Resolution and Composition for its inductive and deductive components, respectively. But he added to Aristotle's methods of induction. His purposes were to verify true theories and to falsify false theories. Causal laws were suspected when certain phenomena were frequently correlated, but natural science sought robust knowledge of real causes, not accidental correlations. ...His approach used deduction to falsify proposed but defective inductions. ...Grosseteste's Method of Verification deduced consequences of a theory beyond its original application and then checked those predictions experimentally. His Method of Falsification eliminated bad theories by deducing implications known to be false. Grosseteste clearly understood that his optimistic view of induction required two metaphysical presuppositions about the nature of physical reality: the uniformity of nature and the principle of parsimony or simplicity. Without those presuppositions, there is no defensible method of induction in particular or method of science in general."

"Although Grosseteste's science could be decidedly Aristotelian, he also was clearly an independent thinker. For example, Grosseteste viewed light as metaphysical phenomenon, holding that God created light as the universe's first, incipient material form, and that light subsequently diffused from a single point to create the natural world. There were several precedents for this Neoplatonic belief in light as the primeval manifestation of God, among them the writings of Saint Augustine. Thus for Grosseteste the study of light and optics was a means of understanding God's handiwork."

"Grosseteste was the first medieval writer to break with the ancient tradition of discounting refraction in the rainbow. In another way, however, Grosseteste is firmly bound to his predecessors' rainbows—an experimentalist in principle, in practice he strays very little from the Aristotelian tradition of selective observation constrained by geometry. Furthermore, Grosseteste's rainbow theory often appeals to authority, leading historian Bruce Eastwood to remark: "When sources fail, he invents, and the invention is never contradictory to literary sources." (In fairness, Grosseteste made several observations about the rainbow that gainsaid ancient authority.)"

"Grosseteste was deeply concerned with the detailed investigation of natural phenomena. It was the inspiration of this attitude of mind, together with Grosseteste's emphasis on the importance of mathematics, that was perhaps his chief legacy to thinkers in fourteenth-century Oxford who were developing the beginnings of a mathematical physics."

"There is scarcely a character in English history whose fame has been more constant, both during and after his life, than Robert Grosseteste, Bishop of Lincoln from 1235 to 1253. As we find his advice sought universally during his lifetime, and his example spoken of as that which almost all the other prelates of his day followed, so was it also after his death. If threats from Rome and excommunications from Canterbury fell harmlessly upon him while alive, his example nerved others in subsequent years—as in the case of Sewal, Archbishop of York—to bear even worse attacks without giving way. And probably no one has had a greater influence upon English thought and English literature for the two centuries which followed his time; few books will be found that do not contain some quotations from Lincolniensis, 'the great clerk, Grostest.'"

"Grosseteste aimed consciously at producing a synthesis of the cosmogony of Genesis and the cosmology of [ Aristotle's ] De Caelo. ...His intution led him to the conviction that mathematics, far from being an abstraction from aspects of the physically real, is the very internal texture of the natural world, presiding over its coming to be and controlling its functioning, that, in the words of Kepler, 'Ubi materia, ibi geometria' [Where there is matter, there is geometry]. Of course, this faith was metaphysical; but then so to was much of the high-level inspiration of scientists in the seventeenth century. It was abstract, because the mathematical structure of reality is not given to the senses, but intuited in or believed by the mind. What it afforded was not so much scientific results as delight in the pure understanding of the essence of things, and, what Grosseteste valued most of all, a glimpse beyond the beauty of the harmonious textura of things to the mind of the primus numerator [premier calculator], the lux prima et inaccessibilus [first and inaccessible light]. The novel aspect of Grosseteste's world-system goes back entirely to this conception of God as the great calculator. For the first time, it would appear, in the history of Christian belief, God is addressed as a mathematician whose ideas for creation are mathematical operations realizable in matter and form."

"He was an open confuter of both Pope and King, the corrector of monks, the director of priests, the instructor of clerks, the supporter of scholars, a preacher to the people, a persecutor of the incontinent, the unwearied student of the Scriptures, a hammer and despiser of the Romans. At the table of bodily refreshment he was hospitable, eloquent, courteous, pleasant, and affable; at the spiritual table devout, tearful, and contrite. In the episcopal office he was sedulous, dignified, and indefatigable."

"He lived in a corrupt age, and he aspired to be the great reformer of the Church of his day as his friend Simon de Montfort was of the State. ...Robert Grosseteste was also the most learned man of his time, not only in England, but in all Europe, and one of the most voluminous writers that England has produced. He was the greatest theologian, the greatest natural philosopher, the greatest master of language, of his day. His works which are almost all still imprinted are more than 200 in number and are upon almost every subject of theology and science."

"The name which he afterwards acquired being doubtless due to the peculiarity of his personal appearance, the largeness of his head. Matthew Paris speaks of him as "Robert who is known by the surname of Grosseteste," or "Robert called Great-Head." Nicholas Trivet says, "he was surnamed by many Great-Head.""

"Robert Grossetest... described a compelling, unified version of the universe in which light was the fundamental force. Differing from Aristotle and others who had argued that heavenly bodies consisted of some pure, quintessential substance unlike any found on Earth, Grosseteste maintained that the stars themselves are composed of the four earthly elements. Like the attraction of a lump of iron to a magnet, light from the stars attracts comets, which themselves are a form of purified fire. His model also explained the moon's influence on the tides in terms of the way its light causes water to swell and move upward."

"Robert Grosseteste. Robert Grosthead or Greathead. Robert Grosse capitas Lincolniensis. ...first chancellor of the University of Oxford; first lecturer to the Oxford Franciscans. ...English mathamatician, astronomer, physicist, philosopher, translator from Greek into Latin. He was the main organizer of philosophical studies at Oxford, and his influence was strongly felt in England for at least a couple of centuries. Nor was it limited to England. His insistence on the necessity of studying Greek and basing natural philosophy upon mathematics and experiment was extremely beneficial and far-reaching; in this he was clearly the forerunner of his most famous pupil, Roger Bacon. We may say that he influenced the whole western world, partly through his own writings, and partly through these new tendencies emphasized by Bacon and others."

"A large number of writings are ascribed to him; allowing for the fact that some are probably apocryphal, his literary activity must have been tremendous. He wrote commentaries on the Posterior Analytics, and on the Physics of Aristotle. His treatise on the compotus (c. 1232) includes a discussion of the reform of the calendar, which was repeatedly quoted by subsequent writers from Bacon to Peter of Ailly. … The majority of his scientific treatises deal with physical and meteorological questions. ...He was much concerned with the complex subject called "perspective" and with optical questions in general. He was well aware of the magnifying properties of lenses, a knowledge which he probably transmitted to Bacon. (Which suggests that other items of Bacon's encyclopedic knowledge were probably obtained from Grosseteste). Many of these physical writings were ascribed by Bacon collectively to Grosseteste and to Adam Marsh. Grosseteste... showed interest in astrology and alchemy, but was remarkably free from magical fancies."

"His main reason for advocating the study of Hebrew was to promote the conversion of the Jews. He was not hostile to the latter, and saved many of them from being massacred. ...Robert was not simply a great scholar, but a courageous man. He did not fear to repress the evil tendencies of his flock, nor reprove those of the Roman curia."

"Lux was probably Grosseteste's ingenious substitute for the immaterial pneuma of the Neoplatonists and the 'animal spirits' of medical writers."

"Grosseteste's experimental method was quite different from a method of controlled experiment. Grosseteste made no use of such a method in his writings, deriving his conclusions on the basis of a mix of considerations, appealing to authority and everyday observation (the Latin “experimentum”). He made use of thought experiments and certain metaphysical assumptions, such as the assumption of a principle of “least action.”"

"In 1307 a general application was made to Clement V. for the purpose by the Dean and Chapter of Lincoln, who sent one of their number, Robert de Killingworth, to Rome with that object and also by the Dean and Chapter of St Paul's, London, the Abbot and convent of Osney, King Edward the First, Greenfield, Archbishop of York, and the University of Oxford. ...The most interesting testimony is that from the University of Oxford, which says that he never did anything connected with the office he held or his pastoral care through fear of any man, and that he was ready, if need be, to suffer martyrdom for what he believed to be right. It also speaks of his magnificent services to the cause of science, and of the admirable character of his "regency" at Oxford. What was the precise influence which prevented his canonisation is unknown, though his attitude of sturdy independence may have contributed to the result."

"The treatise on light (De luce)... reflects a significant influence of Aristotle's scientific thinking. ...Its model of the expanding universe stimulated speculation as to whether in 1927... was aware of Grosseteste's thinking when he introduced the modern 'Big Bang' model... Grosseteste develops the consequences of his metaphysics of light towards a physics of light... This connection between the perfect heavens and the imperfect earth is an astonishing intellectual feat, rooted on the premise that there exists a fundamental unity..."

"He was a man of excellent wisdom, and of most lucid power of teaching, as well as a pattern of all virtue. The good abilities which he had from nature he cultivated by the precepts of Scripture, so as to form a noble soul. When he was Master of Arts he wrote briefly upon the 'Book of Posterior Analytics.' He also put forth treatises on the 'Sphere,' the 'Art of Reckoning,' and many other things useful in philosophy. He was a doctor skilled in three tongues, the Latin, the Hebrew, and the Greek; and many things did he bring forth from the tongue of the Hebrews and caused many to be translated from the Greek."

"To compare him to the modern doctors is as the comparison of the sun to the moon when it is eclipsed."

"Light, according to Grosseteste, was the first form of corporeity, and from it all else followed. Multiplying itself from a single point infinitely and equally on all sides, light formed a sphere and together with this action arose matter. Following the expansion of light to its ultimate extent came a phase differentiation caused by condensation and rarefaction, which led in turn to the separation of the heavens and earth..."

"Robert Grosseteste... stands, -headed, facing two directions. One face... evoking a metaphysics of light that embraces hosts of angelic beings and emanations of light that are active in God's creation... His other face gazes earthward to a future... a mathematical physics grounded in experimental observation."

"Looking back the great American ‘stabilisation’ [and boom] of 1922-1929 was really a vast attempt to destabilise the value of money in terms of human effort by means of a colossal programme of investment [driven by too easy credit]... which succeeded for a surprisingly long period, but which no human ingenuity could have managed to direct indefinitely on sound and balanced lines. [and therefore it ended dramatically in the huge 1929 stock market crash followed by the Great Depression.]"

"The value of a yellow metal, originally chosen as money because it tickled the fancy of savages, is clearly a chancy and irrelevant thing on which to base the value of our money and the stability of our industrial system.""

"Islands of conscious power in this ocean of unconscious co-operation like lumps of butter coagulating in a pail of buttermilk."

"Professor Sir Dennis Robertson and Keynes were closely associated in the development of their ideas in monetary economics during the 1920s. Robertson had published his textbook Money in 1922 which went through a number of editions."

"I regard Mr. Hawtrey as my grandparent and Mr. Robertson as my parent in the paths of errancy, and I have been greatly influenced by them."

"Pure mathematics is a collection of hypothetical, deductive theories, each consisting of a definite system of primitive, undefined, concepts or symbols and primitive, unproved, but self-consistent assumptions (commonly called axioms) together with their logically deducible consequences following by rigidly deductive processes without appeal to intuition."

"I have undertaken to say a few words to you on the "Art of Questioning". It is a subject of great importance to all of you who desire to become good teachers ; for, in truth, the success and efficiency of our teaching depend more on the skill and judgment with which we put questions than on any other single circumstance."

"It is very possible for a teacher to be fluent in speech, earnest in manner, happy in his choice of illustration, and to be a very inefficient teacher, nevertheless. We are often apt to think it enough if we deliver a good lesson, and to forget that, after all, its value depends upon the degree in which it is really received and appropriated by the children. Now, in order to secure that what we teach shall really enter their minds, and be duly fixed and comprehended there, it is above all things necessary that we should be able to use effectively the important instrument of instruction to which our attention is now to be drawn."

"We are so accustomed to hear arithmetic spoken of as one of the three fundamental ingredients in all schemes of instruction, that it seems like inquiring too curiously to ask why this should be. Reading, Writing, and Arithmetic—these three are assumed to be of co-ordinate rank. Are they indeed co-ordinate, and if so on what grounds? In this modern “trivium” the art of reading is put first. Well, there is no doubt as to its right to the foremost place. For reading is the instrument of all our acquisition. It is indispensable. There is not an hour in our lives in which it does not make a great difference to us whether we can read or not. And the art of Writing, too; that is the instrument of all communication, and it becomes, in one form or other, useful to us every day. But Counting—doing sums,—how often in life does this accomplishment come into exercise? Beyond the simplest additions, and the power to check the items of a bill, the arithmetical knowledge required of any well-informed person in private life is very limited. For all practical purposes, whatever I may have learned at school of fractions, or proportion, or decimals, is, unless I happen to be in business, far less available to me in life than a knowledge, say, of history of my own country, or the elementary truths of physics. The truth is, that regarded as practical arts, reading, writing, and arithmetic have no right to be classed together as co-ordinate elements of education; for the last of these is considerably less useful to the average man or woman not only than the other two, but than 267 many others that might be named. But reading, writing, and such mathematical or logical exercise as may be gained in connection with the manifestation of numbers, have a right to constitute the primary elements of instruction. And I believe that arithmetic, if it deserves the high place that it conventionally holds in our educational system, deserves it mainly on the ground that it is to be treated as a logical exercise. It is the only branch of mathematics which has found its way into primary and early education; other departments of pure science being reserved for what is called higher or university instruction. But all the arguments in favor of teaching algebra and trigonometry to advanced students, apply equally to the teaching of the principles or theory of arithmetic to schoolboys. It is calculated to do for them exactly the same kind of service, to educate one side of their minds, to bring into play one set of faculties which cannot be so severely or properly exercised in any other department of learning. In short, relatively to the needs of a beginner, Arithmetic, as a science, is just as valuable—it is certainly quite as intelligible—as the higher mathematics to a university student."

"Suppose then I want to give myself a little training in the art of reasoning; suppose I want to get out of the region of conjecture and probability, free myself from the difficult task of weighing evidence, and putting instances together to arrive at general propositions, and simply desire to know how to deal with my general propositions when I get them, and how to deduce right inferences from them; it is clear that I shall obtain this sort of discipline best in those departments of thought in which the first principles are unquestionably true. For in all 59 our thinking, if we come to erroneous conclusions, we come to them either by accepting false premises to start with—in which case our reasoning, however good, will not save us from error; or by reasoning badly, in which case the data we start from may be perfectly sound, and yet our conclusions may be false. But in the mathematical or pure sciences,—geometry, arithmetic, algebra, trigonometry, the calculus of variations or of curves,—we know at least that there is not, and cannot be, error in our first principles, and we may therefore fasten our whole attention upon the processes. As mere exercises in logic, therefore, these sciences, based as they all are on primary truths relating to space and number, have always been supposed to furnish the most exact discipline. When Plato wrote over the portal of his school. “Let no one ignorant of geometry enter here,” he did not mean that questions relating to lines and surfaces would be discussed by his disciples. On the contrary, the topics to which he directed their attention were some of the deepest problems,—social, political, moral,—on which the mind could exercise itself. Plato and his followers tried to think out together conclusions respecting the being, the duty, and the destiny of man, and the relation in which he stood to the gods and to the unseen world. What had geometry to do with these things? Simply this: That a man whose mind has not undergone a rigorous training in systematic thinking, and in the art of drawing legitimate inferences from premises, was unfitted to enter on the discussion of these high topics; and that the sort of logical discipline which he needed was most likely to be obtained from geometry—the only mathematical science which in Plato’s time had been formulated and reduced to a system. And we in this country [England] have long acted on the same principle. Our future lawyers, clergy, and statesmen are expected at the University to learn a good deal about curves, and angles, and numbers and proportions; not because these subjects have the smallest relation to the needs of their lives, but because in the very act of learning them they are likely to acquire that habit of steadfast and accurate thinking, which is indispensable to success in all the pursuits of life."

"What mathematics, therefore are expected to do for the advanced student at the university, Arithmetic, if taught demonstratively, is capable of doing for the children even of the humblest school. It furnishes training in reasoning, and particularly in deductive reasoning. It is a discipline in closeness and continuity of thought. It reveals the nature of fallacies, and refuses to avail itself of unverified assumptions. It is the one department of school-study in which the sceptical and inquisitive spirit has the most legitimate scope; in which authority goes for nothing. In other departments of instruction you have a right to ask for the scholar’s confidence, and to expect many things to be received on your testimony with the understanding that they will be explained and verified afterwards. But here you are justified in saying to your pupil “Believe nothing which you cannot understand. Take nothing for granted.” In short, the proper office of arithmetic is to serve as elementary 268 training in logic. All through your work as teachers you will bear in mind the fundamental difference between knowing and thinking; and will feel how much more important relatively to the health of the intellectual life the habit of thinking is than the power of knowing, or even facility of achieving visible results. But here this principle has special significance. It is by Arithmetic more than by any other subject in the school course that the art of thinking—consecutively, closely, logically—can be effectually taught."

"Put aside [the] political and theological differences between Sunnis and Shiites and focus on the group’s shared fundamental beliefs, such as the oneness of Allah, Muhammad’s role as the prophet of Allah, and the five pillars of Islam. Take off your lenses and see through the eyes of someone else."

"These guys calling for Sharia law and marching up the Edgware Road are going to cause havoc whatever happens. Syria is just an excuse for them. Those who use Assad to attack Shias in this country, you say to them, why not speak out against Saudi and Qatar? Saudi is the least democratic country on Earth."

"Sunni and Shia are the main schools in Islam, like Protestant and Catholic. … When you debate with the other school you don’t use vile language or other terms against their respective leaders."

"Religion can probably out live any scientific discoveries which could be made. It can accommodate itself to them. The root cause of the decay of faith has not been any particular discovery of science, but rather the general spirit of science and certain basic assumptions upon which modern science, from the seventeenth century onwards, has proceeded."

"The real turning point between the medieval age of faith and the modern age of unfaith came when the scientists of the seventeenth century turned their backs upon what used to be called “final causes.” The final cause of a thing or event meant the purpose which it was supposed to serve in the universe, its cosmic purpose."

"Religion can get on with any sort of astronomy, geology, biology, physics. But it cannot get on with a purposeless and meaningless universe. If the scheme of things is purposeless and meaningless, then the life of man is purposeless and meaningless too. Everything is futile, all effort is in the end worthless. A man may, of course, still pursue disconnected ends, money, fame, art, science, and may gain pleasure from them. But his life is hollow at the center. Hence the dissatisfied, disillusioned, restless, spirit of modern man."

"It is not likely that science, which is basically the cause of our spiritual troubles, is likely also to produce the cure for them. Also it lies in the nature of science that, though it can teach us the best means for achieving our ends, it can never tell us what ends to pursue."

"It has been said that man lives by truth, and that the truth will make us free. Nearly the opposite seems to me to be the case. Mankind has managed to live only by means of lies, and the truth may very well destroy us."

"To be genuinely civilized means to be able to walk straightly and to live honorably without the props and crutches of one or another of the childish dreams which have so far supported men. That such a life is likely to be ecstatically happy I will not claim. But that it can be lived in quiet content, accepting resignedly what cannot be helped not expecting the impossible, and being thankful for small mercies, this I would maintain. That it will be difficult for men in general to learn this lesson I do not deny. But that it will be impossible I would not admit since so many have learned it already."

"It is not that science proves that the world is not moral. Science as such is not concerned with values, and proves nothing of the sort. Nevertheless, as a matter of history, it is science which has suggested this view to the modern mind by its insistence on mechanistic categories."

"To suppose that the world aims, as some human beings do, at noble ends, is plainly anthropomorphic. And perhaps the chief ground for refusing to admit purpose in nature is just that there is no evidence of it."

"The task of thought in our time is to replace the lost religious and metaphysical foundation of morals by a secular and naturalistic foundation."

"Emotions are subjective, but psychological laws or statements about emotions, if they are true, are objective truths."

"People are often mistaken about what is good for the health of their bodies. That is why we have doctors. And people are just as likely to be mistaken about what will be good for the happiness of their souls. That is why we have moralists."

"Morals have a perfectly firm and objective foundation in human personality. If men can be brought to understand this, then moral faith may be restored. The problem is really one of education."

"All religious thought and speech are through and through symbolic. And this fundamental insight is perhaps as old as religion itself."

"How is it possible for both naturalism and religion - atheism and theism, if you prefer it - to be but two sides of one truth, is the same as the problem how God can be both being and non-being, as one of the most ancient religious and mystical insights proclaims he is, or how he can be both the Eternal Yes and the Eternal Nay, as Böhme affirmed."

"And we think that this ultimate blessedness differs only in degree from the happy and joyful experiences of our lives. Whereas the truth is that it differs in kind. The joys, not only of the earth, but of any conceivable heaven - which we can conceive only as some happy and fortunate prolongation of our lives in time - are not of the same order as that ultimate blessedness."

"Either God is a Mystery or He is nothing at all."

"But it is not an exaggeration to say that mystical experience is everywhere unitary in the same sense that everywhere aesthetic experience is unitary. British, American, German, Indian, Chinese, Japanese art are of course very different from one another. Yet they have one root in their basic experience of beauty."

"Thus to say that God is ineffable is to say that no concepts apply to Him, and that He is without qualities."

"But the divine mystery is inherent in the divine, a part of the nature of God, and can never disappear. And this means that it is still a mystery even to the mystic who has directly experienced it, nay, even to God Himself. That is why it is ineffable. The mystery and the ineffability of God are one and the same thing."

"It is only by intuition that the infinite can be apprehended. But why is this? Why cannot the infinite be apprehended by concepts? To see this we must understand that the word "infinite," in the religious sense, has nothing at all to do with that sense of the word in which it is applied to space, time, and the number series. We may call this latter the mathematical infinite to distinguish it from the religious infinite. And it is the confusion between these two which misled us into the false trail of supposing that the infinity of God's mind refers to the amount of His knowledge and that the finitude of man's mind refers to his ignorance. The religious infinite, or in other words the infinity of God, means that than 'which there is no other. In this sense neither space nor time could be infinite, since space is an "other" to time, and time is an "other" to space."

"It is a commonplace that eternity is not an endless prolongation of time, has nothing to do with time. Eternity is a characteristic of the mystical experience. The word eternity doubtless meant originally endlessness of time, which must count, therefore, as its literal meaning. But in its religious and metaphysical use it is a metaphor for the characteristic of the experience. For in that experience time drops away and is no more seen."

"Thus when Plotinus speaks of "the flight of the alone to the Alone," and the positivist or the empiricist asserts that these words are meaningless, he is right. Yet this does not import that the words are nonsense locutions, mere senseless noises which a man makes like a cough or a sneeze though it is possible that this is what the positivist intends. If this were so, it would be impossible to explain why generations of men have quoted those famous words. The explanation is that the words evoke in us a measure of the same experience which the author of them had. Our experience may be but a dim reflection of what was in him bright and clear. Our spirits vibrate faintly in unison with the soul of the great mystic, as a tuning fork vibrates faintly in response to the sound of the clear bell. But it is our own spontaneous experience which is evoked; it is not his experience which is communicated to us. His words are as grappling irons let down into the depths of our subconsciousness, which draw our own inner experiences nearer to the conscious threshold. But they are not, for most of us, drawn above the threshold. They remain below the surface faintly visible. Therefore they appear at the upper levels of our consciousness as faint hints, glimpses, and sometimes as mere vague feelings."

"The same character of revelation, which we find in poetry, attaches to mystical illumination, although here the revelation is always the divine."

"The true religious doctrine is that the world is to be both denied and not to be denied."

"The pure religious consciousness lies in a region which is forever beyond all proof or disproof."

"If God does not lie at the end of any telescope, neither does he lie at the end of any syllogism. I can never starting from the natural order prove the divine order. The proof of the divine order must lie, somehow, within itself. It must be its own witness. For it, like the natural order, is complete within itself, self-contained."

"The great error of traditional proofs of the existence of god is that they try to take a symbolic truth for a literal truth, a truth of fact, and then try to prove that it is a fact."

"It must now be added that these attempts at proof not only fail of their purpose, and so do no good to religion, but that they positively degrade it."

"There is no such thing as natural theology. God is either known by revelation - that is to say, by intuition - or not at all."

"The word "mysticism" is popularly used in a variety of loose and inaccurate ways. Sometimes anything is called "mystical" which is misty, foggy, vague, or sloppy. It is absurd that "mysticism" should be associated with what is "misty" because of the similar sound of the words. And there is nothing misty, foggy, vague, or sloppy about mysticism."

"The incommensurability of the mystical with the sensory-intellectual consciousness is also the ultimate reason why we have to exclude visions and voices, telepathy, precognition, and clairvoyance from the category of the mystical."

"The most important, the central characteristic in which all fully developed mystical experiences agree, and which in the last analysis is definitive of them and serves to mark them off from all other kinds of experiences, is that they involve the apprehension of an ultimate nonsensuous unity in all things, a oneness or a One to which neither the sense nor the reason can penetrate."

"Mystics more often than not avoid direct reference to themselves."

"It is certainly the case that there can exist an atheistic mysticism, a mystical experience naked and not clothed in any religious garb."

"Thus we see that mysticism naturally, though not necessarily, becomes intimately associated with whatever is the religion of the culture in which it appears."

"And in the end it is because of mysticism that it is possible to say that “no man is an island” and that on the contrary every man is “a part of the main.”"

"Ninety per cent of all the mathematics we know has been discovered (or invented), in the last hundred years... the advances made in each of some dozen directions are converging into one single discipline uniting algebra, topology and analysis."

"During this century mathematics has been transformed..."

"The professional mathematician can scarcely avoid specialization and needs to transcend his private interests and take a wide synoptic view of the whole landscape of contemporary mathematics. His scientific colleagues are continually seeking enlightenment on the relevance of mathematical abstractions. The undergraduate needs a guidebook to the topography of the immense and expanding world of mathematics. There seems to be only one way to satisfy these varied interests... a concise historical account of the main currents... Only by a study of the development of mathematics can its contemporary significance be understood."

"The brilliant summaries by Bourbaki (1969) and Weyl (1951)... set a high standard of exposition, but... there is room for a history of mathematical ideas which will demand less mathematical expertise and offer a more detailed account of the motivation of research."

"This book... is primarily and essentially an account of the discovery or invention of mathematical concepts, and the historical material is... divided and classified, neither chronologically nor biographically, but philosophically."

"From Pythagoras to Boethius, when pure mathematics consisted of arithmetic and geometry while applied mathematics consisted of music and astronomy, mathematics could be characterized as the deductive study of 'such abstractions as quantities and their consequences, namely figures and so forth' (Acquinas ca. 1260). But since the emergence of abstract algebra it has become increasingly difficult to formulate a definition to cover the whole of the rich, complex and expanding domain of mathematics."

"The subject matter of mathematics has increased so rapidly and extensively that there is some element of truth in maintaining that mathematics is not so much a subject as a way of studying any subject, not so much a science as a way of life. We turn, then, from the attempt to characterize the material object of mathematics to an attempt to determine its formal object, i.e., its methodology."

"The concept of 'number' in its most elementary sense as the signless integer appears to be an immediate abstraction from quantitative reality subjected to processes of counting and measurement. Vulgar fractions arise from division of a quantity into equal parts. But in what sense is zero a number? Are there negative numbers? Are there numbers corresponding to incommensurable ratios? Each question requires for its solution a fresh exercise of that kind of creative imagination which we call mathematical abstraction."

"At each stage of in the advance of mathematical thought the outstanding characteristics are novelty and originality. That is why mathematics is such a delight to study, such a challenge to practise and such a puzzle to define."

"There is the definition [of mathematics], boldly proposed by Pierce that 'Mathematics is the science which draws necessary conclusions', and more explicitly formulated by Russel that 'Pure Mathematics is the class of all propositions of the form "p implies q"... it was... the purpose of Russell's treatise to provide a complete, exact and convincing justification of this definition... instead, he and Whitehead collaborated to give a magisterial account of the Principia Mathematica."

"The function of logic in mathematics is critical rather than constructive."

"Logical analysis is indispensable for an examination of the strength of a mathematical structure, but it is useless for its conception and design. The great advances in mathematics have not been made by logic but by creative imagination."

"Pure mathematics is much more than an armoury of tools and techniques for the applied mathematician. On the other hand, the pure mathematician has ever been grateful to applied mathematics for stimulus and inspiration. From the vibrations of the violin string they have drawn enchanting harmonies of Fourier Series, and to study the triode valve they have invented a whole theory of non-linear oscillations."

"The 'language theory' is inadequate as a description of the nature of mathematics."

"Mathematical activity has taken the forms of a science, a philosophy and an art."

"As a science mathematics has been adapted to the description of natural phenomena, and the great practitioners in this field... have never concerned themselves with the logical foundations of mathematics, but have boldly taken a pragmatic view of mathematics as an intellectual machine which works successfully. Description has been verified by further observation, still more strikingly be prediction, and sometimes, more ominously, by control of natural forces. Happily, unresolved problems... still remain as challenges."

"Mathematics has also been developed as a philosophy, in the sense in which this term is defined by A.N. Whitehead as 'the endeavor to frame a coherent, logical and necessary system of general ideas in terms of which every element of our experience can be interpreted'. Substitute 'mathematics' for 'experience' and we have an admirable description of its speculative and philosophic development. ...Philosophy of mathematics... has its paradoxes and antimonies, and also diverse schools of thought..."

"For the great majority of mathematicians, mathematics is... a whole world of invention and discovery—an art. The construction of a new theorem, the intuition of some new principle, or the creation of a new branch of mathematics is the triumph of the creative imagination of the mathematician, which can be compared to that of a poet, the painter and the sculptor."

"Most mathematicians are by nature Platonists who cheerfully, unreflectingly and habitually employ such loaded phrases as 'We assume there exists...' or 'Therefore there exists...' an entity with such and such characteristics. Challenged by the realist they would probably reply that since the truths of mathematics are absolute, universal and eternal it is hard indeed to deny them an existence independent of human intelligence."

"What would geometry be without Gauss, mathematical logic without Boole, algebra without Hamilton, analysis without Cauchy?"

"The history of mathematics throws little light on the psychology of mathematical invention."

"In Poland it [the fall of Communism] took ten years, in Hungary ten months, in East Germany ten weeks: perhaps in Czechoslovakia it will take ten days!"

"Putin must be stopped. And sometimes only guns can stop guns."

"The numberless treatises of antiquities, philosophy, mathematics, natural and other history ... written originally in, or translated to our tongue are sufficient to lead us a great way into any science our curiosity shall prompt us to. The greatest difficulty we struggled with, was the want of a good art of reasoning, which we had not, that I know of, till that defect was supplied by Locke, whose Essay on Human Understanding makes large amends for the want of all others in that kind."

"Again, if Absolute Sovereignty be not necessary in a State, how comes it to be so in a family? Or if in a Family why not in a State; since no Reason can Be alle'd for the one that will not hold more strongly for the other?"

"An ill husband may deprive a wife of the comfort and quiet of her life, give occasion of exercising her virtue, try her patience and fortitude to the utmost, which is all he can do; it is herself only that can accomplish her ruin."

"Is it the being tied to One that offends us? Why this ought rather to recommend it to us, and would really do so, were we guided by reason, and not by humor and brutish passion. He who does not make friendship the chief inducement of his choice, and prefer it before any other consideration does not deserve a good wife, and therefore should not complain if he goes without one... The Christian institution of marriage provides the best that may be for domestic quiet and content, and for the education of children."

"If all Men are born free, how is it that all Women are born slaves? as they must be if the being subjected to the inconstant, uncertain, unknown, arbitrary Will of Men be the perfect Condition of Slavery?"

"Thus, whether it be wit or beauty that a man’s in love with, there are no great hopes of a lasting happiness; beauty, with all the helps of arts, is of no long date; the more it is , the sooner it decays; and he, who only or chiefly chose for beauty, will in a little time find the same reason for another choice."

"She must be a fool with a witness, who can believe a man, proud and vain as he is, will lay his boasted authority, the dignity and prerogative of his sex, on moment at her feet, but in prospect of taking it up again to more advantage; he may call himself her slave a few days, but it is only in order to make her his all the rest of his life."

"The better our lot is in this world, and the more we have of it, the greater is our leisure to prepare for the next; we have the more opportunity to exercise that God-like quality, to taste that divine pleasure, doing good to the bodies and souls of those beneath us."

"To withdraw our selves as much as may be from Corporeal things, that pure Reason may be heard the better; to make that use of our Senses for which they are design’d and fitted, the preservation of the Body, but not to depend on their Testimony in our Enquiries after Truth."

"It is the liberals, then, who count. They are, as it might be, the canaries in the sulphurous mineshaft of modern democracy. The alacrity with which many of America's most prominent liberals have censored themselves in the name of the War on Terror, the enthusiasm with which they have invented ideological and moral cover for war and war crimes and proffered that cover to their political enemies: all this is a bad sign. Liberal intellectuals used to be distinguished precisely by their efforts to think for themselves, rather than in the service of others. Intellectuals should not be smugly theorising endless war, much less confidently promoting and excusing it. They should be engaged in disturbing the peace – their own above all."

"Some people, myself included, advocated foreign intervention in Bosnia and Kosovo while opposing our adventure in Iraq. Sam Moyn might find this inconsistent, but (on this occasion at least) it is the world that is inconsistent, not us. During the Balkan wars individuals’ rights were under ascertainable threat in real time. Outside intervention could make a difference, and it did. This was not the case in Iraq. We should always be suspicious of the invocation of universal “rights” as a cover for sectional interests. But it doesn’t follow from this that talk of rights is “really” always about something else. Sometimes it is, and sometimes it isn’t. How, then, should we adjust our response? Well, there is a serviceable Keynesian answer to that: "When the facts change, I change my mind. What do you do?""

"My concern tonight is the following: Why is it that here in the United States we have such difficulty even imagining a different sort of society from the one whose dysfunctions and inequalities trouble us so? We appear to have lost the capacity to question the present, much less offer alternatives to it. Why is it so beyond us to conceive of a different set of arrangements to our common advantage?"

"What, then, is to be done? We have to begin with the state: as the incarnation of collective interests, collective purposes, and collective goods. If we cannot learn to “think the state” once again, we shall not get very far. But what precisely should the state do? Minimally, it should not duplicate unnecessarily: as Keynes wrote, “The important thing for Government is not to do things which individuals are doing already, and to do them a little better or a little worse; but to do those things which at present are not done at all.” And we know from the bitter experience of the past century that there are some things that states should most certainly not be doing."

"I was brought up on English food. But not fish and chips, spotted dick, toad in the hole, Yorkshire pud, or other delicacies of British home cooking. These my mother scorned as somehow unhealthy; she may have grown up surrounded by non-Jews, but for just that reason she and her family kept to themselves and knew little of the domestic world of their neighbors, which they looked upon with fear and suspicion. In any case, she had no idea how to prepare "English delicacies." Her occasional encounters, via my father's friends in the Socialist Party of Great Britain, with vegetarians and vegans had taught her the virtues of brown bread, brown rice, green beans, and other "healthy" staples of an Edwardian left-wing diet. But she could no more cook brown rice than she could have prepared "chop suey." And so she did what every other cook in England in those days did: she boiled everything to death."

"We don’t live in a world of fixed historical laws that says the—as you describe it—liberal state was born at a particular time, lived and died, and that’s what we’re stuck with. But there are reasons why some things are much harder to retain, to invent, to reinvent than others."

"What’s missing from public conversation and public policy conversation is precisely a sort of moral underpinning, a sense of the moral purposes that bind people together in functional societies. And part of the attraction of someone who otherwise didn’t appeal to me in the least—like, say, Pope John Paul II—was how he managed to connect with young people. Whether it was in Eastern Europe or Latin America or wherever, his was the sense of an absolutely, unambiguously, morally noncompromising view about what is right and what is wrong. It seems to me that we need to reintroduce some of that. We need to reintroduce confidently and unashamedly that kind of language into the public realm. And not expel it, so to speak, into church for Sunday. It’s not only on Sunday that some things are right and some things are wrong."

"One of the very few things that I know I believe strongly is that we must learn how to make a better world out of usable pasts rather than dreaming of infinite futures. It’s a very late-Enlightenment view that says that the only way to make a better future is to believe that the future will be better. Smarter people than me used to believe very differently and I think it is time to listen to them once again."

"Where does that leave me? Trying, as usual, to square general truths with particular circumstances. That’s the difference between pure ethics and political theory; but it isn’t resolved by simply abandoning the tension and sliding to one end of the pole."

"God knows I can think of enough things that I did wrong both personally and as part of my cohort. But I never abandoned what I thought of as the benefits of the postwar consensus in favour of sectional advantage. Actually, I was always a bit awkward in this as other respects. As you know, I was against root-and-branch school comprehensivization on the grounds that the postwar arrangements combining meritocracy with opportunity, while imperfect and logically indefensible, were better than the radical schemes on offer – which have trashed much of the pedagogical gains of the early postwar decades."

"I hate publicity, celebrity, fame, and notoriety, all of which are associated with controversy in its public form. But, in fairness, all my life I've been rather upfront with my opinions and never hidden them on grounds of conformity or (I fear) politesse. However, until the wretched Polish consulate affair, I don't think I was ever controversial—I was certainly not known outside of the hermetic little world of the academy, and my contrarian scholarly writings aroused no great fuss."

"I am, I discover in late middle age, a work in progress."

"In practice, the writer or scholar who aspires to that public position which defines intellectuals and distinguishes them from mere scribblers has always had to choose between being the apologist for rulers or an advisor to the people; the tragedy of the twentieth century is that these two functions have ceased to exist independently of one another, and intellectuals like Sartre who thought they were fulfilling one role were inevitably drawn to play both. If their successors, in France or elsewhere, are truly to put this past behind them, it will not be enough to recognize past mistakes. It will also be necessary to accept that entailed in the very meaning for modern society of the term intellectual are a number of roles that writers and scholars today may no longer wish to fulfill; indeed, a refusal to occupy the post of the (engaged) intellectual may be the most positive of the steps modern thinkers can take in any serious effort to come to terms with their own responsibility for our common recent past."

"History is not written as it was experienced, nor should it be. The inhabitants of the past know better than we do what it was like to live there, but they were not well placed, most of them, to understand what was happening to them and why."

"From the end of World War I until the middle of the middle of the 1970s, French public life was shaped and misshaped by three overlapping and intersecting forms of collective and individual irresponsibility. The first of these was political. Reading the history of interwar France, one is struck again and again by the incompetence, the insouciance and the culpable negligence of the men who governed the country and represented its citizens. This is not a political observation, in the partisan sense, but rather a cultural one."

"If the era of political irresponsibility in France lasted from 1918 to 1958, the age of moral irresponsibility may be said to have begun in the mid-thirties and endured for the best part of four decades."

"This book is about three Frenchmen who lived and wrote against the grain of these three ages of irresponsibility. They were very different men and would have been surprised to think of themselves as a group, yet they have something rather distinctive in common. All three played an important role in the France of their lifetime but lived at a slightly awkward tangent to their contemporaries. For much of his adult life each was an object of dislike, suspicion, contempt, or hatred for many of his peers and contemporaries; only at the end of their long lives were Léon Blum and Raymond Aron, for quite different reasons, able to relax into the comfort of near-universal admiration, respect, and, in some quarters, adulation. Camus, who had experienced all three by the age of thirty-five, died twelve years later an insecure and much-maligned figure; it would be thirty years before his reputation would recover."

"Europe is the smallest continent. It is not really even a continent—just a subcontinental annexe to Asia. The whole of Europe (excluding Russia and Turkey) comprises just five and a half million square kilometers: less than two thirds the area of Brazil, not much more than half the size of China or the US. It is dwarfed by Russia, which covers seventeen million square kilometers. But in the intensity of its internal differences and contrasts, Europe is unique."

"Europe is not re-entering its troubled wartime past—on the contrary, it is leaving it. Germany today, like the rest of Europe, is more conscious of its twentieth-century history than at any time in the past fifty years. But this does not mean that it is being drawn back into it. For that history never went away."

"Sixty years after Hitler's death, his war and its consequences are entering history. Postwar in Europe lasted a very long time, but it is finally coming to a close."

"It was in the Second World War, then, that the full force of the modern European state was mobilized for the first time, for the primary purpose of conquering and exploiting other Europeans."

"The war changed everything. East of the Elbe, the Soviets and their local representatives inherited a sub-continent where a radical break with the past had already taken place. What was not utterly discredited was irretrievably damaged. Exiled governments from Oslo, Brussels or the Hague could return from London and hope to take up the legitimate authority they had been forced to relinquish in 1940. But the old rulers of Bucharest and Sofia, Warsaw, Budapest and even Prague had no future: their world had been swept aside by the Nazis' transformative violence. It remained only to decide the political shape of the new order that must now replace the unrecoverable past."

"The two perspectives—doctrine and calculation—were not necessarily in conflict. Ulbricht and his colleagues certainly believed that the way to expunge Nazism from Germany was by effecting a socio-economic transformation: they were not particularly interested in individual responsibility or moral re-education. But they also understood that Nazism was not just a trick perpetrated on an innocent German proletariat."

"This distrust of short-term memory, the search for serviceable myths of anti-Fascism—for a Germany of anti-Nazis, a France of Resisters or a Poland of victims—was the most important invisible legacy of World War Two in Europe. In its positive form it facilitated national recovery by allowing men like Marshall Tito, Charles De Gaulle or Konrad Adenauer to offer their fellow countrymen a plausible and even prideful account of themselves. Even East Germany claimed a noble point of origin, an invented tradition: the fabled and largely fabricated Communist 'uprising' in Buchenwald in April 1945. Such accounts allowed countries that had suffered war passively, like the Netherlands, to set aside the record of their compromises, and those whose activism had proven misguided, like Croatia, to bury it in a blurred story of competing heroisms. Without such collective amnesia, Europe's astonishing post-war recovery would not have been possible. To be sure, much was put out of mind that would subsequently return in discomforting ways. But only much later would it become clear just how much post-war Europe rested on foundation myths that would fracture and shift with the passage of years. In the circumstances of 1945, in a continent covered with rubble, there was much to be gained by behaving as though the past was indeed dead and buried and a new age about to begin. The price paid was a certain amount of selective, collective forgetting, notably in Germany. But then, in Germany above all, there was much to forget."

"Fascism and war were thus the bridge linking heterodox, marginal and often controversial notions of economic planning with mainstream post-war economic policy. Yet this compromised heritage had little impact on planning's appeal— whatever its associations with far Right, far Left, occupation or war, planning was quite distinctly not associated with the discredited politics of the inter-war years, a point widely held in its favour. What planning was really about was faith in the state. In many countries this reflected a well-founded awareness, enhanced by the experience of war, that in the absence of any other agency of regulation or distribution, only the state now stood between the individual and destitution. But contemporary enthusiasm for an interventionist state went beyond desperation or self-interest."

"The economics of Planning drew directly upon the lessons of the 1930s—a successful strategy for post-war recovery must preclude any return to economic stagnation, depression, protectionism and above all unemployment. The same considerations lay behind the creation of the modern European welfare state. In the conventional wisdom of the 1940s, the political polarizations of the last inter-war decade were born directly of economic depression and its social costs."

"The post-1945 urge for change went well beyond the provision of welfare. The years following World War Two were a sort of foreshortened Age of Reform, during which many long-pressing problems were belatedly addressed. One of the most important of these was the matter of agrarian reform, which many well-informed contemporaries saw as Europe's most pressing dilemma."

"Statesmen whose experience reached back beyond the troubled inter-war decades to the more settled and self-confident era before 1914 thus had a particular attraction. In the continuity of their person they could facilitate a difficult transition from the over-heated politics of the recent past to a coming era of rapid social transformation. Whatever their party 'label', the elder statesmen of Europe were all, by 1945, skeptical, pragmatic practitioners of the art of the possible. This personal distance from the over-confident dogmas of inter-war politics faithfully reflected the mood of their constituents. A post-'ideological' age was beginning."

"The logic of the Marshall Plan required the lifting of all restrictions upon (West) German production and output, so that the country might once again make its crucial contribution to the European economy. Indeed, Secretary of State Marshall made clear from the outset that his Plan meant an end to French hopes of war reparations from Germany—the point, after all, was to develop and integrate Germany, not make of it a dependent pariah. But in order to avoid a tragic re-run of the events of the 1920s—in which frustrated efforts to extract war reparations from a prostrate Germany had led, as it seemed in retrospect, directly to French insecurity, German resentment and the rise of Hitler—it was clear to the Americans and their friends that the Marshall Plan would only work as part of a broader political settlement in which French and Germans alike could see real and lasting advantage. There was no mystery to this—a post-war settlement in Germany was the key to Europe's future, and this was as obvious in Moscow as it was in Paris, London or Washington. But the shape such a settlement should take was an altogether more contentious matter."

"In fact, Yalta left the truly important issue—arrangements for post-war Germany—off the table precisely because it was so important and intractable. And it is unlikely that the Western leaders could have got a better deal out of Stalin during these last months of the war, even if it had occurred to them to try."

"Thus the post-war Bretton Woods system did not come about all at once. The participants at Bretton Woods had anticipated universal international convertibility by the end of the 1940s, but their calculations did not allow for the political and economic consequences of the coming of the Cold War (or, indeed, of the Marshall Plan). Put differently, the high ideals of those setting out plans and institutions for a better international system presumed a stable era of international cooperation from which all would gain."

"Stalin himself was famously risk-averse, which is why some commentators then and since regretted the West's failure to exercise 'containment' sooner and further forward. But no-one wanted another war in these years, and whereas Stalin could readily be dissuaded from trying to destabilize Paris or Rome (since he had no armies there), the Soviet presence further east was a non-negotiable affair, as everyone recognized."

"It should be clear from this narrative that there is little to be gained from asking 'who started the Cold War?' To the extent that the Cold War was about Germany, the final outcome—a divided country—was probably preferred by all parties to a Germany united against them. No one planned this outcome in May 1945, but few were deeply discontented with it."

"Looking back, it is somewhat ironic that after fighting a murderous war to reduce the power of an over-mighty Germany at the heart of the European continent, the victors should have proven so unable to agree on post-war arrangements to keep the German colossus down that they ended up dividing it between them in order to benefit separately from its restored strength. It had become clear—first to the British, then to the Americans, belatedly to the French and finally to the Soviets— that the only way to keep Germany from being the problem was to change the terms of the debate and declare it the solution. This was uncomfortable, but it worked. In the words of Noel Annan, a British intelligence officer in occupied Germany, It was odious to find oneself in alliance with people who had been willing to go along with Hitler to keep Communism at bay. But the best hope for the West was to encourage the Germans themselves to create a Western democratic state."

"Stalin’s calculations were typically indifferent to national variety. Where Communists could reasonably hope to secure power by legal or ostensibly legal means this appears to have been Stalin’s preference, at least through the autumn of 1947. But the point was power, not legality, which is why Communists’ tactics became more confrontational and less embarrassed by judicial or political constraints, even at the cost of alienating foreign sympathy, once it was clear that electoral success would elude them."

"If Stalin engineered the Prague coup without fully anticipating these consequences, it was not just because he had always planned to enforce his writ in a certain way throughout the bloc. Nor was it because Czechoslovakia mattered much in the grand scheme of things. What happened in Prague—and what was happening at the same time in Germany, where Soviet policy was moving swiftly from stonewalling and disagreement to open confrontation with her former allies—was a return by Stalin to the style and strategy of an earlier era. This shift was driven in general terms by Stalin’s anxiety at his inability to shape European and German affairs as he wished; but also and above all by his growing irritation with Yugoslavia."

"To outside observers, Communism was a single political entity, shaped and run from the Moscow ‘Centre’. But from Stalin’s perspective matters were more complicated. From the late Twenties through to the outbreak of war, Moscow had indeed succeeded in imposing its control over the world Communist movement, except in China. But the war had changed everything. In its resistance against the Germans the Soviet Union had been forced to invoke patriotism, liberty, democracy and many other ‘bourgeois’ goals. Communism had lost its revolutionary edge and become, deliberately, part of a broad anti-Fascist coalition. This had been the tactic of the pre-war Popular Fronts too, of course, but in the Thirties Moscow had been able to keep tight control of its foreign parties—through financial aid, personal intervention and terror."

"Domestic politics in post-war Britain were taken up with matters of social justice and the institutional reforms it required. This was to a considerable degree the result of a cumulative failure on the part of previous governments to address social inequalities; the belated re-centering of debate around urgently needed public expenditure—on health, education, transport, housing, pensions and the like—seemed to many to constitute a well-earned reward for the country’s recent sacrifices. But it also meant that most British voters (and many British Members of Parliament) had absolutely no idea of how poor their country was and what it had cost them to win their epic struggle with Germany."

"What Stalin wanted in Europe above all, as we have seen, was security. But he was also interested in the economic benefits to be had from his victories in the West. The little states of central Europe, from Poland to Bulgaria, had lived under the shadow of German dominion long before World War Two: in the 1930s especially, Nazi Germany was their main trading partner and source of foreign capital. During the war this relationship had been simplified into one of master and slave, with Germany extracting for its war effort the maximum possible output from land and people. What happened after 1945 was that the Soviet Union took over, quite literally, where the Germans had left off, attaching eastern Europe to its own economy as a resource to be exploited at will."

"The Communist state was in a permanent condition of undeclared war against its own citizens. Like Lenin, Stalin understood the need for enemies, and it was in the logic of the Stalinist state that it was constantly mobilizing against its foes—external, but above all domestic."

"Instead, the imposition of a Russian rather than a German solution cut Europe’s vulnerable eastern half away from the body of the continent. At the time this was not a matter of great concern to western Europeans themselves. With the exception of the Germans, the nation most directly affected by the division of Europe but also ill-placed to voice displeasure at it, western Europeans were largely indifferent to the disappearance of eastern Europe. Indeed, they soon became so accustomed to it, and were anyway so preoccupied with the remarkable changes taking place in their own countries, that it seemed quite natural that there should be an impermeable armed barrier running from the Baltic to the Adriatic. But for the peoples to the east of that barrier, thrust back as it seemed into a grimy, forgotten corner of their own continent, at the mercy of a semi-alien Great Power no better off than they and parasitic upon their shrinking resources, history itself ground slowly to a halt."

"The intellectual condition of post-war Western Europe would have been unrecognizable to a visitor from even the quite recent past. German-speaking central Europe—the engine room of European culture for the first third of the twentieth century—had ceased to exist."

"At the core of anti-Fascist rhetoric as deployed by the official Left was a simple binary view of political allegiance: we are what they are not. They (the Fascists, Nazis, Franco-ists, Nationalists) are Right, we are Left. They are reactionary, we are Progressive. They stand for War, we stand for Peace. They are the forces of Evil, we are on the side of Good. In the words of Klaus Mann, in Paris in 1935: whatever Fascism is, we are not and we are against it. Since most of the anti-Fascists’ opponents made a point of defining their own politics as above all anti-Communist (this was part of Nazism’s wartime appeal to conservative elites in countries as far apart as Denmark and Romania), this tidy symmetry worked to the Communists’ polemical advantage. Philo-Communism, or at least anti-anti-Communism, was the logical essence of anti-Fascism."

"‘Anti-Fascism’, with its sub-text of resistance and alliance, was also related to the lingering favorable image of the wartime Soviet Union, the genuine sympathy that many Western Europeans felt for the heroic victors of Kursk and Stalingrad."

"Communism excited intellectuals in a way that neither Hitler nor (especially) liberal democracy could hope to match. Communism was exotic in locale and heroic in scale."

"This fear of serving anti-Soviet interests was not new. But by the early fifties it was a major calculation in European intellectual debates, above all in France."

"If the Left had the wind in its sails and History on its side, then a new generation of Right-wing literati would take pride in being defiant losers, turning the genuine decadence and death-seeking solipsism of inter-war writers like Drieu la Rochelle and Ernst Jünger into a social and sartorial style—thereby anticipating the ‘young fogeys’ of Mrs Thatcher’s Britain."

"Liberal intellectuals, then, whether of the continental persuasion like Aron or Luigi Einaudi, or in the British sense like Isaiah Berlin, were always distinctly more comfortable than most conservatives with the American connection that history had imposed upon them. The same was true, curious as it may seem, of Social Democrats. This was in part because the memory of FDR was still fresh, and many of the American diplomats and policy-makers with whom Europeans dealt in these years were New Dealers, who encouraged an active role for the state in economic and social policy and whose political sympathies fell to the left of center."

"In cultural matters, the Communists did not even need to take the initiative. Fear of American domination, of the loss of national autonomy and initiative, brought into the ‘progressive’ camp men and women of all political stripes and none."

"The Communists’ attitude towards their mass movements was strictly instrumental—the Peace Movement was only ever a vehicle for Soviet policy, which is why it suddenly adopted the theme of ‘peaceful co-existence’ in 1951, taking its cue from a shift in Stalin’s international strategy. Privately, Communists—especially in the eastern bloc—had little but scorn for the illusions of their fellow-travellers."

"The cultural competition of the early Cold War years was asymmetrical. Among European cultural elites there was still a widespread sentiment that they shared, across ideological divides and even bridging the Iron Curtain, a common culture to which America posed a threat. The French in particular took this line, echoing the early post-war efforts of their diplomats to trace an international policy independent of American control."

"Western Europeans owed their newfound well-being to the uncertainties of the Cold War. The internationalization of political confrontations, and the consequent engagement of the United States, helped draw the sting from domestic political conflicts."

"This paradox—that a peaceful European settlement was taking shape even as the two Great Powers of the day were arming themselves to the hilt and preparing for the eventuality of a thermonuclear war—was not so bizarre as it might appear. The growing emphasis in US and Soviet strategic thinking on nuclear weapons, and the intercontinental missiles with which to deliver them, released European states from the need to compete in an arena where they could not hope to match the resources of the superpowers, even though central Europe remained the most likely terrain over which any future war might be fought. For this reason, the Cold War in Western Europe was experienced quite differently in these years from the way it was felt in the United States, or indeed in the USSR."

"The outcome of the Berlin crisis showed that the two Great Powers had more in common than they sometimes appreciated. If Moscow undertook not to raise again the question of Allied status in Berlin, Washington would accept the reality of East German government there and would resist West German pressure for nuclear weapons. Both sides had an interest in stability in central Europe; but more to the point, the US and the USSR were both tired of responding to the demands and complaints of their respective German clients."

"In important respects Italy’s condition after the war stood comparison with that of Austria. Both countries had fought alongside Germany and had suffered accordingly after the war (Italy paid a total of $360 million in reparations to the Soviet Union, Greece, Yugoslavia, Albania and Ethiopia). Like Italy, Austria was a poor and unstable country whose post-war renaissance could hardly have been predicted from her recent past. The country’s two dominant political groupings had spent the inter-war years in bitter conflict. Most Austrian Social Democrats had regarded the emergence in 1918 of a truncated Austrian state out of the ruins of the Habsburg Empire as an economic and political nonsense. In their view the German-speaking remnant of the old Dual Monarchy ought logically to have joined its fellow Germans in an Anschluss (union), and would have done so had the self-determination clauses of the Versailles agreements been applied consistently."

"Internationally condemned after Hitler’s fall for blindly obeying immoral orders, Germans thus turned the defect of their industrious obedience into a national virtue. The shattering impact of their country’s total defeat and subsequent occupation made West Germans amenable to the imposition of democracy in a way that few could have imagined a decade earlier. In place of the ‘devotion for its rulers’ that Heine had first observed in the German people a century before, Germans in the nineteen-fifties attracted international respect for their similarly wholehearted devotion to efficiency, detail, and quality in the manufacture of finished products."

"No French government except Léon Blum’s short-lived Popular Front of 1936 paid serious attention to the grievous mis-rule practiced by colonial administrators in French North Africa. Moderate Algerian nationalists like Ferhat Abbas were well known to French politicians and intellectuals before and after World War Two, but no-one really expected Paris to concede their modest goals of self-government or ‘home rule’ any time soon."

"The ‘European project’, in so far as it ever existed outside the heads of a few idealists, had stalled by the mid-nineteen-fifties. The French National Assembly had vetoed the proposed European army, and with it any talk of enhanced European coordination. Various regional accords on the Benelux model had been reached—notably the Scandinavian ‘Common Nordic Labor Market’ in 1954—but nothing more ambitious was on the agenda. Advocates of European cooperation could point only to the new European Atomic Energy Community, announced in the spring of 1955; but this—like the Coal and Steel Community—was a French initiative and its success lay, symptomatically, in its narrow and largely technical mandate. If the British were still as skeptical as ever about the prospects for European unity, theirs was not an altogether unreasonable view."

"The resulting ‘goulash Communism’ secured the stability of Hungary; and the memory of Hungary ensured the stability of the rest of the Bloc, at least for the next decade. But this came at a cost. For most people living under Communism, the ‘Socialist’ system had lost whatever radical, forward-looking, utopian promise once attached to it, and which had been part of its appeal—especially to the young—as recently as the early fifties. It was now just a way of life to be endured. That did not mean it could not last a very long time—few after 1956 anticipated an early end to the Soviet system of rule. Indeed, there had been rather more optimism on that score before the events of that year. But after November 1956 the Communist states of Eastern Europe, like the Soviet Union itself, began their descent into a decades-long twilight of stagnation, corruption and cynicism. The Soviets too would pay a price for this—in many ways, 1956 represented the defeat and collapse of the revolutionary myth so successfully cultivated by Lenin and his heirs."

"The economic history of post-war western Europe is best understood as an inversion of the story of the immediately preceding decades. The 1930s Malthusian emphasis on protection and retrenchment was abandoned in favor of liberalized trade. Instead of cutting their expenditure and budgets, governments increased them. Almost everywhere there was a sustained commitment to long-term public and private investment in infrastructure and machinery; older factories and equipment were updated or replaced, with attendant gains in efficiency and productivity; there was a marked increase in international trade; and an employed and youthful population demanded and could afford an expanding range of goods. The post-war economic ‘boom’ differed slightly in its timing from place to place, coming first to Germany and Britain and only a little later to France and Italy; and it was experienced differently according to national variations in taxation, public expenditure or investment emphasis. The initial outlays of most post-war governments went above all on infrastructure modernization—the building or upgrading of roads, railways, houses and factories. Consumer spending in some countries was deliberately held back, with the result—as we have seen—that many people experienced the first post-war years as a time of continuing, if modified, penury. The degree of relative change also depended, of course, on the point of departure: the wealthier the country, the less immediate and dramatic it seemed."

"The 1960s saw the apogee of the European state. The relation of the citizen to the state in Western Europe in the course of the previous century had been a shifting compromise between military needs and political claims: the modern rights of newly enfranchised citizens offset by older obligations to defend the realm. But since 1945 that relationship had come increasingly to be characterised by a dense tissue of social benefits and economic strategies in which it was the state that served its subjects, rather than the other way around."

"The rise in the influence of the state upon the employment and welfare of its citizens was accompanied by a steady reduction in its authority over their morals and opinions. At the time this was not seen as a paradox. Liberal and Social Democratic advocates for the European welfare state saw no reason in principle why government should not pay close attention to the economic or medical welfare of the population, guaranteeing citizens’ well-being from cradle to grave, while keeping its nose firmly out of their views and practices on strictly personal matters like religion and sex, or artistic taste and judgement. The Christian Democrats of Germany or Italy, for whom the state still had a legitimate interest in the manners and mores of its subjects, could not so readily make this distinction. But they too faced growing pressure to adapt."

"The diminishing standing of public authorities in matters of morality and personal relationships in no way supposed a decline in the role of the state in the cultural affairs of the nation. Quite the contrary. The broad Western European consensus of the age held that only the state had the resources to service the cultural needs of its citizens: left to themselves, individuals and communities would lack both means and initiative. It was the responsibility of a well-run public authority to deliver cultural nourishment no less than food, lodging and employment. In such matters Social and Christian Democrats thought alike, and both were heir to the great Victorian-era improvers, though with far greater resources to hand. The aesthetic revolt of the Sixties changed little in this respect: the new (‘counter-’) culture demanded and obtained the same funding as the old."

"Moments of great cultural significance are often appreciated only in retrospect. The Sixties were different: the transcendent importance contemporaries attached to their own times—and their own selves—was one of the special features of the age."

"But it is symptomatic of the fundamentally apolitical mood of May 1968 that the best-selling French books on the subject a generation later are not serious works of historical analysis, much less the earnest doctrinal tracts of the time, but collections of contemporary graffiti and slogans. Culled from the walls, noticeboards and streets of the city, these witty one-liners encourage young people to make love, have fun, mock those in authority, generally do what feels good—and change the world almost as a by-product."

"It was one of the self-delusions of the age that the Sixties were an era of heightened political consciousness. ‘Everyone’ (or at least everyone under twenty-five attending an educational establishment and drawn to radical ideas) was in the streets and mobilized for a cause. The deflation of the causes—and the demobilization of the coming decades—thus confers in retrospect an air of failure upon a decade of frenetic political activity. But in certain important respects the Sixties were actually a vital decade for the opposite reason: they were the moment when Europeans in both halves of the continent began their definitive turn away from ideological politics. Thus the slogans and projects of the Sixties’ generation, far from re-awakening a revolutionary tradition whose language and symbols they so energetically sought to reinvigorate, can be seen in hindsight to have served as its swansong. In Eastern Europe, the ‘revisionist’ interlude and its tragic dénouement saw off the last illusions of Marxism as a practice. In the West, Marxist and para-Marxist theories soared clear of any relationship to local reality, disqualifying themselves from any future role in serious public debate. In 1945 the radical Right had discredited itself as a legitimate vehicle for political expression. By 1970, the radical Left was set fair to emulate it. A 180-year cycle of ideological politics in Europe was drawing to a close."

"One immediate result of the economic down-turn was a hardening of attitudes towards ‘foreign’ workers of all sorts. If published unemployment rates in West Germany (close to zero in 1970) did not climb above 8 percent of the labor force despite a slump in demand for manufactured goods, it was because most of the unemployed workers in Germany were not German—and thus not officially recorded."

"In the past, the social cost of economic change on this scale, and at this pace, would have been traumatic, with unpredictable political consequences. Thanks to the institutions of the welfare state—and perhaps the diminished political enthusiasms of the time—protest was contained. But it was far from absent. In the years 1969-1975 there were angry marches, sit-ins, strikes and petitions all across industrial Western Europe, from Spain (where 1.5 million days were lost to industrial strikes in the years 1973-75) to Britain, where two major strikes by coalminers—in 1972 and 1974—persuaded a nervous Conservative government that it might be the better part of valor to postpone major mine closures for a few more years, even at the cost of further subsidies charged to the population at large."

"The greatest beneficiaries of the modern welfare state, after all, were the middle classes."

"If one strand in the heritage of the Sixties was high-cultural pretension, the other, its intimate inversion, was a hardening crust of knowing cynicism. The relative innocence of rock and roll was increasingly displaced by media-wise pop bands whose stock in trade was a derisive appropriation and degradation of the style forged by their immediate precursors. Much as popular romances and tabloid journalism had once fastened on to mass literacy for commercial advantage, so ‘punk’ rock appeared in the Seventies in order to exploit the market for popular music. Presented as ‘counter-cultural’ it was in fact parasitic upon mainstream culture, invoking violent images and radical language for frequently mercenary ends."

"The longevity of Europe’s political parties derived from a remarkable continuity in the ecology of the electorate. The choice between Labour and Conservatives in Britain, or Social Democrats and Christian Democrats in West Germany, no longer reflected deep divisions over particular policies, much less profound ‘lifestyle’ preferences as they would come to be known. In most places it was an echo of longstanding, trans-generational voting habits, determined by the class, religion or locality of the voter rather than by the party’s program. Men and women voted as their parents had voted, depending on where they lived, where they worked and what they earned."

"Eurocommunism was thus a contradiction in terms, despite the best efforts of its spokesmen."

"In the short run the Soviet authorities and their colleagues in eastern Europe could certainly suppress easily enough any voices raised on behalf of individual or collective rights: in 1977 the leaders of a Ukrainian ‘Helsinki Rights’ group were arrested and sentenced to terms ranging from three to fifteen years. But the very emphasis that Communist leaders had placed upon ‘Helsinki’ as the source of their regimes’ international legitimacy would now come to haunt them: by invoking Moscow’s own recent commitments, critics (at home and abroad) could now bring public pressure to bear on the Soviet regimes. Against this sort of opposition, violent repression was not just ineffective but, to the extent that it was public knowledge, self-defeating. Hoist by the petard of their own cynicism, Leonid Brezhnev and his colleagues had inadvertently opened a breach in their own defenses. Against all expectation, it was to prove mortal."

"The democratic transition of Mediterranean Europe was quite the most remarkable and unexpected development of the age."

"‘Europe’, in short, was coming to represent a significant ‘moral hazard’, as its carping critics, in Britain in particular, gleefully insisted. The decades-long drive to overcome continental disunity by purely technical measures was looking decidedly political, while lacking the redeeming legitimacy of a traditional political project pursued by an elected class of familiar politicians. Insofar as ‘Europe’ had a distinctive goal, its economic strategy was still grounded in the calculations and ambitions of the Fifties. As for its politics: the confident, interventionist tone of pronouncements from the European Commission—and the authority and open chequebooks with which European experts descended on distant regions—bespoke a style of government rooted firmly in the social-democratic heyday of the early Sixties."

"Every politically significant revolution is anticipated by a transformation of the intellectual landscape. The European upheavals of the 1980s were no exception. The economic crisis of the early Seventies undermined the optimism of Western Europe’s post-war decades, fracturing conventional political parties and propelling unfamiliar issues to the center of public debate. Political argument on both sides of the Cold War divide was breaking decisively with decades of encrusted mental habits—and, with unexpected speed, forming new ones. For better and for worse, a new realism was being born."

"Economic liberalization did not signal the fall of the welfare state, nor even its terminal decline, notwithstanding the hopes of its theorists. It did, though, illustrate a seismic shift in the allocation of resources and initiative from public to private sectors. This change went far beyond the technical question of who owned which factories, or how much regulation there was to be in any given industry. For nearly half a century Europeans had watched the state, and public authorities, play a steadily more prominent part in their affairs. This process had become so commonplace that the premise behind it—that the activist state was a necessary condition of economic growth and social amelioration—was largely taken for granted. Without the cumulative unraveling of this assumption in the course of the waning decades of the century, neither Thatcherism nor the Mitterrand volte-face would have been possible."

"Behind the long ‘Social-Democratic moment’ in Western Europe there had lain not just pragmatic faith in the public sector, or allegiance to Keynesian economic principles, but a sense of the shape of the age that influenced and for many decades stifled even its would-be critics."

"Lenin’s distinctive contribution to European history had been to kidnap the centrifugal political heritage of European radicalism and channel it into power through an innovative system of monopolized control: unhesitatingly gathered and forcefully retained in one place. The Communist system might corrode indefinitely at the periphery; but the initiative for its final collapse could only come from the centre. In the story of Communism’s demise, the remarkable flowering in Prague or Warsaw of a new kind of opposition was only the end of the beginning. The emergence of a new kind of leadership in Moscow itself, however, was to be the beginning of the end."

"Gorbachev did more than just let the colonies go. By indicating that he would not intervene he decisively undermined the only real source of political legitimacy available to the rulers of the satellite states: the promise (or threat) of military intervention from Moscow. Without that threat the local regimes were politically naked. Economically they might have struggled for a few more years, but there, too, the logic of Soviet retreat was implacable: once Moscow started charging world market prices for its exports to Comecon countries (as it did in 1990) the latter, heavily dependent on imperial subsidies, would have collapsed in any event. As this last example suggests, Gorbachev was letting Communism fall in eastern Europe in order to save it in Russia itself—just as Stalin had built the satellite regimes not for their own sake but as a security for his western frontier. Tactically Gorbachev miscalculated badly—within two years the lessons of Eastern Europe would be used against the region’s liberator on his home territory. But strategically his achievement was immense and unprecedented. No other territorial empire in recorded history ever abandoned its dominions so rapidly, with such good grace and so little bloodshed. Gorbachev cannot take direct credit for what happened in 1989—he did not plan it and only hazily grasped its long-term import. But he was the permissive and precipitating cause. It was Mr Gorbachev’s revolution."

"The American President’s publicly-aired caution is a further salutary reminder of the limited part played by the USA in these developments. Pace the self-congratulatory narrative that has entered the American public record, Washington did not ‘bring down’ Communism—Communism imploded of its own accord."

"But this still left unresolved two much harder dilemmas. What should be done with former Communist Party members and police officials? If they were not accused of specific crimes, then should they suffer any punishment at all for their past acts? Should they be allowed to participate in public life—as policemen, politicians, even prime ministers? Why not? After all, many of them had cooperated actively in the dismantling of their own regime. But if not, if there were to be restrictions placed on the civic or political rights of such people, then how long should such restrictions apply and how far down the old nomenklatura should they reach? These questions were broadly comparable to those faced by Allied occupiers of post-war Germany trying to apply their program of de-Nazification—except that after 1989 the decisions were being taken not by an army of occupation but by the parties directly concerned."

"Uncontentious decisions were typically made in Brussels by experts and civil servants. Policies likely to affect significant electoral constituencies or national interests were hammered out in the Council of Ministers and produced complicated compromises or else expensive deals. Whatever could not be resolved or agreed was simply left in abeyance. The dominant member states—Britain, Germany and above all France—could not always count on getting what they wanted; but whatever they truly did not want did not come to pass."

"Europeans may have lost faith in their politicians, but at the core of the European system of government there is something that even the most radical anti-system parties have not dared to attack head on and which continues to attract near-universal allegiance. That something is certainly not the European Union, for all its manifold merits. It is not democracy: too abstract, too nebulous and perhaps too often invoked to stand in isolation as an object for admiration. Nor is it freedom or the rule of law—not seriously threatened in the West for many decades and already taken for granted by a younger generation of Europeans in all the member states of the EU. What binds Europeans together, even when they are deeply critical of some aspect or other of its practical workings, is what it has become conventional to call—in disjunctive but revealing contrast with ‘the American way of life’—the ‘European model of society’."

"That history should have weighed so heavily upon European affairs at the start of the twenty-first century was ironic, considering how lightly it lay upon the shoulders of contemporary Europeans. The problem was not so much education—the teaching or mis-teaching of history in schools, though in some parts of southeastern Europe this too was a source of concern—as the public uses to which the past was now put. In authoritarian societies, of course, this was an old story; but Europe, by its self-definition, was post-authoritarian. Governments no longer exercised a monopoly over knowledge and history could not readily be altered for political convenience."

"In contrast to the United States, which continued to treat ‘Islam’ and Muslims as a distant challenge, alien and hostile, best addressed by heightened security and ‘pre-emptive war’, Europe’s governments had good reason to see the matter very differently. In France especially, the crisis in the Middle East was no longer a matter of foreign policy: it had become a domestic problem. The transmigration of passions and frustrations from persecuted Arabs in Palestine to their angry, dispirited brethren in Paris should not have come as a surprise—it was, after all, another legacy of empire."

"But the Derrida-Habermas initiative, even though it articulated sentiments shared by many Europeans, passed virtually unnoticed. It was not reported as news, nor was it quoted by sympathizers. No-one implored its authors to take up their pens and lead the way forward. The governments of a significant number of European states, including France, Germany, Belgium and later Spain, undoubtedly sympathized in general terms with the views expressed in these essays; but it did not occur to any of them to invite Professors Derrida or Eco in for consultation. The whole project sputtered out. One hundred years after the Dreyfus Affair, fifty years after the apotheosis of Jean-Paul Sartre, Europe’s leading intellectuals had thrown a petition—and no-one came."

"Something is profoundly wrong with the way we live today. For thirty years we have made a virtue out of the pursuit of material self-interest: indeed, this very pursuit now constitutes whatever remains of our sense of collective purpose. We know what things cost but have no idea what they are worth. We no longer ask of a judicial ruling or a legislative act: is it good? Is it fair? Is it just? Is it right? Will it help bring about a better society or a better world? Those used to be the political questions, even if they invited no easy answers. We must learn once again to pose them."

"We have entered an age of insecurity—economic insecurity, physical insecurity, political insecurity. The fact that we are largely unaware of this is small comfort: few in 1914 predicted the utter collapse of their world and the economic and political catastrophes that followed. Insecurity breeds fear. And fear—fear of change, fear of decline, fear of strangers and an unfamiliar world—is corroding the trust and interdependence on which civil societies rest."

"All change is disruptive. We have seen that the specter of terrorism is enough to cast stable democracies into turmoil. Climate change will have even more dramatic consequences. Men and women will be thrown back upon the resources of the state. They will look to their political leaders and representatives to protect them: open societies will once again be urged to close in upon themselves, sacrificing freedom for ‘security’. The choice will no longer be between the state and the market, but between two sorts of state. It is thus incumbent upon us to re-conceive the role of government. If we do not, others will."

"Inequality is corrosive. It rots societies from within. The impact of material differences takes a while to show up: but in due course competition for status and goods increases; people feel a growing sense of superiority (or inferiority) based on their possessions; prejudice towards those on the lower ranks of the social ladder hardens; crime spikes and the pathologies of social disadvantage become ever more marked. The legacy of unregulated wealth creation is bitter indeed."

"The ‘false precision’ of which Maynard Keynes accused his economist critics is with us still. Worse: we have smuggled in a misleadingly ‘ethical’ vocabulary to bolster our economic arguments, furnishing us with a self-satisfied gloss upon crassly utilitarian calculations. When imposing welfare cuts on the poor, for example, legislators in the UK and US alike have taken a singular pride in the ‘hard choices’ they have had to make."

"The past was neither as good nor as bad as we suppose: it was just different. If we tell ourselves nostalgic stories, we shall never engage the problems that face us in the present—and the same is true if we fondly suppose that our own world is better in every way. The past really is another country: we cannot go back. However, there is something worse than idealizing the past—or presenting it to ourselves and our children as a chamber of horrors: forgetting it."

"What did trust, cooperation, progressive taxation and the interventionist state bequeath to western societies in the decades following 1945? The short answer is, in varying degrees, security, prosperity, social services and greater equality. We have grown accustomed in recent years to the assertion that the price paid for these benefits—in economic inefficiency, insufficient innovation, stifled entrepreneurship, public debt and a loss of private initiative—was too high. Most of these criticisms are demonstrably false."

"We no longer have political movements. While thousands of us may come together for a rally or march, we are bound together on such occasions by a single shared interest. Any effort to convert such interests into collective goals is usually undermined by the fragmented individualism of our concerns. Laudable goals—fighting climate change, opposing war, advocating public healthcare or penalizing bankers—are united by nothing more than the expression of emotion. In our political as in our economic lives, we have become consumers: choosing from a broad gamut of competing objectives, we find it hard to imagine ways or reasons to combine these into a coherent whole. We must do better than this."

"Unfortunately, pragmatism is not always good politics. The greatest asset of mid-20th century social democracy—its willingness to compromise its own core beliefs in the name of balance, tolerance, fairness and freedom—now looks more like weakness: a loss of nerve in the face of changed circumstances. We find it hard to look past those compromises to recall the qualities that informed progressive thought in the first place: what the early 20th century syndicalist Edouard Berth termed “a revolt of the spirit against . . . a world in which man was threatened by a monstrous moral and metaphysical materialism”."

"We face today two practical dilemmas. The first can be succinctly described as the return of the ‘social question’. For Victorian reformers—or American activists of the pre-1914 age of reform—the challenge posed by the social question of their time was straightforward: how was a liberal society to respond to the poverty, overcrowding, dirt, malnutrition and ill health of the new industrial cities? How were the working masses to be brought into the community—as voters, as citizens, as participants—without upheaval, protest and even revolution? What should be done to alleviate the suffering and injustices to which the urban working masses were now exposed and how was the ruling elite of the day to be brought to see the need for change? The history of the 20th century West is in large measure the history of efforts to answer these questions. The responses proved spectacularly successful: not only was revolution avoided but the industrial proletariat was integrated to a remarkable degree. Only in countries where any liberal reform was prevented by authoritarian rulers did the social question rephrase itself as a political challenge, typically ending in violent confrontation. In the middle of the 19th century, sharp-eyed observers like Karl Marx had taken it for granted that the only way the inequities of industrial capitalism could be overcome was by revolution. The idea that they could be dissolved peacefully into New Deals, Great Societies and welfare states simply never would have occurred to him."

"Political skepticism is the source of so many of our dilemmas. Even if free markets worked as advertised, it would be hard to claim that they constituted a sufficient basis for the well-lived life. So what precisely is it that we find lacking in unrestrained financial capitalism, or ‘commercial society’ as the 18th century had it? What do we find instinctively amiss in our present arrangements and what can we do about them? What is it that offends our sense of propriety when faced with unfettered lobbying by the wealthy at the expense of everyone else? What have we lost? We are all children of the Greeks. We intuitively grasp the need for a sense of moral direction: it is not necessary to be familiar with Socrates to feel that the unexamined life is not worth much. Natural Aristotelians, we assume that a just society is one in which justice is habitually practiced; a good society one in which people behave well. But in order for such an implicitly circular account to convince, we need to agree on the meaning of ‘just’ or ‘well’."

"The case for reviving the state does not rest uniquely upon its contributions to modern society as a collective project; there is a more urgent consideration. We have entered an age of fear. Insecurity is once again an active ingredient of political life in Western democracies. Insecurity born of terrorism, of course; but also, and more insidiously, fear of the uncontrollable speed of change, fear of the loss of employment, fear of losing ground to others in an increasingly unequal distribution of resources, fear of losing control of the circumstances and routines of our daily life. And, perhaps above all, fear that it is not just we who can no longer shape our lives but that those in authority have also lost control, to forces beyond their reach."

"It would seem to follow that the ‘invisible hand’ is not much help when it comes to practical legislation. There are too many areas of life where we cannot be relied upon to advance our collective interests merely by doing what we think is best for each of us. Today, when the market and the free play of private interests so obviously do not come together to collective advantage, we need to know when to intervene."

"Even in Scandinavia, where social democratic institutions were far more culturally ingrained, membership of the EU—or even just participation in the World Trade Organization and other international agencies—appeared to constrain locally-initiated legislation. In short, social democracy seemed doomed by that same internationalization which its early theorists had so enthusiastically adumbrated as the future of capitalism. From this perspective, social democracy—like liberalism—was a byproduct of the rise of the European nation-state: a political idea keyed to the social challenges of industrialization in developed societies. Not only was there no ‘socialism’ in America, but social democracy as a working compromise between radical goals and liberal traditions lacked widespread support in any other continent. There was no shortage of enthusiasm for revolutionary socialism in much of the non-Western world, but the distinctively European compromise did not export well."

"In writing this book, I hope I have offered some guidance to those—the young especially—trying to articulate their objections to our way of life. However, this is not enough. As citizens of a free society, we have a duty to look critically at our world. But if we think we know what is wrong, we must act upon that knowledge. Philosophers, it was famously observed, have hitherto only interpreted the world in various ways; the point is to change it."

"In some sense it is my story, too. I grew up and read and became a historian and, I like to think, an intellectual. The Jewish question was never at the center of my own intellectual life, or indeed my historical work. But it intrudes, inevitably, and with ever greater force. One of the aims of this book is to allow such themes to encounter each other, to permit the intellectual history of the twentieth century to meet the history of the Jews. This is a personal as well as a scholarly effort: after all, many of us who have, in our work, kept these themes distinct are ourselves Jews."

"The two decades following the end of the late-nineteenth century economic depression were the first great age of globalization; the world economy was truly becoming integrated in just the ways Keynes suggested. For precisely this reason, the scale of the collapse during and after the First World War and the rate at which economies contracted between the wars is difficult for us to appreciate even now. Passports were introduced; the gold standard returned (in 1925 in the British case, reinstated by Chancellor of the Exchequer Winston Churchill over Keynes’s objections); currencies collapsed; trade declined."

"The three quarters of century that followed Austria’s collapse in the 1930s can be seen as a duel between Keynes and Hayek. Keynes, as I was saying, begins with the observation that under conditions of economic uncertainty we would be imprudent to assume stable outcomes and therefore had better devise ways to intervene in order to bring these about. Hayek, writing quite consciously against Keynes and from the Austrian experience, argues in the The Road to Serfdom that intervention—planning, however benevolent or well-intentioned and whatever the political context—must end badly. His book was published in 1945 and is most remarkable for its prediction that the post–World War II British welfare state already in the making should anticipate a fate similar to that of the socialist experiment in post-1918 Vienna. Starting with socialist planning, you would end with Hitler or a comparable successor. For Hayek, in short, the lesson of Austria and indeed the disaster of interwar Europe at large boiled down to this: don’t intervene, and don’t plan. Planning hands the initiative to those who would, in the end, destroy society (and the economy) to the benefit of the state. Three quarters of a century later, this remains for many people (especially here in the U.S.) the salient moral lesson of the twentieth century."

"“Telling the truth”—which for so long was itself a problematic exercise thanks to competing “truths” and the cost of airing them publicly—now became a virtue in itself. And the bigger the truth you have to tell, the greater your claim upon the attention of fellow citizens and sympathetic observers. Thus, despite the obvious risk of appearing to compete with the ultimate truth of Jewish genocide, speaking openly about hitherto uncomfortable episodes in the recent German past opens the possibility of encouraging the telling of many stories."

"Perhaps the real difficulty facing anyone seeking intellectuals at the highest political levels in England is that the intellectual agenda which drove ideologically-configured political movements in continental Europe was quite absent in London."

"So I certainly don’t regard myself as brave. I just see myself—if I want to indulge a little immodesty—as rather more honest and outspoken than some other people I know."

"As right-wing politicians and pundits call us stooges for Osama bin Laden, Tony Judt charges, in a widely discussed and heatedly debated essay in the London Review of Books, that American liberals -- without distinction -- have "acquiesced in President Bush's catastrophic foreign policy." Both claims are nonsense on stilts.Clearly this is a moment for liberals to define ourselves. The important truth is that most liberals, including the undersigned, have stayed our course throughout these grim five years. We have consistently and publicly repudiated the ruinous policies of the Bush administration, and our diagnosis, alas, has been vindicated by events. The Bush debacle is a direct consequence of its repudiation of liberal principles. And if the country is to recover, we should begin by restating these principles."

"Judt is at least clear about what our priorities should be. They are quite simply the traditional goals of social democracy: a pragmatic balance of freedom and fairness, of individual liberty and social cohesion. [...] Social democrats need to remember how they used to measure efficiency not only by means of spreadsheets, but in social result.These solutions are painted with the same broad brush that Judt often wields throughout the book. This sweep is the book’s strength and weakness. We need thinkers to stand back and capture the big picture. But real change requires hundreds of piecemeal, practical changes. That is not to diminish the importance of panoramic visions. Obama’s crusading “yes we can” seems a thousand miles from the tortuous negotiations behind the eventual passing of the healthcare bill. But without his campaign’s clear purpose and simple message, the bill would never have even got before Congress. Judt’s impassioned, often angry polemic is likewise sorely needed, but much more sober, practical thinking is needed too, if the land is to fare better."

"Judt never explained why postwar French thought and especially ’68-era theory “proved irresistibly appealing to a new generation.” Not without a certain charm, he was stubbornly out of touch with intellectual developments that “bored” him. One can understand what seemed to him so maddening, for instance, about Althusserian “theoretical practice.” By the same token, however, it was Judt’s failing not to understand why such a concept might appeal to some of us growing up in the shadow of the sixties and coming of age within the constricted political possibilities of the fin de siècle. To speak for myself, academic research, especially the intellectual history of France, has in part seemed worthwhile precisely because of the imaginative, unbound, and even critical possibilities such thinking affords. May 1968 and French theory are obviously not more important than the Prague Spring or the critique of fellow traveling, but Judt did a disservice to historical understanding through his consistent dismissal of the former. If in the end one ought to be entirely sympathetic to his criticisms of the insularity, pettiness, and narrowness of intellectuals in France, French intellectual history nevertheless involves much more than silly people saying silly things. The understanding of French intellectual life is not furthered by the assertion that significant strains of it are not worth appreciating."

"The most striking thing about Judt's narrative is his essentially amoral view of history. That isn't to say Judt is amoral as a writer. He certainly is not. But he doesn't believe in history has a necessary trajectory, nor does he much care about narratives of inevitable progress. Europe was wrecked after the War. French opinion polls in 1946 list "food," "bread," and "meat" as the public's main concerns. In the East, bad harvests and droughts brought back reports of cannibalism."

"Judt’s essays become both more important and more troubling for being brought together in one volume. The publication of Reappraisals certainly confirms, were any confirmation still needed, his standing as a significant figure in the public intellectual life of the contemporary United States. I salute the range, the command, and the courage displayed in his writing. But spending a prolonged spell in his literary company also leaves me feeling a bit uncomfortable. I feel that I would be forced into banging the table in my turn if I wanted to enter the conversations whose terms he partly sets. We need historians to play the role that Judt so ably does, but perhaps we need them also to be a bit less at ease with that role. The best works of history rarely yield unambiguous support to any political cause or affiliation, and we look to the vocabulary, register, and cadence of good historical writing to communicate that chastened sense of complexity which otherwise can struggle to get itself heard in public debate. That’s not everything, of course. But it’s not ‘nothing’, either."

"He is cranky, unfair to his intellectual opponents, and he repeatedly misrepresents thinkers such as Hayek on some fairly simple points. He conducts unsubstantiated attacks on various New York Times columnists, as if they had once beaten him in a debate and this was his revenge."

"It is unclear why Tony Judt hates Clinton so much--Bill Clinton was, I think, (except for that big problem with the zipper) the best president America has had since Truman (or maybe Eisenhower), and the most liberal president America has had since LBJ. But hate Bill Clinton Tony Judt does. And that, I think, is the source of the energy behind his massive misreading of Reich."

"To my knowledge, but I don't know everything and it is not too late, Professor Judt has not yet acknowledged publicly that he did not tell the truth. You will have noticed that, in speaking of the contre-vérité of his article, I never said that Professor Judt had lied. Everything that is false cannot be imputed to a lie. The lie is not an error. Already Plato and Augustine insisted on this in unison. If the concept of lie has some resistant specificity, it must be rigorously distinguished from error, from ignorance, from prejudice, from faulty reasoning, and even from failure in the realm of knowledge or still again-and this is where things will soon have to get more complicated for us-from failure in the realm of action, practice, or technique. If the lie is neither the failure of knowledge and knowhow, nor error, if it implies ill will or bad faith in the order of moral reason, not of practice but of pure practical reason, if it addresses belief rather than knowledge, then the project of a history of the lie should not resemble in the least what could be called, following Nietzsche in The Twilight of the Idols, the history of an error [Geschichte eines Irrtums]."

"His style is temperate rather than polemical, allusive rather than dogmatic. He is not easy to pin down. I suspect that, like Michael Oakeshott, he does not believe in conclusions, preferring conversation to meander according to the quality of those taking part. The reader is left with impressions and suggestions, jostling each other for attention. He avoids the catcalls and blazing generalities that pass for debate in today’s cyber world."

"Even when he is wrong, however, Judt writes with fearless integrity and moral seriousness. Like Raymond Aron, the subtle and relentless French polemicist whose spirit breathes through these pages, Judt is a liberal thinker dedicated to demystifying liberal illusions."

"Postwar tells the story of how that happened. The book is ambitiously organized to combine the whole of the postwar history of Europe—Western and Eastern—into a single conceptual framework. The result is not a work of dispassionate scholarship. In the preface, Judt describes his approach as an "avowedly personal interpretation" of the recent European past. "In a word that has acquired undeservedly pejorative connotations," he writes, Postwar is "opinionated." Judt's thesis, developed through 900 pages, is this: Europe remade itself by forgetting its past. "The first postwar Europe was built upon deliberate mis-memory—upon forgetting as a way of life." And there was much to forget: collaboration, genocide, extreme deprivation."

"One of these pasts is the lost role of the public intellectual: well-informed but willing to range beyond the ghetto of expertise—who doesn’t just observe but also tries to intervene or provoke. The economic background to Ill Fares the Land might be incomplete but the reappraising anger is just. Tony’s willingness to take on this topic—to use his fast-depleting energies on this particular stage at this particular time—is yet another dramatic intervention, combining a personal voice with a knowledge of history and sense of occasion in a way that is both responsive and responsible, timely and moral."

"In his quest for a perfect past and a morally responsible world, Judt himself draws a veil over the many imperfect perceptions and judgments that led these historical actors to make the choices they did in an atmosphere that was decidedly less clear than he allows. Perhaps the emphasis on clarity in the past demonstrates Judt’s desire for greater clarity in the present, as Past Imperfect has been described as the “hinge” between Judt’s life as a historian of France and a public intellectual. But the past is always imperfect as is our present, and it is the historian’s burden of responsibility to uncover the past’s imperfections, not to veil them."

"What struck me as I was reading Judt’s reflections on Sartre, Camus, Kolakowski, Hobsbawm, Koestler etc., most of which obviously have to do with Communism and Marxism, are two things. First, they were discussions of ideas where people (“real people”) have almost no place, and second, their discussion, so anachronistically placed around the events in the 1930s or 1940s, has very scant real-life resonance to somebody who lived under Communism in the 1970s and 1980s (like me) and obviously even less to anyone today. It occurred to me that practically no one of these people (Kolakowski obviously excepted) lived under Communism and for them the Cold War battles were waged in New York and Paris. Moreover, they were waged around the issues that were of almost total irrelevance to the “real people” in Eastern Europe. In some sense, these “battles” replicated Lenin without Leninism: primacy of ideology, disregard of real life."

"Judt’s very narrow focus on Western Europe, plus Poland, makes him not realize how politically parochial he can be at times. In an otherwise nice essay on Romania (a bit unusual given the geographically constrained topics of the book), Judt reports, with apparent disapproval, how a listener in a Romanian town asked him whether European Union should be limited only to Christian nations (p. 258). The question is supposed to illustrate the “nativism” of the Balkan man. Judt finds the idea abhorrent. But only five pages later (p. 263), Judt mentions how Bucharest, being “Balkanic” and “Byzantine” (as opposed to Central European cities) somehow rules the country out from the membership in Europe. Thus, in the span of five pages, we move from a seeming (skin-deep?) cosmopolitan inclusiveness to cultural nativism. There are many similar contradictions, rather bizarrely displaying the prejudices of the author—the very same prejudices that, when political correctness lights are “on”, he rejects in other, less enlightened, individuals."

"The excellence of “Postwar” was no doubt hard to achieve—Judt says that he began planning the book in 1989—but it is easy to describe. The writing is vivid; the coverage—of little countries as well as of great ones—is virtually superhuman; and, above all, the book is smart. Every page contains unexpected data, or a fresh observation, or a familiar observation freshly turned. And there are more than eight hundred pages."

"“Postwar” is first-rate political, economic, and social history. The only sections that are unworthy of the author’s talents are the brief ventures into intellectual history, and the proverbial British prudishness about abstract ideas may have something to do with this. As a reference to the philosopher Jacques Derrida as “the literary critic Jacques Derrida” suggests, Judt has no patience for Continental thought, whose prominence, such as it was, he tends to attribute to a combination of fashionableness and ambition."

"Judt is so suspicious of intellectualism that at one point he suggests that the British are immune to it. “The species has always been uncommon in Britain,” he says of the public intellectual. This is almost comical. What about, in the period covered in Judt’s own book, Bertrand Russell, C. P. Snow, and the man who was arguably the most influential public intellectual of the Cold War era, George Orwell?"

"The conversion of Tony Judt has been less radical but more interesting. He made his name excoriating French left-wing intellectuals for their failure to champion rights–a failure he saw as rooted in their nation’s revolutionary tradition, especially when measured against Anglo-American political wisdom. Rights have an “extrapolitical status,” he wrote thirteen years ago, diagnosing as French pathology the error of making them “an object of suspicion.” Now he says that universalistic invocations of rights often mask particular interests–and never more so than in America’s current wars–even though he once chastised opponents of rights who took this very position. Formerly treating them as an intellectual talisman, Judt now complains in passing about “the abstract universalism of ‘rights’–and uncompromising ethical stands taken against malign regimes in their name.” He warns that such abstractions can all too easily lead those who invoke them to “readily mistake the US president’s myopic rigidity for their own moral rectitude.” Of course, Judt still understands himself to be a committed liberal intellectual, at a time when he thinks practically all other liberals have disappeared. But not just the world has changed; he has too, and most strikingly in his acknowledgment that his old standard can hallow many causes."

"Tony knew that the disappearance of social theory, our common fate today, is not to be remedied so easily. The programmatic alternative to the present Tony came to favor— imagining a different future—depends, as he saw, on a social theory underlying it. And in spite of the fact that Marxism towered over the modern landscape, there are other possibilities. Keynes—Tony’s apparent hero at the end—presupposed a social theory too, though so did Friedrich Hayek, and the point is not just to revive their dispute simply to take sides but rather to understand their contention as the clash of philosophical visions it was, both broadly about the nature of social life and more narrowly about the place of modernity in it."

"Tony Judt, in short, was a mass of contradictions, a polemicist as well as a prophet, a philosopher as well as a pamphleteer; but, most of all, through these pages, he emerges as a wellspring of enlightenment you need to spend time with. Stab him, and he will bleed; but hug him and perhaps he may shed a tear."

"We are none of us infallible—not even the youngest of us."

"Greatness is no sure frame to build upon, No worldly treasure can assure that place; God makes both even, the Cottage with the Throne."

"If Eve did err, it was for knowledge’ sake, / The fruit being fair persuaded him to fall."

"Since the 1970s, interest in economic methodology has grown dramatically, to the extent that it is now possible to view methodology as a clearly identifiable sub-discipline within economics."

"Following the financial crisis of September 2008 when the American investment bank Lehman Brothers collapsed, threatening to engulf the entire banking system, the British economist John Maynard Keynes returned to center stage. In the popular press and in the writings of many economists, Keynes featured prominently as governments around the world urgently sought ways to avoid economic collapse. (...) After only a brief delay, critics of Keynes’s ideas also began to appear; but the emergence of such critics only served to emphasize the fact of his return, for only a few years earlier Keynes’s name would not even have appeared in public debate about economic policy: his ideas were seen as having so little relevance that it did not even seem necessary to mention his name when discussing the performance of the economy."

"In the years after 1936, whilst Hayek was working on The Pure Theory of Capital, most economists were convinced by Keynes, whose theory had an elegance and simplicity that Hayek’s did not. Keynes’ theory lacked Hayek’s theoretical rigor in that it was not based on equilibrium (on individual rationality), and there were places in the argument where Keynes relied on loose, informal arguments, preferring to put his trust in intuition rather than formal theory. Keynesians did not solve the problems with capital theory that Hayek had identified: they just bypassed or ignored them. According to Hayek’s methodological criteria, Keynes’ theory was decidedly inferior. Against this, Keynes’ theory provided opportunities for mathematical and statistical analysis that Hayek’s did not. Indeed, though Hayek paid some attention to data, he did so only minimally: he certainly made no attempt to test his theory against statistical data. The choice of Keynesian theory was, at least in part, a methodological one."

"As the title of his 1941 book indicates, the theory of capital lay at the heart of his theory of the cycle. The reason is that he attributes the cycle not to changes in aggregate demand, or even to changes in the quantity of capital, but to changes in the structure of production and hence the structure of the capital stock. In this, his theory was highly unusual: one of the reasons for his failure to engage more effectively with Keynes was the latter’s inability to see how the theory of capital could be of any importance for the cycle. Because the theory of capital is so central, and because it is so complex, it needs to be explained carefully. After that, the rest of his theory falls into place comparatively easily."

"Though he died in 1946, Keynes still dominated economics at Cambridge in the mid-1960s. It wasn't just that all the leading figures among the faculty, Richard Kahn, Joan Robinson, Brian Reddaway, David Champernowne, Nicholas Kaldor, and James Meade, had been his pupils and/or collaborators. It was the tone of the place. The study of economics, theoretical or empirical, was driven by the desire to improve the conduct of economic policy. This did not mean that pure theory was neglected. Indeed, in those years Robinson was fighting a stirring battle in the realms of high theory with Paul Samuelson and Robert Solow from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Nor was Cambridge innocent of the cutting edge of econometric technique. Richard Stone, who, following Keynes's suggestions, had created the first modern national income accounts, was still director of the Department of Applied Economics where much of modern econometrics was pioneered. Nonetheless, we were taught that theory and technique should serve the higher cause of rational economic policies, and to use our newly learned econometric expertise to write essays on unemployment, or inflation, or the balance of trade, or some other topic at the top of the current political agenda."

"Skidelsky tells us Keynes was also practical, absorbed in questions of economic policy, argumentative, benevolent and intolerant, often rude, and had an intellectual arrogance that would allow positions previously held with great passion to be calmly abandoned. Well, that is exactly what the Cambridge faculty was like in the 1960s. Not only did the ghost of Keynes dominate the content of economics education at Cambridge, it also dominated the style. That style could be sustained with substance only by the extraordinarily gifted. So it is not surprising that the Cambridge faculty, although still very "Keynesian," looks much more conventional these days."

"It doesn’t matter that the people of the UK voted for Brexit, and the people of the USA voted for Donald Trump — the anti-democrats of the left are incandescent with anger. Their programme of cultural destruction and managed decline of the West has fallen apart at the ballot box as the quiet, dignified conservative majority voted peacefully to take back control of their countries and reject mass immigration, radical Islam, and political correctness."

"The self-righteous inhabitants of the out-of-touch London political-media bubble are still Pharisaical in their own sense of moral superiority, yet to those living in communities ripped apart by massive immigration and rapid destabilising cultural change, they are despicable in their hypocrisy."

"Since Donald Trump became President, London’s Mayor has become increasingly hostile to one of the best and most Anglophile Presidents there has ever been. Instead of building a good relationship and welcoming his offer of putting Britain at the front of the queue for a trade deal, he has snubbed him with a series of personal insults."

"Sadiq Khan's latest outburst that President Trump is 'not welcome' in London is well beyond his pay grade and flies in the face of common courtesy. It is also hypocritical: he is willing to host the ambassadors of countries which have a travel ban on Israeli citizens at a reception at City Hall, but hurls insults at President Trump who has highlighted the horrors of Islamism and wants to protect his own citizens from violent jihadis. His so-called drive to be 'inclusive' is a sham. He has snubbed the democratically elected President of the United States and the American people who voted for him, and London will be worse off for the continuing deterioration of his tone."

"The power of capitalist realism derives in part from the way that capitalism subsumes and consumes all of previous history: one effect of its 'system of equivalence' which can assign all cultural objects, whether they are religious iconography, pornography or Das Kapital, a monetary value."

"The new defines itself in response to what is already established; at the same time, the established has to reconfigure itself in response to the new. Eliot’s claim was that the exhaustion of the future does not even leave us with the past. Tradition counts for nothing when it is no longer contested and modified. A culture that is merely preserved is no culture at all."

"The power of capitalist realism derives in part from the way that capitalism subsumes and consumes all of previous history: one effect of its ‘system of equivalence’ which can assign all cultural objects, whether they are religious iconography, pornography, or Das Kapital, a monetary value. Walk around the British Museum, where you see objects torn from their lifeworlds and assembled as if on the deck of some Predator spacecraft, and you have a powerful image of this process at work. In the conversion of practices and rituals into merely aesthetic objects, the beliefs of previous cultures are objectively ironized, transformed into artifacts. Capitalist realism is therefore not a particular type of realism; it is more like realism in itself."

"Capitalist realism no longer stages this kind of confrontation with modernism. On the contrary, it takes the vanquishing of modernism for granted: modernism is now something that can periodically return, but only as a frozen aesthetic style, never as an ideal for living."

"No cultural object can retain its power when there are no longer new eyes to see it."

"The role of capitalist ideology is not to make an explicit case for something in the way that propaganda does, but to conceal the fact that the operations of capital do not depend on any sort of subjectively assumed belief. It is impossible to conceive of fascism or Stalinism without propaganda – but capitalism can proceed perfectly well, in some ways better, without anyone making a case for it."

"What we are dealing with now is not the incorporation of materials that previously seemed to possess subversive potentials, but instead, their precorporation:the pre-emptive formatting and shaping of desires, aspirations and hopes by capitalist culture. WItness, for instance, the establishment of settled 'alternative' or 'independent' cultural zones, which endlessly repeat older gestures or rebellion and contestation as if for the first time. 'Alternative' and independent' don't designate something outside mainstream culture; rather, they are styles, in fact 'the' dominant styles, within the meainstream."

"If capitalist realism is so seamless, and if current forms of resistance are so hopeless and impotent, where can an effective challenge come from? A moral critique of capitalism, emphasizing the ways in which it leads to suffering, only reinforces capitalist realism. Poverty, famine and war can be presented as an inevitable part of reality, while the hope that these forms of suffering could be eliminated easily painted as naive utopianism. Capitalist realism can only be threatened if it is shown to be in some way inconsistent or untenable; if, that is to say, capitalism’s ostensible ‘realism’ turns out to be nothing of the sort."

"A moral critique of capitalism, emphasizing the ways in which it leads to suffering, only reinforces capitalism realism. Poverty, famine and war can be presented as an inevitable part of reality, while the hope that these forms of suffering could be eliminated easily painted as naive utopianism. Capitalism realism can only be threatened if it is shown to be in some way inconsistent or untenable; if, that is to say, capitalism's ostensible 'realism' turns out to be nothing of the sort."

"Initially, It might appear to be a mystery that bureaucratic measures should have intensified under neoliberal governments that have presented themselves as anti-bureaucratic and anti-Stalinist. Yet new kinds of bureaucracy - 'aims and objectives', 'outcomes', 'mission statements'- have proliferated, even as neoliberal rhetoric about the end of top-down, centralized control has gained pre-eminence. It might seem that bureaucracy is a kind of return of the repressed, ironically re-emerging at the heart of a system which has professed to destroy it. But the resurgence of bureaucracy in neoliberalism is more than atavism or an anomaly."

"This is in part a consequence of the inherent resistance of certain processes and services to marketization. (The supposed marketization of education, for instance, rests on a confused and underdeveloped analogy: are students the consumers of the service or its product?) The idealized market was supposed to deliver ‘friction free’ exchanges, in which the desires of consumers would be met directly, without the need for intervention or mediation by regulatory agencies. Yet the drive to assess the performance of workers and to measure forms of labor which, by their nature, are resistant to quantification, has inevitably required additional layers of management and bureaucracy. What we have is not a direct comparison of workers’ performance or output, but a comparison between the audited representation of that performance and output. Inevitably, a short-circuiting occurs, and work becomes geared towards the generation and massaging of representations rather than to the official goals of the work itself. Indeed, an anthropological study of local government in Britain argues that ‘More effort goes into ensuring that a local authority’s services are represented correctly than goes into actually improving those services’. This reversal of priorities is one of the hallmarks of a system which can be characterized without hyperbole as ‘market Stalinism’. What late capitalism repeats from Stalinism is just this valuing of symbols of achievement over actual achievement."

"It would be a mistake to regard this market Stalinism as some deviation from the ‘true spirit’ of capitalism. On the contrary, it would be better to say that an essential dimension of Stalinism was inhibited by its association with a social project like socialism and can only emerge in a late capitalist culture in which images acquire an autonomous force. The way value is generated on the stock exchange depends of course less on what a company ‘really does’, and more on perceptions of, and beliefs about, its (future) performance. In capitalism, that is to say, all that is solid melts into PR, and late capitalism is defined at least as much by this ubiquitous tendency towards PR-production as it is by the imposition of market mechanisms."

"Yet wherever one looks, in non-specialist guides, or in holiday brochures, one reads about the 'mysterious' Etruscans; hidden Etruria; underground Etruria — as if the culture is somehow concealed from us. It is a sales gimmick which has been very useful and profitable, but it is also misleading. (...) The Etruscans were no more more mysterious than most other peoples of archaic Italy."

"It is very probable that the Hindenburg Line to which the defence of our traditions retired as a result of the onslaughts of the last century will be blown up in the near future. If this should happen a mental chaos such as man has never experienced may be expected. We shall then be thrown back, as Matthew Arnold foresaw, upon poetry. It is capable of saving us; it is a perfectly possible means of overcoming chaos."

"A book is a machine to think with, but it need not, therefore, usurp the functions either of the bellows or the locomotive."

"The chief lesson to be learnt from it is the futility of all argumentation that precedes understanding. We cannot profitably attack any opinion until we have discovered what it expresses as well as what it states."

"An experience has to be formed, no doubt, before it is communicated, but it takes the form it does largely because it may have to be communicated."

"Very simple experiences – a cold bath in an enamelled tin, or running for a train – may to some extent be compared without elaborate vehicles; and friends exceptionally well acquainted with one another may manage some rough comparisons in ordinary conversation. But subtle or recondite experiences are for most men incommunicable and indescribable, though social conventions or terror of the loneliness of the human situation may make us pretend the contrary.”"

"[B]y the end of the nineteenth century... ...a rapid change had set in. Men were no longer convinced that the writers of Scripture knew more about a future life than they did themselves. Historical criticism began to suggest that writers who were far from infallible in their descriptions of the past were not wholly to be trusted in their prognostications of the future.""

"Our intention in making Threads was to step aside from the politics and – I hope convincingly – show the actual effects on either side should our best endeavours to prevent nuclear war fail."

"I think it was the first novel I'd actually read in my own time, and of my own volition. I'd actually sat down and read a book, and I was 21. Ridiculous. I can't remember reading anything before."

"I'd never heard of Ernest Hemingway, but when I read his stories I realised there was something special about this simple style, but I couldn’t understand how he got the effect. I realised there was something underneath it, and that's how the whole thing started to unfold for me."

"I thought I would like to show that these kids can do something which is in fact very skillful - not the old tale about them being cobblers and joiners, but something that means they have to get books out of the library. And it’s a technical skill; they’ve actually got to read about it before they can do something like training a hawk. My brother trained a kestrel in these fields at the back, and I wanted to show that kids can do this kind of thing. They can do all kinds of things if only they’re given opportunities."

"The trouble in school is that you can do so little to help kids because you come up against this dead end of the educational system. I think a comprehensive system is the only answer for these kids, if it is carried through properly. But education reflects the system, rather than changes it. People say it’s an instrument of social change; well, if it is, it’s a bloody slow one. I think education reflects the class system, and the system has to change before education can."

"I think that the book has survived as a set text because teachers like using it. It has a lot of possibilities from a teaching point of view. Most kinds of children seem to identify with the story. Northanger Abbey it is not! It should really be out of date now after all these years. But sadly, it's not. There are still a lot of kids like Billy around. Ken Loach's film Kes is a sympathetic retelling of the book. It adds value to it. Ken is a wonderful director for any writer to work with. I was very lucky that Tony Garnett the producer and Ken discovered my little book."

"I think that I painted an accurate picture of what life was like for someone like Billy forty years ago. Looking back, maybe I was not as sympathetic as I could have been to some of the adult characters."

"How often are 'dreams realised' in real life? I write about real people and show a section of their life. Without the Hollywood endings which rarely happen outside Hollywood. My memory is failing me these days and I cannot remember the exact details, but Walt Disney offered to make Kes. On the condition that the hawk recovered. Should we have sold out? I know which way would always be right for me."

"I remember years ago when [w:The Price of Coal|The Price of Coal]] was on television one evening [in either 1977 or 1978]. When I got on the bus in Chapeltown the next day it was full of miners coming off shift. I walked down the aisle and they just looked and said nothing. I'm scared to death until one man appointed himself spokesman and said ‘that were alreight, Barry’. I felt like an icon then, I can tell you!"

"He did hate doing it. It was alien to his nature. He reluctantly let himself be drawn into this thing, thinking what he would have done would have been a very passionate politicised scream of emotion, and what he was being pushed into was this box he didn't feel at all comfortable in."

"He hated coming on the set and despised me because I wore white shoes."

"I wanted him to use all his experience and intuition and empathy with people who'd grown up around him in Sheffield and put that into the movie, and I would be [...] the alien force, who was the voice of what science can do, and I would kind of foist these horrible indignities and horrors on these people, and he would try and get them to behave the way they would. So there was an innate conflict in that. We had many shouting matches, really passionate things, totally necessary for doing this."

"Ha! It's poetry in motion. She turned her tender eyes to me, As deep as any ocean, As sweet as any harmony. Mm, but she blinded me with science (She blinded me with science!) And failed me in biology, yeah."

"The Earth can be any shape you want it any shape at all Dark and cold or bright and warm long or thin or small If love is all you're missing look into your heart: Is anybody home? There are stones buried in your soul In time you'll come to understand this flat old Earth is in your gentle hands"

"I scare myself just thinking about you I scare myself when I'm without you I scare myself, the moment that you're gone I scare myself when I let my thoughts run But it's oh so very different when we're together And I'm so, so, so much calmer, I feel better 'Cause the stars already crossed our paths forever And the sooner that we realize it, the better And then I'll be with you and I won't scare myself And I'll know what to do and I won't scare myself And my thoughts will run and I won't scare myself And I'll think of you and I won't scare myself"

"Some people sing love songs Everybody's got one This isn't my love song It's more like my love-gone-wrong song She came to breakfast And stayed a week But the lie detectors Broke down each time she tried to speak Broke down when she said: "You came close Close but no cigar You didn't miss by far You know you came this close Close but no cigar." I remember, I remember, I remember The promise in your eyes As black as the night I drove you to the airport And I remember, I remember, I remember The wide Brazilian sky that swallowed you Then I hit thirty Guess I can't complain But I must have been lonely The night I bumped into Lorraine She came for coffee And stayed all night But the lie detectors Broke down every time I tried to smile Broke down like the story of my life And each dream I missed by half a mile Broke down when I told her: "You came close Close but no cigar You didn't miss by far You know you came this close Close but no cigar.""

"Poetry has always been at the margins, and I think that because of its sidelining, this has been a part of its appeal…"

"Spoken Word poetry is an art form that fits me well because it enables me to bring all the layers of who I am into one space — A reader, writer, and performer…"

"I can say poetry has certainly sharpened my senses and keeps me open to wonder about alternative realities, to be overly curious rather than overly ideological, it can be read as just a reminder that we have more senses than we have the words for, so perhaps we ought to revel in that if we are to truly live our lives in the light?"

"I try to root the language of my poetry in kindness, forgiveness, compassion and curiosity, that is the way I want to live, but of course that’s not to say anger and resentment and envy and other difficult emotions don’t make a noise in my work…"

"It is because of identity politics – we are, sadly, becoming more tribal. The expectation seems to be that a writer from each tribe must tell the story of that tribe. I’m Turkish but also many other things. For me, imagination is a desire to transcend boundaries. When we write, we can be multiple."

"Many women are asking: why do some women choose to cover their heads? We have to understand this and other questions. This is one of the biggest challenges for feminism today. What is worrying is that when women are divided into categories it is the status quo – the patriarchy – that benefits.…"

"I learned to pay attention to the readers and not to the madness…Because to be a writer in Turkey is a bit like being kissed on one cheek and slapped on the other."

"I have met lots of women who have grown up in Turkey who cannot bring themselves to swear in Turkish. But in English they use the F-word all the time. Writing is like that for me."

"Workers in lower status jobs tend to have more stressful working conditions—they have lower pay, poorer pension arrangements, less control over their work, and report more unsupportive colleagues and manager."

"I am pretty confident in saying that the physiological stress levels (as measured by cortisol) of bosses are lower than their employees—in other words, the bosses are not as stressed as the employees they manage, this is shown not just by my study, but loads of other studies that show exactly the same results. Stress levels increase (not decrease) as we go from the top of the occupational ladder to the bottom."

"If you start putting very large numbers of human brain cells into primates, suddenly you might transform primates into something that has some of the capacities that we regard as distinctively human – speech or other ways of being able to manipulate or relate to a human. These possibilities, at the moment, are largely being explored in fiction but we need to start thinking about them now."

"The old men remember the roadsides, the wastes, and commons, and village greens, and patches of no man's land, which have gone from them for ever. The donkey munched the thistles or rolled in the dust, the cow, half starved perhaps in winter, yet gained a certain sort of sustenance and picked up its livelihood under the hedge or on the green. The geese hissed at strangers intruding upon this or that patch of verdure, and brought in a few shillings, if their owner were lucky with them, at Michaelmas time."

"If the salt was dear and scarce, sugar was unknown except to the very rich. The poor man had little to sweeten his lot. The bees gave him honey; and long after the time I am dealing with, people left not only their hives to their children by will, but actually bequeathed a summer flight of bees to their friends; while the hive was claimed by one, the next swarm would become the property of another."

"The ordinary life of the monastery began at six o'clock in the morning, and when the small bell, called the skilla, rang, all rose, washed themselves at the latrines, put on their daily habit, and then presented themselves at the matin Mass."

"Even in our country villages we are losing our Individuals. The world is getting quite too much for us—withering us, in fact."

"It seems to me that before a man has any right to pose as a reformer he must do two things: first, he must learn the truth of things as they are, and look facts in the face; and secondly, he must learn how things were, and how they have come to be as they are."

"The old Cambridge, which some of us knew in our youth, with its solemn ecclesiasticism, its quaint archaisms, its fantastic anomallies, its fascinating picturesqueness, its dear old barbaric unintelligible odds and ends that met us at every turn in street and chapel and hall—that old Cambridge is as dead as the Egypt of the Pharaohs."

"Literature has had little to say of the labourer; and this, not that his class is lacking in interest, in poetry, in romance, but simply because those sections of society to which writers belong know nothing about him."

"I read Tennyson for myself, learning by heart the greater part of the original volumes and thinking, as I still think, that for subtle workmanship no one had at all approached the same perfection since Milton. I did not then recognise how little thought is contained in that pomp and melody of verse, still less how very little of what thought there is, is the poet's own. For instance, a very large number of people are apparently unaware that Tennyson's idyll "Dora" is simply a story in Miss Mitford's Our Village broken up into blank verse with poetic touches added, and in later life his "Idylls of the King" are whole chapters of Malory's Morte d'Arthur and Lady Charlotte Guest's Mabinogion treated in the same way."

"With perhaps the exception of Dr. Johnson and Lord Tennyson, it is difficult to name any men who, writing really good works, lived by those works and by the pensions conferred upon them on account of those works. With those exceptions, I can think of no one whose books have lived and are likely to live, who have not either had an independent fortune or a profession quite apart from literature, by which they gained at least a modest living."

"Mr. Montagu was fourteen when Dr. Johnson, whom he knew, died; he was the intimate associate of Godwin, Coleridge, Wordsworth; he watched by Mary Wollstonecraft's deathbed; Sir James Mackintosh helped to steady those liberal principles which were growing somewhat wild under Godwin's influence; his home was the haunt not only of Londoners like Charles Lamb, but of young men from the country before they grew famous, if only they had promise in them, like Edward Irving and Carlyle."

"George Eliot's Salon on Sundays was a stately reception, in which her talk was always well worth hearing: she raised conversation on whatever subject she touched to a higher level. Miss Anna Swanwick is the only other person I know with the same immediate power of raising the conversation with apparent continuity and without seeming to force it."

"Poverty can be defined objectively and applied consistently only in terms of the concept of relative deprivation."

"The term is understood objectively rather than subjectively. Individuals, families and groups in the population can be said to be in poverty when they lack the resources to obtain the types of diet, participate in the activities and have the living conditions and amenities which are customary, or are at least widely encouraged or approved, in the societies to which they belong. Their resources are so seriously below those commanded by the average individual or family that they are, in effect, excluded from ordinary living patterns, customs and activities."

"Fear has a useful function: it concentrates the mind. And the appropriate reaction is to work to understand the thing that is causing the fear whether it’s a large fish or anything else. This way both parties are more likely to survive the encounter unscathed."

"The thing about rivers, is if you work with them, if you give them a little bit of help, it’s surprising how much they respond. And I think that is cause for hope. If we can just change our attitudes just a little bit, from being out-and-out exploitative to just sort of drawing back a little bit, and just giving them a little bit of thought and help… they do have this incredible regenerative power."

"We live in the information age where in theory everybody knows anything. You ask somebody where your fish comes from, they don’t know. You go, “Is that because you can’t tell me or because the system is designed to obscure that fact?” Which unfortunately is the case a lot of the time."

"You do get these similar stories everywhere. And I think part of that is because the underwater world is so unknown. The human mind doesn’t like a vacuum. We will populate that vacuum with the contents of our own head, and often that’s scary stuff. It’s a blank canvas. Often what happens is that real creatures get mixed up. They’ll get our own baggage mixed up with their reality, and part of my job is to sort that out."

"There is real wisdom there about respecting the environment that more enlightened people, supposedly, have forgotten all about."

"Eating a fish from a river used to be a birth right, but those days are long gone. Now it’s our duty to put them back."

"I am not a composer, I’m a clerk."

"One of the main functions of an analogy or model is to suggest extensions of the theory by considering extensions of the analogy, since more is known about the analogy than is known about the subject matter of the theory itself... A collection of observable concepts in a purely formal hypothesis suggesting no analogy with anything would consequently not suggest either any directions for its own development."

"A theory in its scientific context is not a static museum piece, but is always being extended and modified to account for new phenomena."

"These three assumptions between them constitute a picture of science and the world somewhat as follows : there is an external world which can in principle be exhaustively described in scientific language. The scientist, as both observer and language-user, can capture the external facts of the world in prepositions that are true if they correspond to the facts and false if they do not. Science is ideally a linguistic system in which true propositions are in one-to-one relation to facts, including facts that are not directly observed because they involve hidden entities or properties, or past events or far distant events. These hidden events are described in theories, and theories can be inferred from observation, that is the hidden explanatory mechanism of the world can be discovered from what is open to observation. Man as scientist is regarded as standing apart from the world and able to experiment and theorize about it objectively and dispassionately."

"It could plausibly be argued that far from Christian theology having hampered the study of nature for fifteen hundred years , it was Greek corruptions of biblical Christianity which had hampered it , and the attitude to nature."

"This of course has always been the method of empirical science, which has been suspicious of deductive argumentation unchecked by reference to experiment; but in a more general sense, and outside the practice of science itself, scientists have sometimes been the greatest offenders in adhering to dogmatic ideas against all the evidence, especially when they have tended to limit 'experience' to laboratory experiment."

"We are all of us accustomed to exaggerate the successes and magnify the prospects of the cause we favor. It is a habit arising mainly from a desire to convert others to our way of thinking, and since by far the largest part of mankind not only submit to the accomplished fact as soon as it is recognised, but accept it as satifactory, we are tempted to resort to this method of conversion as the most potent and expeditious. In proportion, however, as the prestige created is ill-founded, it is sure to be followed by discouragement and reaction. A cause which has solid elements of strength, is best served in the long run by unexaggerated estimates of its past, and sober forecasts of its future."

"In an English court of justice every effort is made to narrow down the discussion to a simple issue of fact. Every irrelevant allegation on either side is jealously excluded by the presiding judge. Usage and public opinion prescribe a course to the jury from which they cannot deviate; though even in England, on political trials, the animus of jurymen leads them sometimes to disregard the evidence. But at Rome, a State trial, though technically relating to a specified act, virtually dealt with the whole life of the accused. Nor was this all. The jury looked on it as their duty to take into consideration other circumstances which we should deem still more foreign to the question. Among these notoriously was the political bearing their verdict would have. A Roman jury never forgot that it was in some sort a committee of the Legislative Assembly."

"The government, worship, and doctrine of the Established Church are the most abiding works left by Elizabeth on the national life of England. Logically it might have been expected that the settlement of doctrine would precede that of government and worship. It is characteristic of a State Church that the inverse order should have been followed. For the Queen the most important question was Church government; for the people, worship."

"Steaming onwards to the south-east between Methana and Ægina, we passed close under the island of Poros, with its hilly slopes clothed with groves of citron, an island which once bore the name of Calaureia, and was the scene of the death of Demosthenes. It was here that he sought sanctuary from the emissaries of Antipater in the temple of Poseidon."

"'Philology' was for a long time limited to linguistic studies, and was regarded as only including grammar, lexicography, exegesis, and textual and literary criticism; but, since the time of Wolf, it has been generally understood in a wider sence, as including the study of ancient life in all its phases, as handed down to us in the literature, the inscriptions, and the monuments, of Greece and Rome ..."

"In Petrarch we readily recognise a link between the mediaeval and the modern world. He was fully conscious of belonging in a peculiar sense to a transitional time. He describes himself as placed on the confines of two peoples, and as looking backwards as well as forwards ..."

"Experimental Science is represented by Bacon, in the sixth part of the Opus Maius, as a general method for the purpose of checking the results reached by mathematical processes, and also of prompting further researches in fresh fields of inquiry. He saw its bearing and its importance as a universal method of research."

"Basically, as a child, just like you do with any adult – and at that age, too – I don’t think I really questioned anything. I just felt that they knew what they were doing, and that I would fulfill what was necessary – what they needed me to do – to the best of my ability."

"War is hell, and all that, but it has a good deal to recommend it. It wipes out all the small nuisances of peace-time."

"What do you mean, funny? Funny-peculiar or funny ha-ha?"

"The white British population has decreased by 600,000, while the minority population has increased by 1.2 million. So yes, lads, we're winning!"

"I'm on Team Hate."

"[Asked what makes her tick?] Petty vengeance and hopefulness."

"Mama Sarkar didn't raise a diplomat."

"I'm literally a communist, you idiot."

"No ones saying that Jewish people don’t experience racism. That’s obviously true, especially online. But unlike me, you can *also* benefit from white privilege."

"The unfortunate truth is that, sometimes, the only thing that separates an anonymous troll and a journalist is a byline. Some of the worst abuse I’ve received is either from journalists or the direct consequence of their actions in spreading misinformation about me."

"If the super-rich can spend £250,000 on vanity jaunts 2.4 miles beneath the ocean then they’re not being taxed enough."

"We get well-funded public services, they get saved from the consequences of their own hubris. What's not to like?"

"The Titanic submarine is a modern morality tale of what happens when you have too much money, and the grotesque inequality of sympathy, attention and aid for those without it."

"We would ask the BBC to explain why someone who defended the desecration of a memorial to the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising has been invited to speak on a programme about the rise of the Nazis. Given the outrage her comments have caused, the invitation by the programme makers seems both insensitive and provocative."

"For months the Muslim minority throughout India was safe from molestation. The R.S.S., by destroying the Mahatma, had given the country the shock it needed. Those who had been angrily criticising him now saw the tragic consequences of their own short sighted anger. They knew that he had been right."

"My favorite element is . That's mainly because of this organism... a ... a tiny... organism that lives in the surface of the ocean..."

"[A]ll of these platelets, this really intricate structure... is made of so calcium is incorporated into this structure..."

"This organism lives, and it dies, and quite often when it dies, the broken fragments... drift down... and... can build up... on the floor of the ocean, and over geological time these beautiful little platelets of calcium carbonate become squashed into rocks of calcium... [A]s techtonic plates move around and seas come and go, those rocks can get lifted up and so this... is what the White Cliffs of Dover are made of..."

"[M]ost of the south coast of England is underlain by a great layer of this calcium carbonate, mostly made of this one amazing organism."

"So after the calcium has been part of the cliffs it can crumble down... It goes back into the ocean and this cycle starts all over again."

"Humans have found this a very useful material. Drawing this diagram with this piece of is a lovely thing to do because... I drew it with itself. So the tiny... fragments of old marine creatures sitting around in here are now what's stuck to the blackboard making up my drawing of the . So calcium is my favorite element, just because of this cycle."

"[T]here are these very famous images in ' of s swimming, and they've always got these trailing bubbles. ...[N]o one really thought about it until a few years ago at the University of Bangor, a couple of fluid dynamicists... had a bit of think, and it turns out that what the penguins do is really... cool! ...They are constantly preening. The feathers are the most important thing a penguin has because they are its insulation and they are a large part of how hydrodynamic it is. How easy it swims through the water. ...Before the penguin goes down to dive, and they can be quite long dives, the penguins all fluff up their feathers and trap gas... bubbles underneath."

"And then they go down, and they go hunting for fish... [I]t comes time to go back up to the surface and hop out onto the ice past the s."

"[A]s they're starting that swim upwards they... unfluff their feathers and... release... a coat of bubbles... [T]hose bubbles... are inducing . It's just like the same reason a golf ball has dimples, the bubbles are reducing the drag on the penguin and a penguin that is producing bubbles can travel 50% faster... So it stands a much better chance of getting past the leopard seals now, onto the land."

"So this is brilliant, because it's this wonderful interaction of all sorts of things. It's a physical process. The reason the bubbles come out as the penguin swims up is because the pressure is decreasing, and the bubbles are expanding, so they can come out of the feathers."

"They are reducing... drag, which is one of the most complicated problems in , and the penguins just... do it."

"And... it changes the ecosystem because the penguins can then survive in conditions they would not otherwise be able to survive in."

"So penguins use bubbles, and I think that's brilliant!"

"We live on the edge, perched on the boundary between planet Earth and the rest of the Universe. ...Every human civilization has seen the stars, but no one has touched them. Our home on Earth is the opposite: messy... full of things... we touch and tweak... The physical world is full of startling variety... But this diversity isn't random. Our world is full of patterns."

"If you pour milk into your tea and give it a quick stir... liquids mix in beautiful swirling patterns... not... merging instantaneously. ...If you look down on Earth from space, you... often see... similar swirls in the clouds... where warm... and cold air waltz around... instead of mixing directly. In Britain... they form at the boundary between cold polar air... and warm tropical air... We know these swirls as depressions or s..."

"[S]imilarity in patterns is... a clue that hints at something... fundamental. ...[A] systematic basis for all such formations... This process of discovery is science: the continual refinement and testing of our understanding, alongside the digging that reveals even more..."

"[[w:Scorpion|[S]corpion]]s... have pigments in their that take in light that we can't see and give back visible light... . The blue-green glow is thought to be an adaptation to help... at dusk. ...[I]t can detect its own glow and so... needs to do... better... hiding. It's an effective... signalling system..."

"Look at... cyclists; their high visibility jackets... oddly bright... as though they're glowing... It's... the same trick the scorpions are playing..."

"[A] nugget of physics... isn't just an interesting fact: it's a tool... useful anywhere..."

"[[w:Tonic water|[T]onic water]] glow[s] under ultraviolet... because the ... is fluorescent. ... ink is also acting as an ultraviolet detector..."

"A toaster can teach you some of the most fundamental laws of physics..."

"Physics is awesome... because the same patterns are universal... in the kitchen and in the furthest reaches of the universe."

"Learning the science of the everyday is a direct route to the... knowledge... every citizen needs..."

"Put the egg down on a smooth, hard surface and set it spinning. ...[W]hen you stopped the raw egg, you only stopped the shell. The liquid never stopped swirling... so... the shell started rotating again... dragged around by its insides. ...It is a principle of physics that objects continue the same... movement unless you push or pull on them. ...[[w:Angular momentum#Conservation of angular momentum|[C]onservation of angular momentum]]."

"The ... has produced many... spectacular images... But when you're floating... in space... how do you hold your position... How do you know... which way you're facing? Hubble has six s, each... a wheel spinning... Conservation of angular momentum means that those wheels will [tend to] keep spinning... and the spin axis will stay pointed in... the same direction... The gyroscopes give Hubble a reference direction..."

"The physical principle used to orient one of the most advanced technologies... demonstrated with an egg in your kitchen."

"This is why I love physics. Everything you learn will come in useful somewhere else, and it's all one big adventure..."

"As far as we know, the physical laws we observe... on Earth apply everywhere... You can test them for yourself."

"In the past, information was treasured... These days we live on the shore of an ocean of knowledge... with regular s that threaten out sanity."

"The basic principles alone often won't provide specific answers, but they'll provide the context needed to ask the right questions. And if we're used to working things out... we won't feel hopeless when the answer isn't obvious..."

"Critical thinking is essential... especially with advertisers and politicians all telling us... they know best."

"We are responsible for our civilization. We vote... choose what to buy and how to live... collectively [as] part of the human journey."

"No one can understand every... detail of our complex world, but the basic principles are fantastically valuable tools..."

"This is what separates science from other disciplines—a scientific hypothesis must make specific testable predictions. ...[Y]ou have to look hard for consequences that you can check for, and especially... that you can prove wrong."

"Science is always trying to prove itself wrong, because that's the quickest route to finding what's actually going on."

"You don't have to be a qualified scientist to experiment with the world. Knowing some basic principles will set you on the right track... [I]t doesn't even have to be an organized process..."

"This book is about linking the little things we see every day with the big world we live in."

"Science is not about 'them', it's about 'us'... we can all go on this adventure in our own way."

"[B]eing at sea during the , when it arrived in the UK... back in 2013. I was on the in the North Atlantic and the swell... the during that storm was 10 meters during the middle of it."

"Being up on the bridge and watching these waves roll in... We were sitting bow into the wind. We were studying high wind gas exchange so... we'd gone out there for those conditions. The chief scientist was incredibly happy when that storm came around."

"[J]ust being on the bridge when that storm came along... and watching those waves roll towards the ship and... rear up in front of us. It wasn't everyone's favorite thing, but I felt privileged to be there."

"[W]e have all these dry numbers and significant wave height is one of them... [W]atching what it really means for a significant wave height to be 10 meters and thinking about how small that is compared to the depth of the ocean... It's like... having a swimming pool and... blowing tiny ripples across the top. ...Being in that situation was... fascinating and fun... I wouldn't want to do it every day, but it was... a special experience."

"We know how that graph goes... Wind speed... along the x-axis, some measure of gas flux... along the y-axis, and we knew at the time that the graph only went so far to the right... [W]e were putting dots... on the graph that had not been there before... So there's that added thing of being there with the right equipment at the right time to... measure something that has not been measured directly before..."

"It wasn't my first time at sea. It was my first time in waves that big."

"It's not a linear path. I did my PhD... in experimental explosion physics... I was interested in the , which was much harder then than it is now. This was before CCDs and CMOS sensors were built into things like high-speed cameras... [Y]ou had to do it the old-school way. ...[I]t was interesting and challenging and I liked building that kind of experiment. Looking at small things that were too quick... to see directly. But I never wanted to do [explosion physics]..."

"So after I finished my PhD I looked around for another topic, and I found bubbles... [T]hat... took me to Scripps, to the lab of Grant Deane and he... showed me the ocean... indirectly... I was in that lab. I had these experiments on bubbles. They involved things I understood, s and tanks and... s... [T]here was this frame by the door... and after three weeks they all started fussing around it, and I realized this thing, which I now know is just a surface following buoy, was their gateway to another world."

"The day they carried... [the surface following buoy] down to the beach... and I had never thought about what really might be underneath [the ocean]... [T]hen I understood the context for them and... became an ocean scientist by the back door. ...Then I had opportunities to go to sea and I continued the research..."

"I've looked at basic bubble physics, and optics... the dynamics of what bubbles do underneath waves, and particularly, sensing them in very difficult conditions like that big storm. ...Acoustical and optical devices for detecting bubbles... just under... [Y]ou're interested in the top meter, but the top meter is going up and down, or in the case by 10 meters. So it's not an easy place to get to. But that kind of challenge, studying bubbles in difficult situations... in the ocean, that's what I do now."

"I was indignant because I hadn't even read about it. ...I was that kid who had read every physics book, every science book, I'd read every copy of ' and whatever else... I was the... kid who had really read everything, and nobody had ever mentioned the ocean."

"Once I understood. Once I looked at the ocean differently... I was cross. Why had no on ever told me about this? Because this is clearly the biggest story on Earth!"

"I set out to learn. I went around Scripps... I knocked on people's doors and I said "Hello, I'm a physicist. ...I'm learning about the ocean. If you've got a book you would recommend..." and people recommended books to me... [O]ne of them was Jacques Cousteau's Silent World and a whole bunch of others... Once I knew I wanted to learn, I was in exactly the right place to begin that journey."

"I was on the Kilo Moana, out of Santa Barbara, on a preparatory cruise for a bigger one... [W]e were in... calm water off Santa Barbara and the Kilo Moana... has swath holes, so a very stable platform kind of a ship, more of a platform than a ship in some sense... [T]hat was the first time I'd ever... hung an instrument over the side... in order to try and measure something... [I]n the second cruise... I made a video of the cruise, like a... mini-documentary..."

"I never wanted to go into filmmaking. It was just that I had the opportunity... I found the visceral nature of it very appealing... [Y]ou're in the middle of something directly experiencing it at the same time as studying it... [T]hat was really interesting to me."

"I think that video... We made little DVDs of it that got shared around the participants on the cruise. They were all... interested in it, and... this was long before I'd done any stuff for the and... I didn't think of filmmaking as something I would want to do. But in retrospect... there was a story to tell, and I was interested in telling that story."

"It's interesting how you can look at the sea and not see it. There's this phrase... that the Merchant Marine use, which is sea blindness... [T]he UK is especially guilty of this... We talk of ourselves as an island nation and we talk... of having this maritime history, and yet we never actually look at the sea... This idea that it can be right there and yet we're somehow blind to it... I was totally guilty of that... being sea blind."

"I come from in the north of England... a long way from the coast. ...I learned to scuba dive at Scripps. I learned to sail in . I hadn't done any of that before, so I was about as much a landlubber as you can get, but I was up for the adventure... That's the reason I'm doing what I'm doing... because it not only involves very interesting physics, but you are right in the middle of... experiencing it while it's happening..."

"I've always studied the physics in the middle, even when I was doing my degree. ...I passed my exams in quantum mechanics and cosmology, but I knew I was never going to touch those things, but with the ocean it's something you can directly experience... I'm much more interested in the everyday world than in... s or something."

"It's very, very important to make the point that there are lots of ways to be an oceanographer. You don't have to go to sea... I would say to people, "I'm a physicist. I'm not an oceanographer." and they would go, "Oh you go to sea, so you're an oceanographer." But actually now we have much better data availability, data visualization... There are lots of people involved in coding and modeling and building devices and the engineering, who don't go to sea. But they are part of the ocean science community, and it's very, very important that they are there."

"[W]e're past the point now where we say you have to go to sea to be an oceanographer, because it's not true, and it's actually very important that it isn't true."

"[P]eople can experience the ocean in lots of ways, and... that's the important point. It's the experience of the ocean in some sense, so... it's not just a computer game..."

"[P]eople can contribute in lots of ways... [W]e're at the stage now, especially with any environmental science and... designing the future of society... where we... need all the help we can get... [S]o it is ludicrous to rule people out because they get seasick, for example. ...That's something of the past and... we have to move on from that."

"Alongside being a researcher for the past 10 or 12 years, I've also had the opportunity to make a lot of documentaries for the . ...This is not my first book. I've written science columns for years, for Focus magazine and '..."

"[N]o one was talking about the ocean, and when I went looking for popular science books... about , there really is close to nothing. There's lots of things about fish and whales and about pollution. Everything except the water itself, and that seemed to be the most ludicrous omission... I was sure the stories were there, but... to tell the story, to paint a picture of the ocean."

"[T]he problem with the ocean... is that it's too many things to sum up in a sentence... [Y]ou can say logically what it is. It's a layer of water about this thick that covers 70% of Earth. Fine, it doesn't mean anything. But to convey to people what it means to have an ocean, what it means to be a citizen of an ocean planet, you... need lots of different types of stories..."

"[T]he way I started to think about it... sometimes you get those kind of special effects where little pictures start appearing, making a , and then there's a shape left in the middle, and once you've got enough little pictures you can see the shape. But... until you've seen all those little pictures, you can't see anything. ...[T]he ocean's ...like that. The only way to really understand it, and we take this for granted as ocean scientists, is that you have to see it in lots of different ways. It's like the blind man and the elephant... One finds a trunk and thinks it's a snake. One finds a leg and thinks it's a tree. Yet you need all those perspectives, and then you start to build up a picture of what it means for an ocean to be there. ...[I]t ...bugged me that no one had done that and I thought I could find those stories."

"I paddle outrigger canoes with the and I also do that here in London. I work on research ships. I've worked on many of the world's oceans. ...I've had the privilege of working at Scripps and at the Graduate School of Oceanography... at NOC, or the University of South Hampton... and it felt like no one had told those stories, so I wanted to tell those stories... because I wanted people to see. I was so frustrated of people assuming that the ocean was just a place where the fish lived, or assuming that the ocean was just a big empty pond... and I realized, "Why would they see?" because no one had told them."

"I think it's not an approach that many people have taken. I think oceanographers take those stories for granted. ...[W]e don't tell our own history..."

"I did my degree in physics and... the telling of the history and the philosophy... is built into the telling of the subject, partly because of quantum mechanics, and partly because some of these ideas in physics are so big, you almost can't not discuss the philosophy of it... [T]he... mind blowing moment when Einstein presents general relativity and... unites these things, or these moments where Heisenberg's uncertainty principle is being worked out... [Y]ou've got to go and see why it's called that... [T]hese stories are built into physics, and in ocean science it's not really the same, and it's... not the same across the biology and chemistry and physics of the ocean, because they tend to be taught... separately..."

"[E]ven the ocean scientists don't really know all the little stories, the places where it's mattered in history... [S]o I went looking for those."

"So... The Blue Machine is the story of the ocean told through its messengers, passengers and voyages... [I]t's a mixture of natural history... human culture and human history... It's... a textbook dressed up as a bunch of stories."

"[T]hey came back with these two photos. One from , which was ', which was the Earth rising over the surface of the moon... before they'd landed on the moon, and the other on , the last of the Apollo missions, where they had the... full disk, the fully illuminated disk... '. ...That was when people started referring to the Earth as a "Blue Planet" because you couldn't look at that and not see that it was blue... [T]hen we spent 50 years not talking about the blue."

"[T]he called two or three... great series, '... but when did they actually say "What is the Blue?"... Not ever addressed."

"And so this time NASA... the Artemis missions are... very much gearing up to go back to the moon. Different setup, different politics... but fundamentally, this time... for the first time in 50 years, we're going to be far enough away to look back at the Earth and to see... this blue planet. And this time we have to see that blue for what it is. ...[T]he timing of the book... from the point of view... of the arc of human history, this time... we have to understand the blue itself, is the point."

"Any alien visitor to Earth... would look at the ocean first. Any alien visitor who wants to know the dynamics of planet Earth would look at the ocean before they looked at the land. And yet, we don't see it. ...We don't see this engine that completely defines our planet, and that has to change. ...Now is a good time for that to change."

"I've collaborated with many people from NOC over the years... I visited Steph Henson and the group she works with that study ... [W]hat was great... was seeing the variety of practical ways of doing things, and this... contrasts with what looks very crude... these... big yellow plastic funnels, and then the technology that's coming down the line. This... holographic camera and other things that will let them watch marine snow as it's falling, rather then waiting for it to be scooped up and put on the sample plate. ...The huge benefit... of being at NOC is that you've got all these people, it's such an interdisciplinary place. You've got all these people right next to each other that can learn from each other... I definitely miss that, not being in Southampton any more."

"My [publisher] actually said she was very moved by... the scale of trying to track these tiny bits of that are drifting around in the ocean... [S]he found something about that very... awesome, in the traditional sense of the word "awe"... The enormity of it really caught her."

"But you have to try... [T]hat's the lesson of ocean science... It was never going to be easy. If you go back to Challenger, we're now 150 years on from the Challenger expedition... something like 400 stations around the globe... That's like going around the and checking what color the paint is... on 400 dots along the ceiling... and the Sistine Chapel doesn't change every season... and people did try, and there are fundamental principles behind it all, and so it's worth it to try."

"[T]he ocean world is not good at talking about itself... [A] lot of ocean scientists... assume that people should care about the ocean, because they should... [A]ctually it's much more interesting than that. There are much more interesting things to say, but you've.. got to frame it right... [I]t's the framing that we miss in these conversations. ...You ...need a skeleton to hang pieces of information on, and for most people ...you say the ocean, they've got literally nothing... It really is a void. They're just like, "I don't know what to think about that. I don't know where to even start thinking about it, so I... forget everything I hear about it. ...I ...know it's all going wrong somehow ..." ...[T]he opportunity that NOC has is to earn a place in people's perception of what their world is like, by providing some of that context. ...[T]he most powerful thing that NOC has is... the collective."

"Scientists always think that the most important thing about what they do is the individual things that they're learning. That's not true. The most important thing... actually the gift that you have as a scientist that you've been given through the training, is a perspective on the world. ...[W]hat NOC has is an amazing opportunity to share a perspective, and not to dumb it down or to sugarcoat it, but just to say, "This is what it is." and to say that really well... [T]hat's... where you really can change people's idea of what it means to live on planet Earth, if you do that well..."

"[I]t's not just about pretty fish. We all like pretty fish, but... it's much more interesting than that, and we are shortchanging people if we don't really show what the ocean is. We all take it for granted as ocean scientists... So it's that opportunity that NOC has to do something really important. That's why I'm on board."

"Ocean scientists... who have read it said they learned lots of things. So there is this assumption that popular science books are for the people who don't know anything, and that is not true because the oceanographers know the oceanography, but they don't know the stories, and I think that the stories are worth it."

"Helen Czerski's engaging debut book seeks to demystify physics in everyday life... this should be an invaluable primer. ...Dealing with the everyday... enables Czerski to offer a mixture of erudition and enthusiasm... keeping the discussion light, accessible and interesting."

"Helen Czerski has the coolest job in science—she's a bubble scientist. Or... full title... a physicist and oceanographer at University College London. When she's not doing that... a science presenter for the BBC. ...[S]he also plays badminton competitively."

"Keeping everything in balance is one of the functions of the blue machine, but the... gradual raising of world temperatures poses a significant threat... It is only at the very end of her book that Czerski directly addresses the environmental changes... Her concern up to that point has been to set out clearly and calmly the design of the ocean engine. But... her... closing chapter on ‘the future’... is clear... the blue machine is... resilient, but will suffer permanent damage from rising temperatures. ...sea levels; currents... diverted; the fishy inhabitants... disperse and... disappear; tropical storms.. increase in frequency and power; sub-surface areas... de-oxygenated—all... alongside... the ocean as... dumping ground for plastic and... detritus. The oceans absorb carbon... breathe out carbon dioxide... determine global temperatures, but there are limits to their capacity..."

"Czerski... frames the ocean as a , the blue machine, driven by the difference in solar heating between the equator and North and South poles, with complications from tidal forces, wind, differences in salinity—which, like temperature, affects density—and shape of continental land masses and undersea crust. They generate complex effects... in a great, layered mass of water that is in constant motion. ...It all adds up to a persuasive case that Earth-dwellers need to understand the ocean and work with it..."

"Infinity is a Loch Ness monster, capturing the imagination with its awe-inspiring size but elusive nature. Infinity is a dream, a vast fantasy world of endless time and space. Infinity is a dark forest with unexpected creatures, tangled thickets and sudden rays of light breaking through. Infinity is a loop that springs open to reveal an endless spiral."

"Abstraction is about digging deep into a situation to find out what is at its core making it tick. Another way to think of it is about stripping away irrelevant details, or rather, stripping away details that are irrelevant to what we're thinking about now. These details might well be relevant to something else, but we decide we don't need to think about them for the time being. Crucially, it's a careful and controlled forgetting of details, not a slapdash ignoring of details out of laziness or a desire to skew an argument in a certain direction."

"... I wish we could educate people not just to be able to do things and know things, but to be nicer humans — and to get their self-esteem not from being better at something than someone else — but from how much they are able to help someone else do something."

"...The idea of math is to look for similarities between things so that you only need one "recipe" for many different situations. The key is that when you ignore some details, the situations become easier to understand and you can fill in the variables later. This is the process of abstraction."

"I am going to show that mathematics... is precisely "that which is easy.""

"[S]omething is easy if it is attainable by logical thought processes.... without having to resort to imagination, guesswork, luck, gut feeling, convoluted interpretation, leaps of faith... drugs, violence... [etc.]"

"We will never be able to encompass everything by rationality alone... [T]his is a necessary and beautiful aspect of human existence."

"Mathematics... helps... construct and understand arguments... too difficult for ordinary intuition. ...It is a way of eliminating ambiguity... It cuts corners, answering many questions... by showing... they're all... the same question... by abstraction: throwing out things that cause ambiguity, and ignoring [irrelevant] details... until all you have to do is apply unambiguous logical thought..."

"Now, if you imagine drawing a circle in the air with a , the surface you make is a over a circle. The idea is that for each point in the circle, you now have an entire vector, that is, a line given by the lightsaber at that instant."

"I'd like to talk about abstract mathematics and my experience of making it... palatable to people who may have had very bad experiences of it..."

"Maths... as it's taught in school is often... boring, pointless, painful, beside the point, and doesn't show people the things that... are the most beautiful about abstract math, and what the point of it is..."

"The point is to help us. It's not there to cause people pain. The point of abstraction is to clear out the fluff in order... to see more clearly what's actually going on."

"If you're only presented with... things you don't care about... then you won't care about having those things made easier, and so if all the problems... given are dumb... problems that don't... have anything to do with real life, then everyone.., especially young people... will immediately see that we're just talking a load of rubbish..."

"So instead, I like to show people, rather by analogy, why abstraction is useful... [A]bstraction is a process of analogy because... it's going to ignore certain parts of this... and... [that] situation, and... miraculously the two situations become the same, and then I can study them both at the same time, which saves me time, which is good because I'm... lazy."

"[A]bstract theory often comes from wanting to be lazy, or... conserving brain power, conserving energy, because if you do the same thing over and over again, wouldn't you rather not... and just do it once... [T]hat's what abstract theory is there for... [T]hat applies to all sorts of aspects of life, not just sciences and programming"

"The work I do is totally abstract... [T]he idea is that it will help other people understand things that they can then do in the world..."

"I believe very strongly in helping other people understand things. There's no point knowing things if you don't help other people know..."

"I don't believe that one should have anything without sharing it, and that includes knowledge, money, food, love..."

"I make it my business to help everybody understand these things a bit more, because... they're very misunderstood..."

"I wrote this book because I love maths, and I love food... [S]adly most people love food more than they love maths..."

"Math... is... misunderstood, and most people think it's all about numbers, and it's not... [M]ost people think it's about getting things right and wrong, and it's not. ...[I]t's more like cooking ...[Y]ou decide you're just going to fiddle around in the kitchen with some ingredients and make something, and the only thing that matters is if you like it or not. ...In the end all that matters is ...you make your own rules, and then you follow them and see what happens. ...[M]aybe you cause a contradiction ...then your whole world implodes, and that's ok. You move on to the next world."

"I'm going to declare that mathematics is the study of how things work... how logical things work... [I]t's the logical study of how logical things work. ...I don't think it's impossible to define. I think I just did it."

"The trouble with this is that nothing behaves logically."

"[I]n order to study anything logically, we have to ignore all the pesky details that prevent it from behaving logically, and... move into the idealized world... rather than the real world of things... [T]his... is what... abstraction... is..."

"[T]hat's why we move into the abstract world of ideas, where things behave the way that we want them to... [T]hat can be a scary move... because... in the real world you get to touch things... throw things... Whereas in the abstract world... if the logic doesn't do the thing that you want... There's nothing you can do about it. That's just how it works... [T]he upside... is that if you align yourself with the way logic is supposed to work, then everything behaves the way you want it to, because everything behaves perfectly logically... [I]t is the only place where everything behaves perfectly logically."

"[W]e can try and apply logic to other areas of life... [I]t's very frustrating if we try... with the expectation that that works. ...[I]t doesn't mean we shouldn't try ...[I]t's always good to try and understand everything else according to logic, but... this is the fate of many mathematicians who... get... frustrated with the actual world, because nothing behaves the way we want... Whereas in the beautiful mathematical world everything does behave..."

"All our dreams can come true as long as we have the right dreams... [A]s long as we think logically, this is the world where everything behaves correctly, and... where any toy we want, we can play with, as soon as we've dreamed it up."

"In the abstract world, as soon as you've thought of... something, you can play with it. It's there... the idea and the thing are the same... so you create things just by thinking of them... I wish I could do that for my dinner, but I can't."

"[T]his is one of my favorite pieces of Bach... the Prelude in G minor from Book 2 of the preludes and fugues The Well-Tempered Clavier... [T]here is a huge quantity of maths in Bach. Because... the tuning system enabled him to write in every key, for the first time ever... he wrote a prelude and fugue in every key. There are 12 keys on the piano. He wrote in major and minor, so that made 24 preludes and fugues. Then he got really excited, and did it again, so that made 48..."

"[T]his is from the second Book and you can almost hear his excitement at being able to write in all these keys, that he was unable to... [do] before... [S]ometimes I think when he gets to the keys... the most far away from ones he could previously write in, things become almost simpler, because he's just enjoying the sheer joy of being in f-sharp major for the first time in his life..."

"So this piece... is written in , like many pieces of Bach are. So the four lines... are independent lines of music that went their way... by themselves... [E]ach... could be sung by a person."

"When I drew this picture it enabled me to understand the piece better, but moreover, it helped me understand why I didn't understand the piece, because the voices got wound... between each other in a way that was difficult to follow until I drew this diagram... [I]t enabled me to follow the lines of music as I was playing... which... enables me to play it better. ...This is the point of understanding the s inside things."

"If we strip away the paint... the windows and the non-structural walls of this building, we'll get to the structural walls... and then this building will look a lot more like a lot of other buildings... I don't know which are the load bearing walls, and I don't need to, but it's a good thing that somebody does... [T]hat's true of all abstract structures."

"We can go through life, and this is why people do believe they can go through life without needing to know any maths... [S]o when... we go "Math is really important!" They can just go, "Well, I don't... do any of those things, and I'm just fine." ...Yeah, you can be just fine, but wouldn't you like to be better?"

"[I]f you know where the s are, you can... use things better, you can make things better. You can improve them. You can fix them when they go wrong."

"It... [abstract structure] is a beautiful thing, and sometimes all that matters is that it's a beautiful thing."

"[T]hen I started my PhD and discovered that in higher dimensional category theory... the braids show the coherence of the structure inside some higher dimensional categories, and I didn't know this when I first drew this picture, and then I... said "Wow!" I was studying braids before I was even studying braids..."

"[S]o mathematics comes up with abstract ways of studying these, where... it... looks like pieces of string, but how can I study them as if they were pieces of string without actually waving pieces of string around... [T]here are all sorts of practical situations where it's not practical to wave... string around."

"What if the pieces of string aren't really... string, but they're s? ...[M]aybe ...early diagnosis of Alzheimer's may come from looking at... the tangledness of brain cells that mutate... So an abstract way of telling whether it's tangled is... useful."

"I've invented some new words... ingressive to replace masculine and congressive to replace feminine... Ingressive is a character trait... a behaviour... about going forward... not being waylaid about what people say... being competitive and winning. Congressive is about bringing things together and... shedding light and understanding... helping people... and maybe we are presenting mathematics at school in a very ingressive way, because it's often about being right... getting the right answer."

"I'm not interested in being right... I'm not interested in winning... but I hate losing, and I don't like being wrong. ...But if it's a situation when nobody is going to lose because we're all trying to understand something together, then there's no risk of losing, and... we can all gain from it."

"I'm not interested in playing sport... because I hate the idea of losing, and I'm not interested in winning, so there's no upside and there's only potential downside..."

"If you hate the idea of being... told you're wrong, then you get put off math at a very early age because it's the one subject where you start being told you're wrong a lot, and... if you don't like that... you'll move off into some subject where... you can create things..."

"Math, unfortunately is presented in this very ingressive way, despite the fact that when you get to the research level, it's very congressive."

"[T]here are many fields where we use ingressive means to filter people, despite the fact that congressive characteristics would be more useful... and that's the thing that I would like to change."

"A lot of programs for good mathematicians at a young age are... competitions and... problem solving... and Olympiads, and that is very ingressive..."

"I love to focus on how to make mathematical activities more congressive... so when I'm teaching art students I do a lot of activities where there is no right and wrong... [W]e're not trying to achieve an answer, we're trying to explore... [W]e build something. It's more craft-like. ...[M]aybe we're trying to build s, but it doesn't really matter if you didn't... [A]long the way we discover how triangles fit together and... how versatile an equilateral triangle is... and that you can make all sorts of shapes... and some... are Platonic solids... [E]veryone can explore... and... in the world of , this is... "low floor/high ceiling" activities where there's a very low floor to entry and a very high ceiling, so if someone really does want to go far they can, but... there's no real failure, because everyone has done something. ...[I]f we do more of that, then we will stop putting off congressive people from mathematics."

"The premise of “Is Math Real?” is that people have different emotions about math. Some love the math and have little difficulty determining the correct answer to a problem while others loathe and dislike the math and have a difficult time ascertaining the correct response. Many times, a student is humbled or chastised for asking ‘a stupid question’. Author Cheng states that there are no stupid questions. In fact, the most profound concepts in mathematics are learned from asking the simplest of questions. As teachers and professors of math, we should welcome all questions and understand that answering questions is what helps students learn. ... “Is Math Real?” treats mathematical topics in a unique and original way. Discussions on number patterns, Platonic solids, math history, ethnomathematics, and mathematical structures presents the reader with a plethora of ideas on how one can envision mathematics."

"How to Bake 𝜋 is a success at explaining what mathematics is and how it is done, using simple, appealing language. It should be a rewarding read for mathematicians and nonmathematicians alike. ...[T]eachers will find plenty to borrow for... classrooms... Cheng frequently strips away technical details in order to show the big picture... [T]he book’s frequent digressions... topology, Arrow’s theorem, fair-division problems, s, the Poincaré Conjecture, the Riemann Hypothesis... [etc.]"

"… By relating personal stories, historical examples and mathematical analogies, Cheng explains how, when we rely on simplistic concepts like female and male, and the crusty logic that accompanies those concepts, we cannot have good conversations. As Cheng puts it: “If we object to the idea that ‘men are better,’ it’s not that helpful to declare instead that ‘women are better.’ It pits men and women against each other and sets up a prescriptive framework rather than a descriptive one.” She motivates us to strip away consistent triggers for dumb fights that lead nowhere. What would she have us strip away? This is where Cheng becomes a logician. She wants to carefully think through our associations with the word “success” as they relate to gender."

"As a category theorist, Cheng researches relationships. She uses this focus on relationships to address the problem of the divisiveness of arguments around gender equality. She abstracts the ideas and reframes the discussion based on relevant character traits that she demonstrates do not have to be linked to gender. She looks for assumptions that have been made, seeks to discard them, and discovers fundamental relationships. In order to better articulate these relationships, she invents new terminology as a way of preventing futile divisive arguments. These new terms are ingressive and congressive. She defines ingressive behavior as “going into things” where the focus is on the self and is more competitive, individualistic, and adversarial. She defines congressive behavior as “bringing things together” where the focus is on community and is more collaborative, interdependent, and cooperative. She gives many examples to illuminate her definitions. ... Cheng is deeply interested in making mathematics accessible to everyone."

"[Q:] What is the best thing about your job? [A:] Chatting. And the fact that I can write about whatever I like. [Q:] And the worst? [A:] Chatting. (I'm always behind with my work) And the fact that I can write about whatever I like - which is terrible when the cupboard is bare of ideas."

"London is where powerful people are, on the whole. The best-paid jobs are here, the best-paid egos. London is the capital of power and egos — therefore it's the capital of office affairs as well."

"People in professional jobs work for three reasons: money, status and the interest of the work itself. The main reason those in their fifties become sluggish is not that their minds are going, nor that the work itself has become too monotonous. It is that neither money nor status move them as they used to and the interest of the job is not enough to keep them going on its own."

"With jobs, as with parties, it is best to leave when you are still having a good time."

"[T]he biggest thing, which readers may find hard to swallow given my entire career has been based on ridiculing others, is that, for my next act, I want to be useful. Yes, I know sticking pins in pompous chief executives is useful in a meta kind of way but that's not the kind of useful I have in mind."

"[J]acking in journalism to become a teacher so late in life wasn’t brave – it was desperate. Though I didn’t admit it at the time, I was entirely burnt out – I had been at the same place for an interminably unimaginative 32 years – and was showing the classic symptoms. I was cynical about the value of what I did and of journalism as a whole – what was all this crazy chasing of ephemera really for? I also felt the columns I was writing were rubbish. The very thought of writing another one was making me feel so sick I had to find a way out and do something else entirely."

"Our blindness to ageism is particularly puzzling as it is a prejudice not against people who are different from us (other races, genders etc) but against our future selves."

"As I write, I'm interrupted by a dull thud. My partner has discovered medieval ceiling beams in the bathroom above a more recent suspended ceiling. Oops, another section of plaster must have come crashing down — but the sound is muffled as the walls are so thick. Indeed, my sister's housewarming gift of a school playground bell to summon people to dinner has been almost entirely useless — in this house you can't hear a thing."

"In my current school the teachers seem happy and have no plans to quit. Many have taught there for 20 or 30 years and educated the parents of the current students. Indeed, teacher turnover is so low that I very nearly didn't get a job. When I started looking last spring, there were 120 vacancies for business studies and economics teachers in London; in the whole of the North East there were only three. In the highest-achieving London academies a quarter of the staff quit every year — not just because they can't afford flats but because they are wrung out by the scale of the work. This is the trade-off: this sort of system gets the best possible GCSE results, but the teachers, and sometimes the students, get burnt out achieving it."

"On returning, she got off the 214 bus outside our house, and spotted a familiar pram being pushed up the front steps. The person propelling it was a stranger — a sinister woman, tall with pointy glasses and a gash of lipstick. It would be nice to say that my earliest memory was looking up from my pram and seeing a prototype of Edna Everage. Instead, I comfort myself with the idea that I may have been the only person in history to be so unmoved by the sight of the housewife superstar — who went on to convulse the world and once rendered the then Prince Charles and Camilla helpless with mirth by simply turning up in their box at the London Palladium — that I slept through the whole thing."

"The principle we wish to establish, put in other words, is that the important thing in this connexion is an increased demand on the part of all kinds of people for educational facilities, which may roughly be termed non-vocational, since they are concerned really with restoring balance to a man who has, of necessity, developed to a great extent one or other of his characteristics for the purposes of his livelihood or for the satisfaction of his reasonable desires."

"Experience has shown that the best organizers or directors of adult educational work are those who have at some time or another sought it for themselves."

"The best education for any man or woman is that which develops the maximum strength of body and mind."

"The reconstruction of society in the world depends upon the co-operation of the different interests in pursuing a line of action which leads to noble and pure ends. Of all possible ends the education of the people stands out as most clearly necessary."

"Knowledge is not education; it is but the fuel burnt in a flame which comes from the heart of the world and which makes all things new. Burnt in any other way it smoulders and suffocates."

"One cannot walk through the streets of any center of population in India without meeting face after face which is eloquent of thought, of fine feeling, and of insight into the profound things of life. In a very true sense the people of India are nearer to the spiritual hearts of things than we III England are. As for brain power, there is that in India which is comparable wIth the best in our country.""

"Every scheme of education being, at bottom, a practical philosophy, necessarily touches life at every point. Hence any educational aims which are concrete enough to give definite guidance are correlative to ideals of life—and, as ideals of life are eternally at variance, their conflict will be reflected in educational theories."

"... the as a substitute for is a law about the metrical properties of space around the "attracting" mass. Since it is to have universal validity, it must be a mathematical formula whose form is preserved when it is transformed from any one system of coordinates to any other; and since each system has its own time-measure as well as its own space-measures, time as well as space must be involved in the metrical properties with which the law deals."

"I do math and statistics. That's what I do, so I come at the whole business of turning numbers into stories. ...How can we turn numbers into stories?"

"What we use in the book... are ways which we think might... provide gripping narratives, and yet provide a realistic way of communicating small risks..."

"If you go to the English Parachuting Association web site... you find this lovely Excel spreadsheet which has got all the deaths... [F]or the last 20 years, 4.6 million jumps, 48 deaths... or 10 in a million. On average, with going up in a plane... I thought there's around 7 or 10 in a million chances of me dying. There's 50 million people in England and Wales... Every day 50 of them have accidental or violent deaths... not to do with their health. So a couple are murdered a day, a few are run over, some people fall off ladders, etc... So that's 1 in a million... Our daily dose of acute risk is a [a 1 in a million chance of dying]. So jumping out of a plane is only about a week's worth. ...[I]n terms of overall mortality... at my age, 59, it's 7,000 micromorts a year in terms of my chances of dying. So an extra 7 or 10 on top of that... [I]t's worthwhile doing... it once....So I did it [parachuted], and I survived."

"The point is... that you can make these comparisons quite easy... is... 8 [micromorts], running a marathon is... 7, ... 5, 's going to be 400..."

"So... in the book we make all these comparisons... That's acute timing risk, things that are going to kill you on the spot. ...What about the other sort of risks? ...You can have your spam ...[T]hat is not going to kill you on the spot. Well, it might. ...You might choke on...[it]... but it's... unlikely..."

"So it's a different sort of risk. These are chronic risks. ...[T]hings that... if you carry on with them, are likely to shorten your life. So how can we express these... [T]hese are the ones that newspapers tend to get terribly wrong."

"This is called a hazard curve. ...This is the chance of dying before your next birthday, on average. ...[I]t's... on a , so 10%... (1 in 10) 83 year olds will not see 84... 1 in 100 people like me [age 59] will not see their next birthday. 1 in 1,000 thirty-two year olds, and 1 in 10,000 7 year olds... and there is a... lump, sadly jumping up at 17, as you can imagine... boys... a risk-taking lump, but if you ignore that lump... it's a... straight line between... 7 and 90."

"This was discovered by Gompertz in 1825. There's something about our bodies, the way that we age, that means that every year our chance of dying increases by the same amount, 9%."

"When epidemiologists... do studies, when they follow lots of people for years, they measure the effects of various habits, in terms of s. This is what it does to your hazard every year. So if you have a daily sausage or a bacon sandwich, this goes up by about 10%, a fixed amount... as your... annual risk. 10% increase in your annual risk of death, of not making it to your next birthday."

"These s that epidemiologists report, as Michael has so ably shown, tend to get... badly reported in the newspapers. So this... in the '... "Less Meat, More Veg is the Secret for Longer Life" which... probably could well be the case, but the way they report it... They said that if we cut down the amount of red meat... 10% of all deaths would be avoided. ...So 10% of us will live forever eating nuts. This is not true. ...[T]hey're talking about relative risk, but they don't understand."

"So we've been trying to think of another metaphor... and the one we caught hold of is... speed of aging. So it's turning these numbers, rather bold numbers quite difficult to understand, into stories, and the story we've got is, "Getting older quicker" or "Aging Slower"..."

"Gompertz's observation said that between the ages of 25 and 80, your risk of dying increases by about 9% per year. ...[T]hat means that every eight years your risk of dying doubles, essentially. ...[I]t's going to get you in the end. Mathematics proves it. You can't go on forever, because it's this exponential increase in the risk. Amazing, really powerful. That's why you peg out in the end. It's going to get you."

"That change in life expectancy is not that gripping in itself. So what we've done in the book, it does seem a rather a strange thing to say... "Over an adult lifetime, about... 50-60 years... take a year off your life." It's like losing roughly 1/50 of your life. It's actually ' because of... these daily habits... like losing a week every year of your life, the same as losing 1/2 hour off a day. So we could say... that... 2 hours watching television... it's as if it's taking 1/2 hour... off your life. ...You're aging an extra 1/2 hour sitting on your backside watching television ..."

"There'a a nice thing about 1/2 hour because an adult life expectancy is 55 to 60 years... is actually a million 1/2 hours. A million 1/2 hours is 57 years. So you have got, not all of you... some of you have got a million 1/2 hours to fritter away."

"Life-expectancy reduced by 1 year = about 30 minutes off your life expectancy for each day with the habit = 1"

"One of the other things we do in the book is talk about radiation... [Y]ou can say exposure to radiation, you can talk in terms of micro-lives or cigarette equivalents. So... a flight to New York, the radiation you get from that is equivalent to smoking a couple of cigarettes, about 1/2 hour of your life... The whole body CT scan... exposing yourself... to possibly an unhealthy dose of radiation... 150 microlives, smoking about 300 cigarettes, about the same as standing about 1 1/2 miles from the Hiroshima explosion. ...[W]hen they advertise these things for a thousand quid, they don't tell you that."

"[W]e can compare hang gliding... taking heroin... health treatments, with standing next to Hiroshima. We're deliberately... using these numbers to tell uncomfortable stories."

"Probability was only invented a few hundred years ago. It's not a natural way to think at all. It's extremely difficult and complex. Anything that can help people do it, is of benefit."

"Psychologists got hold of this lovely idea of why we're trying to do it. I don't care what people do, so I'm not trying to change what they do, particularly. ...It would be nice if they could remember it... get the gist of something... learn something, but I don't even care too much about that. Psychologists have got this great scheme of what, perhaps, we're really trying to do, which is trying to breed some immunity to misleading anecdote, which is... the fact that we're so influenced by idiotic stories we hear on the web, or from our friends and neighbors."

"Misleading anecdote is someone smokes 20 a day and lives to 110, [or] who buys some tablets off the web and their cancer goes away... These are not representative... stories... [T]his is an active area of research, and it's been shown that if you present information in the way that Michael was presenting, as icon arrays, show both the good and the bad, show the totality, [it's been] shown empirically that you can make people less influenced by misleading anecdotes."

"There is a way... which comes from economics and social science. It was developed by... Frank Knight, and Keynes used this... The distinction between risk and uncertainty... [R]isk is about things... we... understand... known unknowns, to use Donald Rumsfeld's... great phrase... [something] we can put numbers on, things within... circumscribed situations... A lot of medicine is like this... repetition, a lot of data. ...[I]nsurance is like this ...We know roughly what the chances are, and we can talk about the numbers. Uncertainty is when... we don't know the numbers, or... deeper... we don't even know... the problem... the options... the possible outcomes..."

"[W]e tend to think... of something that's going to happen... soon, or is well understood as risk, but if we're talking about what will happen in the world in ten years time. Who's going to start putting chances on this. You'd be... deluded... There's much... deeper uncertainty or... radical uncertainty..."

"This current COVID-19 virus... is a classic situation... of... an uncertainty problem, rather than a risk problem because we... don't know the parameters. We don't know... how it might spread in Great Britain. We don't know the effectiveness of the interventions that are going to be made. So... when you're making projections... over the next 6 months, there's a massive range of possibilities, up to 1/2 million deaths... from about 5... the most optimistic... [A]ny quantification, giving any probabilities would be... very ambitious..."

"[S]easonal flu—average year—kills 6,000 people in this country. Mainly old... vulnerable... frail...[etc.] So we are hit by this, year after year... epidemics... we've got to put this into perspective... [T]o an extent it is a trade-off between massive disruption... [I]f you say everyone has to stay in their home for 4 weeks... that's not just economic loss. It has a massive... health... [detriment] in terms of... mentality and fitness. Norsemen of harm will be done... so it's not just a matter of... "Minimize the number of deaths.""

"We know from studying and going... back to Geoffrey Rose's idea that the biggest impact on public health... is not by picking out the real high-risk people and maybe stopping them drinking. It's by reducing the exposure of the vast mass of people at intermediate risk. So... the biggest impact on public health would be if everybody drank a little bit less... But the problem... is the Rose paradox... the very people you want to change the behavior [of] are the ones who don't see why they should change their behavior, because the impact is minimal. They won't notice the benefits. You're asking them to give up something they enjoy for the benefit... they will... never notice... [I]t's only noticeable when... multiplied... ten million times./* Understanding Risk (Mar 24, 2020) */Ref: "a large number of people at a small risk may give rise to more cases of disease than the small number who are at"

"When it comes to vaccines and infectious diseases, nobody is an individual... [With] [i]nfectious diseases... measles when it comes to vaccine decisions, or COVID-19 when it comes to taking precautions, we're not individuals. We are members of society, and there's no... "optimize your individual situation." You have... an absolute responsibility... to protect the people around you, particularly the vulnerable... [T]hat's why... people who avoid vaccinating their kids is outrageous and irresponsible... they are endangering weaker kids who might not be able to have the vaccines because their immune system is compromised or for some [other] reason... [S]imilarly, if young... healthy people... not... harmed by the virus, go around being irresponsible, they are endangering the lives of older people surrounding them, in particular, their own family."

"When it comes to trying to prevent you endangering other people, I don't see anything wrong with persuasion. ...[Y]ou shouldn't be... [endangering people] and you should be trying to be persuaded, if not forced... I get quite Stalinist on these things because... it's so irresponsible for some people to endanger the health of others. If they wanted to make their own decision that only affects them, it's very different, and I wouldn't want to persuade anyone..."

"[I]n medicine... ... not manipulation or coercion, is when... as a doctor or... authority, you genuinely believe that this action is in the person's best interests, but they don't... want to do it. ...How do you make that an ethical persuasion? It's based on... two things, first... respecting the autonomy of the individuals, that they can refuse... no matter what, respect their ability to choose... the other thing is your authenticity, your integrity, that... you are doing this on behalf of that individual, for their best interest; not... to keep your clinic numbers up or to stop this person being a nuisance...[etc.]"

"Communication is not a one-way process. It's not just telling people things. ...[T]he first rule of communication is to shut-up and... just listen... and good doctors will do that. ...Good doctors will listen and explore the person's values and concerns, and... explore to what extent... that person want[s] to be guided... to be told what to do... and that's... appropriate to want... guidance from a trusted source. ...And ...make sure ...before ...that stage, you have ...genuinely laid out the options in a way that gives it balance. You haven't tried to manipulate them... into a particular direction. ...Very difficult ...but ...a worthy objective, and... having done that, it's perfectly reasonable to... then, give advice."

"The worst... medical care would be just say, "Oh well, it's completely up to you. I'm not going to give you any advice." Well... you're the guy who knows... [the] supposed... expert. ...I want your advice. ...[T]his is an invaluable process which I hope all medical students have been taught. How to engage... It's not . ...Paternalism is ...immediately saying, "...I think you should do this," without really allowing that person a full autonomy to choose."

"[s] don't have to get into fantastically complicated statistics. ...It's all just to do with proportions, that's all! It's not a skill. Well, it is a skill in how to tell a story. ...[C]linicians now—we've got some online courses that do this—can learn to do it... Getting a rough idea of magnitudes is very important, and... to avoid words like "chances" and... I'm not even that keen on "s." So I'd much rather say... Experience shows that out of 100 people who match you in these characteristics—They're not you, but would be matching—This is what we would expect to happen, about 60 of them would survive this and... 30 blah, blah, blah... Just as a descriptor, and you could draw a little picture...[etc.] So we've got these possibilities. ...We don't know which one of these you'll be, and then it's very reasonable to tune it: but in your circumstances we... think you're better... other factors... put your chances a little higher... but we can't guarantee it either way."

"We spent ages... working... for child heart surgery... such a delicate area, trying to find the wording for... random error or binomial variability... [Y]ou can give a percentage... 95% . Well, am I going to be one of the 5% or one of the 95%? We don't know. It's just chance or luck, fortune. We can't... use those words in... delicate situations... operating on children... Then we came up with a good phrase... which we used and tested on parents... It's "unforeseeable factors," not "unforeseen factors," because that would suggest someone's to blame... [T]he unforeseeable factors could lead some people to... not survive the operation, and some to survive. So... we can put you in a group, but we can't go beyond that... [O]nly what develops over time, in terms of complications, or something like that, could... put... you in one group or another. "Unforeseeable factors," I really like that phrase. I try to use it all the time, I recommend it."

"s are disastrous. ...Relative risks are deeply misleading. They're a manipulative form of communication. To ever say, "Oh, this doubles your risk, or increases your risk 50%," absolute No-no! They are hopeless. In some situations they can be very valuable... but in general, medical things what... should be always given... s... with and without something... Like my s... I was getting... 15%, 10 year risk: 15 out 100 people like me might expect to have a heart attack or stroke. So I... roughly halved it... only in terms of relative risk... from 15% to 7-8%. ...Being told it halved it does sound good, but if wasn't a very big number in the first place, halving it is of no interest... especially if the thing's going to give me some side-effects... if it did, it would be completely pointless... [Y]ou cannot know... whether you should do something... [Y]ou cannot trade off the benefits... [and] the harms from a medical treatment without knowing the absolute risk. You cannot do it in any rational way whatsoever. ...A lot of the communication now is using absolute risk, which is a huge improvement."

"s are very valuable in... low probability, high impact events. Every time you cross the road there is a low probability and high impact that you're going to get run over. ...You take extra precautions to reduce... very small risk to... even smaller. ...[O]n an absolute risk scale, you [might] say, "Oh, I'm not going to bother... It's not worth doing..." but... by making that low risk even smaller, it's... valid... [P]eople discovered this... doing earthquake predictions... [T]he absolute risk... it's always low. They're very unpredictable... but telling people it's 10 times normal, or 100 times normal, people will act... appropriately. ...They won't panic. They won't rush away. ...[I]n Italy ...they ...sleep outside for a bit. ...So in certain circumstances relative risk can be very valuable... [U]sing both in... situations... with very small risks.., where... consequences are... severe... [and] the cost of the intervention, the action, is... minimal. Taking a bit more precautions, being a bit more careful... not putting a big investment into making a very small risk even smaller.... not walking under ladders... a low-cost change in your behavior to make a small risk even smaller... [A]bsolute risks really don't deal well with that, because you're talking 0.000..."

"We find it very difficult to deal with... low numbers, one in a million, one in a billion... Once I have to start counting the zeros, all intuition and feeling goes. So it's hopeless, and of course we're bad at it. Why should we be good at doing that sort of thing? ...[I]t's more and more reported that people will use this expected frequency format, where instead of talking about... .03 per person year... What does that mean, for heaven's sakes. It's absolutely ridiculous scientific language for something. No, what you say is, out of 100 people... we would expect 3 for this to happen each year. ...You talk about a specific group of people, which you can... draw a... picture of... and that helps enormously. You... want to bring things to... whole numbers, small numbers, preferably between 1 and 100, or between 1 and 50... magnitudes that people have got a feeling for, and... no decimal places, no multiple zeros. You've got to get rid of all of that. You've got to get things to units people can understand, preferably on a scale of 1 to 10."

"Framing is absolutely vital. ...All the work in communications is driven by the work of psychologists like Kahneman, Tversky...[etc.] The simplest one... is not always to talk about s, but to talk about s, and preferably... to give both. Our predict systems are almost always... positively framed, all in terms of survival. So we draw survival curves, not mortality curves... How long can you be without this condition. ...In a way you should give both, but ...it makes a big difference ...whether you talk about 2% mortality or 98% survival. ...2% mortality sounds rather terrifying while 98% survival sounds rather good, and we don't want to unnecessarily upset people... [W]e are all going to die ...It's 100% mortality in the end, but you want to show a decline in survival ...because it's just fairer and more likely to get people engaged rather than frighten them off immediately. ...[W]hen we ...provide an icon array that shows everybody, it shows the deaths ...patients like it. ...They like seeing out of 100 people ...in 10 years time, how many people are going to be alive ...because they have the chemotherapy now, or dead because of breast cancer...[etc.]"

"We need to think slow instead of fast, and resist drawing causal links between events where none may exist."

"It’s a common human tendency to attribute a causal effect between different events, even when there isn’t one present..."

"[S]omeone is diagnosed with autism after receiving the , so people assume a causal connection – even when there isn’t one."

"[W]hen... there have been 30 "thromboembolic events" after around 5m vaccinations, the crucial question... is: how many would be expected anyway, in the normal run..?"

"(DVTs) [normally] happen to around one person per 1,000 each year... out of 5 million people getting vaccinated, we would expect... 5,000 DVTs a year, or... 100 every week. So it is not at all surprising that there have been 30 reports."

"In the trials that led to the vaccines... adverse events were reported by 38% of those receiving the real vaccine... 28% of those who received the control [dummy, or fake vaccine, of which some were meningitis vaccine] also reported a side-effect. ...[F]ewer than 1% reported a serious adverse event, and of these... slightly more had received the dummy than the active vaccine. ...So there was no evidence of increased risk ..."

"In the UK, adverse reactions are reported using the “yellow card”... Up to 28 February, around 54,000 yellow cards have been reported... from... 10 million vaccinations... three to six reports per 1,000 jabs [0.3-0.6%]. That means a far greater number of side-effects are reported in the trials..."

"The most serious problem is anaphylactic reactions, and the advice is not to inject anyone with a previous history of allergic reactions to either a prior [vaccine] dose... or its ingredients."

"So far, these vaccines have shown themselves to be extraordinarily safe."

"Randomised trials have proved the effectiveness of some Covid treatments and saved vast numbers of lives... also showing... overblown claims about treatments... as hydroxychloroquine and , were incorrect."

"Currently, there are few books that can help at school level with communication issues in statistics and DS. One exception is Spiegelhalter, a masterpiece in how to communicate easy, not-so-easy, hard, and very difficult topics in statistics. It uses real-world problem solving as a starting point for introducing statistical ideas. One reviewer of the book suggested “it should be compulsory reading for teachers and students of statistics (indeed all subjects that use or produce data), in schools, colleges and universities.” Although the Spiegelhalter book is a great example of communication, the paucity of material in this area shows that there is an urgent need to develop a pedagogy and a corresponding range of resources in writing and communicating statistics and DS."

"In offering to the public a book on Humanity to Animals, I am sensible that I lay myself open to no small portion of ridicule; independent of all the common dangers to which authors are exposed. To many, no doubt, the subject which I have chosen will appear whimsical and uninteresting, and the particulars into which it is about to lead me ludicrous and mean. From the reflecting, however, and the humane I shall hope for a different opinion and of these the number, I trust, among my countrymen is by no means inconsiderable. The exertions which have been made to diminish the sufferings of the prisoners, and to better the condition of the poor, the flourishing state of charitable institutions; the interest excited in the nation by the struggles for the abolition of the slave-trade; the growing detestation of religious persecution—all these and other circumstances induce me to believe that we have not been retrograding in Humanity during the present century: and I feel the more inclination and encouragement to execute the task to which I have set myself, inasmuch as humanity to animals presents itself to my mind as having an important connection with humanity towards mankind."

"Every single act of cruelty contributes something towards generating in the mind an habit of cruelty."

"[I]t is our duty to cultivate humanity towards animals […] not content merely to rescue animals from pain but to leave them still more abundantly gratified."

"Animals are endued with a capability of perceiving pleasure and pain; and from the abundant provision which we perceive in the world for the gratification of their several senses, we must conclude that the Creator wills the happiness of these his creatures, and consequently that humanity towards them is agreeable to him, and cruelty the contrary. This, I take it, is the foundation of the Rights of animals, as far as they can be traced independently of scripture; and is, even by itself, decisive on the subject, being the same sort of argument as that on which moralists found the Rights of Mankind, as deduced from the Light of Nature."

"[E]very experiment is cruel which gives pain to an animal, without having for its object the leading to some great and public good."

"A man who has made a tolerable progress in humanity, will adopt, and ever bear in mind, the principle of increasing, as far as lies within his power, the quantity of pleasure in the world, and diminishing that of pain: he will establish this to himself as a constant and inviolable rule of action, and in carrying it into practice he will not overlook one created thing that is endowed with faculties capable of perceiving pleasure and pain. He will reflect on who it was that gave these faculties and remember that they were not given to be sported with. He will not esteem the meanest of animals beneath the notice of his humanity because, in the meanest of them, the wisdom and power of the all-benevolent Being are displayed. This is the Being without whom not a single sparrow shall fall to the ground and whose bounty feeds the young ravens that call upon him. His sensibility will be tremblingly alive to the sensations of all animated nature, and he will feel for everything that is capable of feeling: he will look upon pity, kindness, and mercy toward his own species as the weightier matters of humanity, but at the same time, he will consider the humane treatment of animals as more than the tithe of the anise and cummin of it. He will scrupulously do his duty in the former, and in the latter, he will not leave it undone."

"Now the number of dishes used for breakfast is, in the majority of English dishes, very limited. Bacon and eggs are the staple, the former generally unsatisfactory, being over or under cooked, too salt or too new; it is besides expensive, a large portion of it running to fat. New-laid eggs, when they can be procured in town, are very costly, they properly, after twenty-four hours, can only be described as fresh. The mind is not, however, very enlightened on this subject, and the vendors of eggs are persuaded, or at any rate try to persuade the public, that eggs are new-laid until they are "an apology for pepper.'"

"Eggs. Put into a stewpan two s of or milk, two of good gravy, with two ounces of , a little salt and pepper, Break into this six eggs, and when they begin to set throw in the {asparagus prepared thus:—Take two dozen heads of small asparagus, cut the green tops into pieces the size of large peas, throw them into boiling water with plenty of salt, when done, drain them on a sieve. Let them be stirred over the fire with the eggs for half a minute, then pour them on to their dish and garnish them with ."

"... From the earliest days of her married life, Mrs. Heath had found all her pleasure to consist in making her home happy. To be sure, in her young days, change of scene, frequent visiting and parties were not deemed essentials to the health and happiness of the middle-class wife. The bringing up of children was not delegated to ignorant, careless nursemaids, but was the first duty and delight of mothers. Neither in her day were children looked upon as burdens, or a woman pitied because of the cares of her large family. Happiness was then found in these cares, and peace of mind in the performance of the blessed duties of maternity—duties laid upon woman by Providence and nature, and which she may not seek to abrogate without ill consequences to all her race."

"Sausages have from time immemorial found favor as a breakfast dish. But that any one should be able to eat those sold in shops after the revelations respecting them, and the great risk there is of getting diseased meat in so disguised a form, is indeed surprising. There is no difficulty whatever in making sausages at home, a will last a lifetime, and be so useful for a variety of purposes that no family should be without one."

"A good cook will never be embarrassed by having too much cold meat on hand, because she will be able by her skill so to vary the dishes that the appetites of those for whom she caters will never tire of it. Even a small piece of the loin of mutton may be served in half-a-dozen different ways, and be relished by those who are tired of the mutton-chop or the plainroast."

"The right Education of the Female Sex, as it is in a manner every where neglected, so it ought to be generally lamented. Most in this depraved later Age think a Woman learned and wise enough if she can distinguish her Husbands Bed from anothers."

"There is so much servility in rigor and restraint, that of consequence there can be no greater ene∣my to Ingenuity and good nature. Fools are to be always bauld upon, and blows are fitter for beasts than rational creatures; wherefore there can nothing more engage an ingenious generous soul, than cheerfulness and liberty; not over-frightned."

"As Wells insists, many of Verne's inventions have materialized since his time. travel is a commonplace, and the circumnavigation of the moon is more than a possibility. Well's imaginings, however, remain as unattainable now as when he wrote: no one has yet contrived to travel through time, or ; we are still unable to , nor can we ."

"The s whom we admire to-day do not appear to love their s, and the s who appraise their books show no signs of doing so either. For a writer or critic to show delight in a character would would seem to-day rather naïve, an old-fashioned response left over from the days of Dickens and Surtees. Characters, it seems, are no longer objects of affection."

"Arnold Rattenbury was too young to be very active in the , but in the early he was friendly with several older Communist writers who had been. ... Although I make limiting judgements on Auden in the following pages, his centrality in the seems to me unmistakable. Unlike other hostile critics of 'orthodoxy', Mr Rattenbury does give a hostage to fortune by proposing an alternative."

"The poet and critic Bernard Bergonzi, who has died aged 87, was long associated with the teaching of 20th-century English literature at . His books shed new light on the English writing of the first world war and the 1930s, and on developments in criticism since the 60s, which he largely disliked. Monographs on HG Wells, TS Eliot, Gerard Manley Hopkins, Thomas Arnold and Graham Greene showed Bergonzi at his sensible and lucid best."

"In football, we start with an advantage. Everyone that works in the game loves it and this unites us. I think of The FA as three very different organisations: a governing body responsible for rules and regulations"

"My organisational style is based on two principles which I hope are making The FA a better organisation. First, what’s the aim?"

"Whether it is an opportunity we are trying to grasp or a problem we are trying to solve, it’s very important that we all understand the question we are trying to answer. Second, who’s accountable?"

"There can be only one person. And if that’s always the CEO, that’s limiting. In my experience, the best organisations have a depth of management talent who are clear on their accountabilities.""

"It’s really important that you know how things work in practice. One of the first things I did was to ask somebody to show me how we generate revenue, how we decide to allocate funding and how we track the return on that investment."

"Once I understood that, it helped me to work with our executives to review and set priorities. I see my job as to run the board and our council and to work with them to shape our strategy."

"Our executives then communicate and deliver on that strategy. I try hard to give them space to do that, hopefully recognising when they need support to do so.""

"The people around the boardroom are a powerful statement of your leadership. I wanted to create a winning team. Finding talent, selecting it, appointing and developing it – that’s a huge privilege as a leader. I spend a lot of time communicating with people on our board, making sure they feel connected."

"The expectations and gender stereotyping start at birth."

"We’ve got to support women in sport, but we need everyone to be participating."

"The resistance to change comes because it feels like something has been taken away from them."

"There’s no reason why a male coach can’t learn to be brilliant at supporting girls and women through all of those different things that they won’t have experienced themselves."

"With me, I think it’s just always trying to step away so that I can see what’s actually important."

"I think we see that the increased coverage has had a big impact. We need to remember that when we last looked at this, three or four years ago, about 4% overall of sports coverage was of women. We saw from your earlier evidence that the BBC now says that 30% of its coverage is female, although that still means twice as much is men’s. We know that there has been an impact. At the elite level there has been a shift: interestingly, it has been in cricket, rugby and football, which were the traditionally male team sports"

"There is still some coverage of netball, but virtually none. That was the major team sport for girls—and hockey, of course—before we were allowed to play those other big three sports. There still needs to be change at the top but, yes, that movement is very exciting. It is actually moving, for all of us who have been so frustrated by this."

"The culture is slow to shift, though, isn’t it? The shift has not yet happened; we still have this heavy, early years stereotyping meaning that, on arriving at school, girls have less ability to throw, kick and catch a ball than boys."

"We do a lot to try to catch boys up with their fine motor skills when they join school, because they tend to be behind with writing, but we should be making sure that generalist primary teachers are fully aware that the girls are arriving with lower skills in sporting areas, so that there is extra to make up for that."

"People regret far more what they don’t do rather than what they do."

"I have a right to be at the top table in business."

"“I try to define myself personally by my job to deliver on those two things first first rather than by my gender. But I recognize the responsibility I have as a leader, in brackets a little bit, as a role model, because you’re just more visible whether you like it or not.""

"The part of our trust agenda is being a modern employer where whoever you are … you can bring the very best version of yourself to work without fear of any kind of inappropriate behavior."

"“I don’t think anyone can fully explain how to prepare you for what it’s like to be a CEO until you’re actually on the job.”"

"It doesn’t need to be a long list [of medicines], it needs to be a list of things that are going to make a difference."

""There is no better return on investment in healthcare than vaccination, apart from clean water.”"

"“We are seeing new solutions being brought to previously unpreventable infectious diseases.”"

"“The question more and more for all of us in the industry is, ‘can we harness the promise of our understanding of biology, the promise of the capability of technology and with both new kinds of innovation and new policy, try and get ahead of disease at an earlier stage?’ Prevent it before it starts or intervene to keep people out of the hospital and keep people well for longer. Keep the cost of healthcare down but keep the outcomes improving in a way that's fair for more people.”"

""Everyone thinks the answer to every question these days is AI. It isn't. The answer to every question these days is all about the people. If you have a technically brilliant, aligned, energetic, committed, diverse, team, you can achieve absolutely anything,”"

"The situation is very fluid. We’ve been anticipating it for some time and we are confident that we will navigate through it. Our priority is always to make sure that we are securing supply of our medicines and vaccines to the people and patients who need it."

"One of the things that perhaps is underestimated for GSK is that when we went through the separation and the creation of Haleon, we used that to reset our global supply chain for meaningfully more resilience. That includes dual sourcing in all circumstances."

"We don’t manufacture there, so there’s no direct impact in terms of China-US relations. Perhaps you could even argue there may be opportunity as a British-based but global company for us."

"The last thing I’d say in terms of capital allocation is: no one should be in any doubt about our commitment to and recognition of the primacy of delivering returns to shareholders."

"I mean we have been through quite a radical transformation as a company over the last five years."

"We’re now a pure play biopharma and as you said absolutely after the major demerger of Haleon and absolutely resolutely focused on getting ahead of disease literally by preventing it and treating it and that is really taking advantage of this explosion in technologies, new vaccines technologies that we’ve seen, of course, mRNA"

"Unseen is an antislavery organisation and a non-governmental organisation and our mission is to work towards a world without slavery."

"When we talk about support we are talking about direct services to survivors. So we run a women’s safe-house, a men’s safe-house and also a resettlement service. The safe-houses are 24/7 and once people move out of there we then help resettle them in to the community, so we work with them for a bit longer as they are living in and around the South West."

"And we’re due to open a children’s project later this year so again a safe-house for children. Then we say by influencing we realise that as an agency on our own we can’t tackle this issue so we need to collaborate with law enforcement, with government, local and national, with the EU, with local authorities, with other statutory organisations, to make sure that we come together to look at which bits agencies should be doing to stop the issue from occurring in the first place."

"So, I think we appreciate that our support side is a bit of a sticking plaster, in that the issue has already occurred for people and you need to then kind of try and put people back together again and get them back to resilience, empowerment and independence. We do a very small part of that on their journey but ideally we want to work to a situation where we don’t have to have safe-houses anymore."

"... in quiet old-world ... dwelt that master craftsman of s, , whose emblem of minute golden garb or wheatsheaf is searched for amidst the design of any modern church window that we admire. For many years he here applied his craft, leaving as a heritage that well-planned semblance of an Elizabethan house, complete in all its details, comprising a wondrous , a raised Garden Mount, a Wilderness, A Garden House of Entertainment, all those striking features in short which are alluded to in Bacon's Essay "Of Gardens.""

"There are charming avenues of s in the gardens of St. Mary's House ... A bedchamber above is named the " Room," because of its paneled walls constructed from wood taken from these enemy ships. In the centre of each panel is a clever inlaid representation of one of these Spanish warships; picturesque objects, all of them, with their fine sails blown by the wind as they combat the waves."

"… the small village of ... was once the meeting-place of many s, for in the midst of somewhat modern surroundings we see these narrow gipsy-frequented grass-grown lanes at intervals before coming to an especially practical signboard that directs us to Homestall, the late 's old house."

"As I watch the young women gathering apples on this still autumn day, coming up the hill bearing on their arms wooden "trugs," all lined with soft to prevent their load of fruit being bruised, I am more than ever convinced that is most essentially suitable work for them. There is so much connected with it that requires the dainty touch of a woman, much that her inborn gentleness can help. Two long, low dark and cool apple-rooms have been excavated out of the chalk, and here on wooden shelves the apples are carefully laid, forming thus the richest treasure-houses of the garden."

"Like the , we should make a study of thrift, learning to prepare for all emergencies; and thus even the wild fruits of the rows, the , could be turned to useful account. Especially is this the case in a year when apples are so plentiful that there are barely accepted gratefully as a gift and cannot all find room on the shelves in the fruit house. There is nothing more delicious than blackberry-and-apple jam, and the advantage of this mixture is that the blackberries help to keep the jam, as apples if boiled alone and bottled would not last without the berries."

"Aquilegia (') .—The dainty columbines are almost too well known to need description and there can be few who will not appreciated their charms in the border. Planted in groups about 12 inches apart, they are a joy from May to July and associate well with subjects such as ', s, , s, ' or ferns ..."

"are native to Central and South Africa, so that it is hardly surprising to find them real sun lovers in the garden."

"Being rich in farinaceous matter s are cultivated in the Orient for food. The seeds—known as s—can be eaten raw or can be used in soups and various Japanese and Chinese dishes. ... In the Orient the plant is held sacred to Buddha who is thought to have been born in the heart of a Lotus blossom. The comprises a Lotus flower, the and two crossed Palm branches. Incidentally Hindus compare their country to the Lotus, the petals suggesting Central India and the leaves the surrounding provinces."

"' ( Señorita Water-lily] is a of a delicate lavender-blue shade with golden s tipped with blue. It is very free, but the flowers are small, rarely more than 3 or 4 in. across. It hails from Mexico and Texas."

"(C. esculenta of ). A robust species, growing about 2 ft. high, with large dark blue flowers, the irregularly spaces segments of which are twisted and wither independently. Western North America."

"(Bee-Balm; Oswego Tea). Robust plants with brilliant flowers, often grown on the banks of streams and lakes for the colour they impart to the surroundings. In masses they form striking effects …"

"The sometimes attacks in natural lakes, destroying the roots or eating the hearts of the flowers. Trapping and shooting are the only remedies."

"' WATER STAR GRASS C. An uncommon little aquatic with bronzed grassy foliage and small bright yellow flowers lying flat on the water surface. It is easy to grow, does not attract algae and merits more general cultivation. Tropical America."

"Neptunia plena A warm-water aquatic of great charm with opposite pairs of finely pinnate leaves, reminiscent of '. Like that plant they are sensitive to the touch."

"God, who entrusts to us their religious education, has a right to be set before them as truly, as nobly, as worthily as our capacity allows, as beautifully as human language can convey the mysteries of faith, with the quietness and confidence of those who know and are not afraid, and filial pride in the Christian inheritance which is ours. The child has a right to learn the best that it can know of God, since the happiness of its life, not only in eternity but even in time, is bound up in that knowledge."

"As swift to scent the sophist as to praise The honest worker or the well turned phrase."

"There are many good and helpful books worth careful reading—among which may be mentioned: 's How to Lay out a Garden, 's Landscape Gardening, 's Formal Garden in England, 's great work L'Art des Jardins, 's Art and Craft of Garden Making, and from the historical side A History of Gardening in England by the Hon. . The standard work on Japanese gardens is by . Many other books might be mentioned, but the above I have found the most interesting from the design point of view ..."

"The came in with , and work, already practised, became the vogue. Stiff s, and , with the orange trees in tubs outside during the summer, were in every garden of fashion. ... One of the most charming developments of 's time in topiary work was the long alley bordered by trees, generally , kept clipped up to about 10 ft. and then allowed to feather naturally. During this reign the revolt began towards "nature"."

"The position of the kitchen garden is largely dependent on the position of the kitchen, and easy and private access should be arranged between them. Size has to be settled. An acre is supposed to be enough to supply ten persons with vegetables and small fruit, and the designer can tell from the type of house how many have to be catered for; and he rules off sufficient space. Then come the s for games. The most naturally level part should be chosen for them, other conditions being satisfactory. A lawn tennis court measures 78 ft. × 36 ft., and to ensure ample running back space, 120 ft. × 60 ft. must be allowed. requires 115 ft. × 84 ft. for a full sized game, and 120 × 90 ft. of levelled lawn should be provided. A fall of 2 in. in the 100 ft. does not affect tennis, but for croquet the lawn must be a true level. A tennis court ought to run north and south in order to avoid the afternoon sun."

"Anglia cui mater fuerat, cui Gallia nutrix, Matri nutricem praefero mente meam. Six utriusque tamen meritis praeconia justis Attribuo, niteant ut probitate pares."