133 quotes found
"You cannot spend your way out of a recession or borrow your way out of debt. And when you repeat, in that wooden and perfunctory way, that our situation is better than others, that we are well placed to weather the storm, I have to tell you, you sound like a Brezhnev era apparatchik giving the party line. You know, and we know, and you know that we know that it's nonsense. Everyone knows that Britain is worse off than any other country as we go into these hard times. The IMF has said so. The European Commission has said so. The markets have said so, which is why our currency has devalued by thirty percent. And soon, the voters too will get their chance to say so. They can see what the markets have already seen: that you are the devalued Prime Minister of a devalued Government"
"We have lived through this mistake for 60 years now."
"The most dangerous diminutions of freedom come from those who are convinced of their moral rectitude."
"That idea that car manufacturers might disinvest after we leave the EU? It's a - what's the word? - oh yes. Lie."
"The EU's single market is a single regulatory regime. Membership of it doesn’t mean that you can sell your products into it: pretty much the whole world can do that. Membership means, rather, that you accept a common set of technical standards, and that you submit yourself to the ultimate jurisdiction of the European Court of Justice."
"Britain, as a relatively large economy which exports more to non-EU than to EU markets, would be better off trading freely with the single market than belonging to it."
"Back in 2014, when no one else was planning how to win the referendum, @DouglasCarswell talked tactics at the @Tate. He said: "We can win in one of two circumstances: a visible failure of the renegotiation, or one of the two main party leaders being neutral." In the event, we got both. Thanks @jeremycorbyn."
"I love Turkey. I first traveled there in my early twenties, when I was obsessed by the 1915 Dardanelles campaign. I immediately liked the people — brave, stoical, generous, hospitable and patriotic, if a little inclined to conspiracy theories. I saw Turkey as a model for the region, a successful, Western-oriented Muslim democracy."
"What is happening to this country, for the love of God?"
"History is reinterpreted, and it is taken as axiomatic that fascism must have been Right-wing, the logic seemingly being that Left-wing means compassionate and Right-wing means nasty and fascists were nasty."
"Whenever anyone points to the socialist roots of fascism, there are howls of outrage. Yet the people howling the loudest are often the first to claim some ideological link between fascism and conservatism."
"On 16 June 1941, as Hitler readied his forces for Operation Barbarossa, Josef Goebbels looked forward to the new order that the Nazis would impose on a conquered Russia. There would be no come-back, he wrote, for capitalists nor priests nor Tsars."
"Goebbels never doubted that he was a socialist. He understood Nazism to be a better and more plausible form of socialism than that propagated by Lenin. Instead of spreading itself across different nations, it would operate within the unit of the Volk."
"Subsequent generations of Leftists have tried to explain away the awkward nomenclature of the National Socialist German Workers' Party as either a cynical PR stunt or an embarrassing coincidence. In fact, the name meant what it said."
"Marx's error, Hitler believed, had been to foster class war instead of national unity - to set workers against industrialists instead of conscripting both groups into a corporatist order."
"What I want to do, by holding up the mirror, is to take on the equally false idea that there is an ideological continuum between free-marketers and fascists."
"The idea that Nazism is a more extreme form of conservatism has insinuated its way into popular culture."
"Eugenics, of course, topples easily into racism. Engels himself wrote of the "racial trash" - the groups who would necessarily be supplanted as scientific socialism came into its own. Season this outlook with a sprinkling of anti-capitalism and you often got Leftist anti-Semitism."
"Next time you hear Leftists use the word fascist as a general insult, gently point out the difference between what they like to imagine the NSDAP stood for and what it actually proclaimed."
"The two armies [Red Army and Nazi Army] met at the town of Brest, where the 1918 peace treaty between the Kaiser’s government and Lenin’s revolutionary state had been signed. Soldiers fraternised, exchanging food and tobacco – pre-rolled German cigarettes contrasting favourably against rough Russian papirosi. A joint military parade was staged, the Wehrmacht’s field grey uniforms alongside the olive green of the shoddier Soviets. The two generals, Guderian and Krivoshein, had a slap-up lunch and, as they bade each other farewell, the Soviet commander invited German reporters to visit him in Moscow “after the victory over capitalist Albion”."
"It suited Western Leftists, during and after the War, to argue that Hitler had been uniquely evil, certainly wickeder than Stalin. It was thus necessary to forget the enthusiasm with which the two tyrants had collaborated."
"The two totalitarian systems [USSR Communism and German National-Socialism] traded in all the necessary commodities of war: not just oil and vital chemicals, but arms and ships. They exhibited each other’s cultural achievements, performed each other’s music and films, stressed their joint hostility to Western capitalism."
"The idea that there was an unbridgeable gap between Soviet Communism and National Socialism, which is nowadays so widespread, would have seemed curious at the time. To be sure, there were some in Moscow, and a few more in Berlin, who believed that there must eventually come a reckoning with their “real” enemy. But theirs were minority voices. Many more gladly went along with the idea that the two socialist systems were joined in battle against “decadent Anglo-Saxon liberalism”."
"The coincidence in doctrine between the Nazis and the Soviets was obvious to the “decadent” Anglo-Saxons, too. The day after the Soviet invasion of Poland, a Times editorial observed that “Only those can be disappointed who clung to the ingenuous belief that Russia was to be distinguished from her Nazi neighbour, despite the identity of their institutions and political idiom, by her foreign policy”."
"Hayek, writing in 1944, devoted the greater part of his Road to Serfdom to refuting the idea that Nazism and Communism were opposed ideologies, well aware of how fervently this idea was being promoted."
"While Nazism is well understood as the monstrosity it was, there is often a lingering sense that Communism was well-intentioned, even though it went wrong. The merest connection with fascism bars a politician from office; yet those who actively supported the USSRare allowed to become ministers and European Commissioners. Wearing a Che Guevara tee-shirt is not regarded in the same light as wearing an Adolf Hitler tee-shirt; but it should be."
"Don’t get me wrong. Every atrocity is unique in its own terrible way. The Nazi Holocaust haunts us for good reasons. Years after I saw it, I still find this image rising, unbidden, in my mind. Happily, though, no one, beyond a deranged fringe, denies the nature of Nazism. The same is not true of the Soviet tyranny."
"Here is Russia, blatantly threatening a neighboring state with war if it seeks to pursue an independent foreign policy, yet we are so habituated to Russian flouting of international law that we barely notice any more."
"Georgia, like Ukraine and Moldova, is a sovereign state. If we accept, in practice, that Russia can alter borders by force, we signal to Moscow that it can violate international norms with impunity. We can hardly then complain if the Kremlin meddles in American elections, or orders murders on British soil."
"We threaten to rain fire upon North Korea and Iran, yet we quail before an elderly, impoverished and decrepit Russia. How diminished we are as a civilization."
"If people are determined to be outraged, they will be outraged."
"In an atmosphere when anyone can close down the conversation by saying “I feel uncomfortable”, rational discussion becomes impossible. The empirical method, the basis of Enlightenment civilization, no longer applies."
"Race is said to be non-existent, yet our cultural elites rarely seem to think of anything else."
"Surely the liberal ideal one is where, instead of obsessing about the ethnic backgrounds of actors, we treat their skin-colour as just one more attribute, like hair-colour or the ability to speak the appropriate accent for the production."
"Detaining people for shouting republican slogans, even if they do so in a deliberately coarse and provocative way, is utterly un-British [...] I worry that our police are becoming more authoritarian and — worse — that a section of the public is cheering them on."
"The bureaucracy has ballooned since Brexit – in other words, at precisely the moment when we could be opting out of the needlessly intrusive bits of the EU’s Money Laundering Directive."
"The only serious attempt to prioritise growth came from Liz Truss, and prompted outrage from civil servants, commentators and MPs, including many Tories."
"If you don't know who Daniel Hannan is, he is of course a boggle-eyed, slap-headed, unpleasant, revolting, heartless, shit-brained, attention-grabbing, fetid excuse for a prick. Sorry, um, sorry, no, no, no, I think I misread that, could you just scroll the autocue back up a bit, I meant he to say Daniel Hannan is of course a boggle-eyed, slap-headed, unpleasant, revolting, heartless, shit-brained, attention-grabbing, fetid excuse for a prick. Oh no, it turns out I got it right the first time."
"The joy, the tension, the exhilaration and the happiness those Sundays brought into our lives served as a cushion, I am sure, for the sterner life which was ahead for all of us."
"Those people who occupy a territory determine the nature of the society in that region."
"apartheid–to which Afrikaners clung for decades as their only hope and salvation from Third World domination–was in fact an impracticable and unworkable system which led directly to the Afrikaners’ demise as a political force in that country."
"It is said, in fact, that the definition of a white South African is “someone who would rather be murdered in their bed than make it.”"
"Apartheid was based on a fallacy: the fallacy that nonwhites could be used as labor to drive society; that nonwhites could physically form a majority inside South Africa, but that they could not determine the nature of South African society."
"Somehow, white South Africans believed that black labor was like a lawn mower: you could have it around, and when you didn’t need it, you could hide it in its little shed where it would be good and quiet-until you needed it again."
"There are four ways through which a nation's population can vanish: 1. Through obliteration in war; 2. Through their lands being swamped by labor-driven immigration; 3. Through physical mixing with newcomers; and 4. The second and third factors above combined with a decreasing birth rate amongst the original population. Ancient Rome vanished because of the last three factors: now exactly the same scenario is being played out in Western Europe, North America and Australia. Unless checked, the demographic trends show conclusively that Whites will be a minority in all three of these continents by the year 2100. After that, it is only then a question of time and Whites as a racial group will vanish completely."
"[History]... is nothing else but the rise and disappearance of races."
"...immigration today is a racial issue. It is one which sees masses of non-whites from around the globe immigrating to white countries."
"Unless legal and illegal immigration is halted and reversed, European First World nations across all of Europe from Spain to Russia, North America, Australia and New Zealand — will be destroyed and have their very culture and civilisation changed to that of the Third World. Immigration is now the single most important issue facing all First World nations, and will determine whether Western Civilisation continues to exist or not."
"Afrikaners: The time for white supremacism is gone. You cannot hope to survive while you are so intrinsically entwined with black labour. You used them for everything, even to murdering you and then digging your grave. You cannot survive while every single thing you do, every enterprise, every interaction, every aspect of your lives, is determined by your reliance on black labour. Because, whether you like it or not, black people also have rights, and they have claimed them. You cannot think that you have a right to rule over black people — you do not."
""Churchill was 'very keen, able, and broad-minded' and a 'powerful backer', but warned that his weakness was being 'too apt to make up his mind without sufficient knowledge'."
"British influence... is not exercised to impose an uncongenial foreign system upon a reluctant people. It is a force making for the triumph of the simplest ideas of honesty, humanity, and justice, to the value of which Egyptians are just as much alive as anybody else."
"[I]f Egyptian prosperity is a British interest, so is Egyptian independence. We have no desire to possess ourselves of Egypt, but we have every reason to prevent any rival power from so possessing itself. And there is no sure, no creditable manner of providing permanently against such a contingency, except to build up a system of Government so stable as to leave no excuse for future foreign intervention."
"I have a strong hope and conviction that, with moderation and good sense, and a policy of firmness, patience and good temper, these difficulties may yet be satisfactorily, if not immediately settled."
"There is only one possible settlement – war! It has got to come ... The difficulty is in the occasion and not the job itself, that is very easily done and I think nothing of the bogies and difficulties of settling South Africa afterwards. You will find a very different tone and temper when the center of unrest is dealt with."
"If, ten years hence, there are three men of British race to two of Dutch, the country [i.e. South Africa] will be safe and prosperous."
"...the impracticability of governing natives, who, at best, are children, needing and appreciating just paternal government, on the same principles as apply to the government of full-grown men."
"If we believe a thing to be bad, and if we have a right to prevent it, it is our duty to try to prevent it and to damn the consequences."
"I feel more sure that the end is nearing than I do what kind of end it will be."
"My own disposition is against being in the government unless I am part of the Supreme Direction."
"The prospects for peace were, "even blacker than a year ago"."
"Instead of it (World War I) being a war to end wars - it (the Paris Peace Conference) is a Peace to end Peace."
"Only at Government House did I find the Man of No Illusions, the anxious but unwearied Pro-Consul, understanding the faults and virtues of both sides, measuring the balance of rights and wrongs, and determined - more determined than ever, for is it not the only hope for the future of South Africa? - to use his knowledge and power to strengthen the Imperial ties."
"The conditions of the Transvaal ordinance ... cannot in the opinion of His Majesty's Government be classified as slavery; at least, that word in its full sense could not be applied without a risk of terminological inexactitude."
"Lord Milner has gone from South Africa, probably forever. The public service knows him no more. Having exercised great authority he now exercises no authority. Having held high employment he now has no employment. Having disposed of events which have shaped the course of history, he is now unable to deflect in the smallest degree the policy of the day. Having been for many years, or at least for many months, the arbiter of the fortunes of men who are 'rich beyond the dreams of avarice', he is today poor, and honorably poor. After twenty years of exhausting service under the Crown he is today a retired Civil Servant, without pension or gratuity of any kind whatever... Lord Milner has ceased to be a factor in public life."
"He is an old friend of mine. We admired and loved the same woman. That's an indissoluble bond."
"If he does not agree with you, he closes his eyes like a lizard and you can do nothing with him."
"We should have won the war some time ago if there were about half-a-dozen Lord Milners to form a (War) Cabinet."
"How far reaching that service became at the turning point of the war, what a godsend that combination of cool judgement and knowledge with the Premier's flair and courage, how essential to victory the power of decision which at the blackest moment consolidated the direction of the allied armies...but when the story comes to be fully written, it may be found that nothing even in the South African chapter has left a more decisive mark on history than Lord Milner's work at Doullens and in Downing Street..."
"“What would have been the position to-day on South Africa if there had not been a man prepared to take upon himself responsibility; a man whom difficulties could not conquer, whom dissenters could not cow, and whom obloquy could not move?”"
"Milner....is the strongest member of the War Cabinet as well as being the best informed."
"Lloyd George had the firm support of Milner, the strongest man in his War Cabinet."
"The interview adjourned at an appointed hour to the office of the Secretary of War, Lord Milner, whose little book on "The English in Egypt" written twenty-six years ago, was a bible to me in Philippine days. He was an extremely forceful and able man. He was born in Germany of British parents and seems to have acquired a little of the blood and iron. At least he is the most difficult person to bring over that my General (Pershing) and I have attempted. It is all on the question of how many troops shall go with the British and what they shall be. He wants all infantry and machine guns, and while protesting that they all look forward to the day when we shall have our American Army on the line as such, is demanding the things that will make that impossible, at least before 1919."
"In appearance a scholar rather than a man of action, but with an air of grave assurance, which indicated fixity of purpose, a man more apt to give than to take advice."
"I think that Milner and I stand for very much the same things. He is a poor man, and so am I. He does not represent the landed or capitalist classes any more than I do. He is keen on social reform, and so am I."
"Milner was the only person I can turn to for advice. Bonar was a quaking reed. Carson had courage, but not always judgement. Milner alone had both wisdom and intrepidity."
"...trained in the school of newspapers and books rather than that of men. ...poor nervous ignorant fellow, utterly out of sympathy with South Africa."
"Having to deal with the War Cabinet, I know very well there are only two people in it who do anything - the Prime Minister and Lord Milner..."
"l'homme d'action par excellence du cabinet anglais (the outstanding man of drive in the British cabinet)."
"When Lord Milner was given the Order of the Garter... [h]e had to attend a Levee, and when he dressed he was faced by the problem over which shoulder should the riband go. As there was no time to ask anyone's advice he decided to wear it...over the right shoulder; but the Garter...[is] worn over the left shoulder. Quite unconscious that he was wearing his riband over the wrong shoulder he appeared in the antechamber at St. James's Palace, where everyone assembles. There, unfortunately, he met George Curzon, who was scandalised at his ignorance; so strongly, in fact, did Curzon feel that after the Levee he wrote Milner a letter saying that it was almost inconceivable that anyone who had been given this ancient Order, the highest Order in the land, should not even take the trouble to ascertain how it was worn. It happened some months later that one of the Levees at St. James's Palace happened to come on a collar day... Curzon...came rather late to the Levee...and...committ[ed] the most heinous offence of wearing a riband as well as a collar. Of course, the King observed this at once but made little of it, only chaffing Curzon about the mistake; Milner, who was also present, heard these remarks and afterwards wrote to Curzon, repeating nearly word for word that it was almost inconceivable that anyone who had been given this ancient Order, etc. etc."
"Lloyd George is a real bad 'un. The other members of the War Cabinet seem afraid of him. Milner is a tired, dyspeptic old man. Curzon is a gas-bag. Bonar Law equals Bonar Law."
"...Cette decision sauva la France et la liberte du monde. Translated from French to English: ...This decision saved France and the freedom of the world."
"The complete inscription, in english, says, "In this Town Hall, on the 26th of March, 1918, the Allies entrusted General Foch with the Supreme Command on the Western Front. This decision saved France and the liberty of the world.""
"It is in this context that Trotsky's attack on Stalin must be understood. Trotsky's attack on Stalin was not directed against Stalin as an individual but against someone who during the course of struggle had emerged as the most representative spokesman of the Bolshevik Party which was upholding, defending, and applying Leninism. The main target of Trotsky's attacks, therefore, was not Stalin but the Bolshevik Party. It was revolutionary Bolshevism - Leninism - that was under attack. It was an attack on the methods and forms of organisation of the Bolshevik Party - an attack on the fundamental Leninist policies pursued by the Party."
"It will be shown during the course of this pamphlet that this slogan [A general Election to kick out the Tories and to elect a Labour Government committed to Socialism] is opportunist and that in this instance there is nothing to choose between the revisionists and the Trotskyites; that they both are opportunists; that they are not Marxists but petty-bourgeois democrats with near-Marxist phraseology; that they both betray the interests of the working class and serve the interests of the bourgeoisie by acting as the conductors of bourgeois influence into the proletariat; and that differences of opinion and battles of words between them are of no more importance than the usual jealousy between two department managers in the same store."
"The need, therefore, was for the Communist Parties to be ever-vigilant against opportunism and to weed it out by welding themselves ever more closely with the working class, by enlisting the support of the working class in thoroughly smashing all that remained of the old bourgeois state structure. This could only have been done by getting rid of bourgeois parliamentarism and putting into effect the principles of the Paris Commune; all officials to be fully elected and subject to recall; public service to be discharged at the wage rate of the working class uniting within its hands the legaslative and executive arms of the state; and breaking up the instrument of spiritual oppression, the power of the priests."
"In Britain "several hundred" are expected to turn out for a memorial meeting of the Stalin Society, with several speakers and "possibly a drink" according to chairman Harpal Brar."
"Mr Brar, the SLP's former parliamentary candidate in Ealing Southall, says Stalinism "is a minority sentiment" on the left in the UK, but "before you say it's irrelevant ... get out of Europe. Stalin is extremely popular in the former Soviet Union and with millions of people around the world"."
"[Following a CPGB-ML statement ending "Long live the memory and legacy of Comrade Kim Jong Il!"] When Kim's death was announced, I set my watch and waited for a statement in just this vein. I knew Brar's mob wouldn't let me down. ... Incidentally, if you're around on Friday [23 December 2011], the CPGB-ML will be holding a "memorial meeting to honour Comrade Kim Jong Il" at 6.30pm in Southall."
"I offer here the history of neither a saint, a hero, nor a tyrant. I believe there are few events in my life, which have not happened to many: it is true the incidents of it are numerous; and, did I consider myself an European, I might say my sufferings were great: but when I compare my lot with that of most of my countrymen, I regard myself as a particular favourite of Heaven, and acknowledge the mercies of Providence in every occurrence of my life."
"I was named Olaudah, which, in our language, signifies vicissitude or fortune also, one favoured, and having a loud voice and well spoken."
"One day, when all our people were gone out to their works as usual, and only I and my dear sister were left to mind the house, two men and a woman got over our walls, and in a moment seized us both, and, without giving us time to cry out, or make resistance, they stopped our mouths, and ran off with us into the nearest wood."
"The first object which saluted my eyes when I arrived on the coast was the sea, and a slave ship, which was then riding at anchor, and waiting for its cargo. These filled me with astonishment, which was soon converted into terror, which I am yet at a loss to describe, nor the then feelings of my mind. When I was carried on board I was immediately handled, and tossed up, to see if I were sound, by some of the crew; and I was now persuaded that I had gotten into a world of bad spirits, and that they were going to kill me. Their complexions too differing so much from ours, their long hair, and the language they spoke (which was very different from any I had ever heard), united to confirm me in this belief."
"Soon after this the blacks who brought me on board went off, and left me abandoned to despair. I now saw myself deprived of all chance of returning to my native country, or even the least glimpse of hope of gaining the shore, which I now considered as friendly; and I even wished for my former slavery in preference to my present situation, which was filled with horrors of every kind, still heightened by my ignorance of what I was to undergo. I was not long suffered to indulge my grief; I was soon put down under the decks, and there I received such a salutation in my nostrils as I had never experienced in my life: so that, with the loathsomeness of the stench, and crying together, I became so sick and low that I was not able to eat, nor had I the least desire to taste any thing. I now wished for the last friend, death, to relieve me; but soon, to my grief, two of the white men offered me eatables; and, on my refusing to eat, one of them held me fast by the hands, and laid me across I think the windlass, and tied my feet, while the other flogged me severely. I had never experienced any thing of this kind before; and although, not being used to the water, I naturally feared that element the first time I saw it, yet nevertheless, could I have got over the nettings, I would have jumped over the side, but I could not; and, besides, the crew used to watch us very closely who were not chained down to the decks, lest we should leap into the water: and I have seen some of these poor African prisoners most severely cut for attempting to do so, and hourly whipped for not eating. This indeed was often the case with myself."
"Such a tendency has the slave-trade to debauch men's minds, and harden them to every feeling of humanity! For I will not suppose that the dealers in slaves are born worse than other men—No; it is the fatality of this mistaken avarice, that it corrupts the milk of human kindness and turns it into gall. And, had the pursuits of those men been different, they might have been as generous, as tender-hearted and just, as they are unfeeling, rapacious and cruel. Surely this traffic cannot be good, which spreads like a pestilence, and taints what it touches! which violates that first natural right of mankind, equality and independency, and gives one man a dominion over his fellows which God could never intend! For it raises the owner to a state as far above man as it depresses the slave below it; and, with all the presumption of human pride, sets a distinction between them, immeasurable in extent, and endless in duration! Yet how mistaken is the avarice even of the planters? Are slaves more useful by being thus humbled to the condition of brutes, than they would be if suffered to enjoy the privileges of men? The freedom which diffuses health and prosperity throughout Britain answers you—No. When you make men slaves you deprive them of half their virtue, you set them in your own conduct an example of fraud, rapine, and cruelty, and compel them to live with you in a state of war; and yet you complain that they are not honest or faithful! You stupify them with stripes, and think it necessary to keep them in a state of ignorance; and yet you assert that they are incapable of learning; that their minds are such a barren soil or moor, that culture would be lost on them; and that they come from a climate, where nature, though prodigal of her bounties in a degree unknown to yourselves, has left man alone scant and unfinished, and incapable of enjoying the treasures she has poured out for him!—An assertion at once impious and absurd. Why do you use those instruments of torture? Are they fit to be applied by one rational being to another? And are ye not struck with shame and mortification, to see the partakers of your nature reduced so low? But, above all, are there no dangers attending this mode of treatment? Are you not hourly in dread of an insurrection? [...] But by changing your conduct, and treating your slaves as men, every cause of fear would be banished. They would be faithful, honest, intelligent and vigorous; and peace, prosperity, and happiness, would attend you."
"When [Capt. Pascal] saw me he appeared a good deal surprised, and asked me how I came back? I answered, 'In a ship.' To which he replied dryly, 'I suppose you did not walk back to London on the water.' As I saw, by his manner, that he did not seem to be sorry for his behaviour to me, and that I had not much reason to expect any favour from him, I told him that he had used me very ill, after I had been such a faithful servant to him for so many years; on which, without saying any more, he turned about and went away."
"I thought I could plainly trace the hand of God, without whose permission a sparrow cannot fall. I began to raise my fear from man to him alone, and to call daily on his holy name with fear and reverence: and I trust he heard my supplications, and graciously condescended to answer me according to his holy word, and to implant the seeds of piety in me, even one of the meanest of his creatures."
"This produced copious perspirations, so that the air soon became unfit for respiration, from a variety of loathsome smells, and brought on a sickness among the slaves, of which many died, thus falling victims to the improvident avarice, as I may call it, of their purchasers. This wretched situation was again aggravated by the galling of the chains, now become insupportable; and the filth of the necessary tubs, into which the children often fell, and were almost suffocated. The shrieks of the women, and the groans of the dying, rendered the whole a scene of horror almost inconceivable."
"These overseers are indeed for the most part persons of the worst character of any denomination of men in the West Indies. Unfortunately, many humane gentlemen, by not residing on their estates, are obliged to leave the management of them in the hands of these human butchers, who cut and mangle the slaves in a shocking manner on the most trifling occasions, and altogether treat them in every respect like brutes."
"But is not the slave trade entirely a war with the heart of man? And surely that which is begun by breaking down the barriers of virtue involves in its continuance destruction to every principle, and buries all sentiments in ruin!"
"Hitherto I had thought only slavery dreadful; but the state of a free negro appeared to me now equally so at least, and in some respects even worse, for they live in constant alarm for their liberty; and even this is but nominal, for they are universally insulted and plundered without the possibility of redress; for such is the equity of the West Indian laws, that no free negro's evidence will be admitted in their courts of justice. In this situation is it surprising that slaves, when mildly treated, should prefer even the misery of slavery to such a mockery of freedom?"
"Accordingly he signed the manumission that day; so that, before night, I who had been a slave in the morning, trembling at the will of another, was became [sic] my own master, and completely free. I thought this was the happiest day I had ever experienced..."
"My dream now returned upon my mind with all its force; it was fulfilled in every part; for our danger was the same I had dreamt of: and I could not help looking on myself as the principal instrument in effecting our deliverance..."
"And thus ended our Arctic voyage, to the no small joy of all on board, after having been absent four months; in which time, at the imminent hazard of our lives, we explored nearly as far towards the Pole as 81 degrees north, and 20 degrees east longitude; being much farther, by all accounts, than any navigator had ever ventured before; in which we fully proved the impracticability of finding a passage that way to India."
"I was sensible of the invisible hand of God, which guided and protected me when in truth I knew it not: still the Lord pursued me although I slighted and disregarded it; this mercy melted me down. When I considered my poor wretched state I wept, seeing what a great debtor I was to sovereign free grace. Now the Ethiopian was willing to be saved by Jesus Christ, the sinner's only surety, and also to rely on none other person or thing for salvation."
"I hope to have the satisfaction of seeing the renovation of liberty and justice resting on the British government, to vindicate the honour of our common nature."
"Reinforcing these were still rarer items of Africana and foreign Negro interest, the volumes of...Gustavus Vassa's celebrated autobiography that supplied so much of the evidence in 1796 for Granville Sharpe's attack on slavery in the British colonies...The cumulative effect of such evidences of scholarship and moral prowess is too weighty to be dismissed as exceptional."
"This is "a round unvarnished tale" of the chequered adventures of an African who early in life was torn from his native country by those savage dealers in a traffic disgraceful to humanity and which has fixed a stain on the legislature of Britain, which nothing but its abolition can remove. With what propriety can we boast of our humanity and love of justice whilst we continue a commerce inconsistent with either? [...] The narrative appears to be written with much truth and simplicity. The author's account of the manners of the natives of his own province (Eboe) is interesting and pleasing; and the reader, unless perchance he is either a West-India planter or Liverpool merchant, will find his humanity severely wounded by the shameless barbarity practised towards the author's hapless countrymen in our colonies."
"It is commonly said that it was the Mahomedans whom the British displaced as rulers in India. This is true only in a restricted sense. It would be nearer the truth to say that it was the Mahrattas in the main, whom we displaced."
"Now, India presents the greatest of all fields for missionary exertion, greater even than China."
"I shall conclude by reminding you that, as patriotic people, you may be confident that the missions in India are doing a work which strengthens the imperial foundations of British power, and raises our national repute in the eyes of the many millions of people committed to our charge. You may be also confident that the results are fully commensurate with the expenditure."
"I cannot give you an exact idea of the vicious orgies which occur constantly in the Hindu temples. There is a considerable amount of immorality, which is practically the outcome of the religion ;though, on the other hand, there are many domestic virtues practised by the people, showing how much of goodness would be produced, if the religion were purer."
"But for a long time to come the prime movers in these operations must continue to be European. And we hope that a great Christian, and if we may use the term, ecclesiastical army will be raised, the rank and file consisting of natives, while the captains and generals are highly qualified Europeans."
"India is a country which of all others we are bound to en- lighten with eternal truth…. But what is most important to you friends of missions, is this — that there is a large population of aborigines, a people who are outside caste…. If they are attached, as they rapidly may be, to Christianity, they will form a nucleus round which British power and influence may gather. Remember, too, that Hinduism, although it is dying, yet has force … and such tribes, if not converted to Christianity, may be perverted to Hinduism…. You may be confident that the missions in India are doing a work which strengthens the imperial foundations of British power…. I say that, of all the departments I have ever administered, I never saw one more efficient than the missionary department."
"Thus India is like a mighty bastion which is being battered by heavy artillery. We have given blow after blow, and thud after thud, and the effect is not at first very remarkable; but at last with a crash the mighty structure will come toppling down, and it is our hope that some day the heathen religions of India will in like manner succumb.”"
"The missionaries who accompanied the colonial rulers decided to use this idea to further their own proselytizing activities by branding the tribals as followers of “aboriginal” religions distinct from the “Hinduism” allegedly brought in by the theoretically postulated Aryan invaders. In 1866, Sir Richard Temple edited a book “Papers Related to the Aboriginal Tribes of the Central Provinces”, based primarily on the writings of, and of those inspired by, the missionary Reverend Stephen Hislop (1817-1863), which set the trend in “scholarly” writings on the subject. This rapidly became a matter of colonial policy."
"Our sovereign’s health—the majesty of the people."
"We will reposition, we will calibrate, we will re-orientate (due to Brexit on 31 January 2020). The activity we might lose is not that big anyway. There may be some repositioning, some short term stresses and strains but nothing that goes anywhere near threatening Gibraltar's economic survival or standard of living."
"And, indeed, we are making every effort to rebuild and chart Montserrat's sustainable development (after the Soufrière Hills Volcano eruption in 1995). The evidence of this progress is all around us, and I will quickly highlight some recent milestones."
"I want to remind all of us to remain vigilant because COVID-19 has not gone anywhere. We all have to learn how to live and work in the new regular of COVID-19. More variants are emerging around the world, and numbers are rising. It is crucial that we continue to do our part by being vigilant and taking the necessary precautions to keep us all safe from this dreaded virus. Let us continue to pray for the full healing of all persons who have contracted COVID-19."
"Significantly slowing or stopping development would not automatically make the Cayman Islands a more sustainable country. Indeed, some level of physical development will be required to ensure we can address other issues facing our community, such as ensuring we can affordably house our people in dignified conditions, safely treat our solid waste and wastewater, and meet our national renewable energy targets."
"I want to plead to the general public, please ignore the conspiracy theories out there and let's deal with the science. Science has indicated that being vaccinated is the best protection. We have no intention to do anything that would compromise the lives of people or their livelihood and relationship to the economy."
"I think one term (as the President of the Policy and Resources Committee of Guernsey) is enough for anybody. You have to pull the anchor behind you all the time, that's very stressful and takes a lot of effort and energy."
"We are all deeply saddened to learn of the death of Her Majesty The Queen. Throughout her long reign, The Queen – our Lord of Mann – has been a beacon of strength and stability, of dependability and continuity. She led a life dedicated to the service of her people, setting an example for us all. On behalf of the Government and people of the Isle of Man, I extend my sincerest condolences to the Royal Family at this sad time."
"...had not the negociations to that end been interrupted in consequence of a resolution formed by Tippoo (in the combined view of indulging his zeal as a Mahommedan, and at the same time rooting up as he fondly might imagine, the causes of that aversion which the Malabar Hindus had hitherto shewn to his government) to attempt the forcible conversion of all his Hindu subjects in Malabar to the Musulman faith ...."
"The two great Nations, inhabiting this Part of the Indies, differ widely from each other in their Complexions, Language, Manners, Disposition, and Religion. The Moguls (Moghuls) who are commonly called Moors or Moormen, are a robust, stately, and, in respect to the original Natives, a fair People. They speak what the English in India commonly call the Moors Tongue, which is in truth the Persian, 4or at least a Dialect of the Persian. They are naturally vain, affect Shew and Pomp in every thing, are much addicted to Luxury, fierce, oppressive, and, for the most part, very rapacious. In respect to Religion, they are Mohammedans; the common Sort of the Sect of Omar (in which they agree with the Turks), but those of Superior Rank are mostly of the Sect of Ali (which is followed by the Persians), and some affect to be very devout. These have the Dominion, and are possessed of all the Offices of Trust and Power, in virtue of their Descent from the Moguls, whose Empire was established by Timûr, commonly called Tamerlane in this Country; but they are now a very mixed People, composed of Tartars, Arabs, and Persians; more especially of the last mentioned Nation; who for various Reasons have quitted their own Country, but chiefly for the Sake of that Favour and Preferment, which for many Ages they have met with at the Court of (Dehli) Delly."
"The Gentoows, or Native Indians, are of a swarthy Aspect, as their proper Appellation Hindu implies; less warlike but more active and industrious than the Moors. They are a mild, subtle, frugal Race of Men, exceedingly 5superstitious, submissive in appearance, but naturally jealous, suspicious, and perfidious; which is principally owing to that abject Slavery they are kept in by the Moors; and their Vices are such as innate Cunning, of which they have a great deal, suggests to counteract those of their Masters. They are divided into several Casts or Tribes, of which the most noble is that of the Bramins, and there are also several Casts of these. Their Religion is Paganism, gross and absurd among the Vulgar, but not so amongst the wiser and better Sort. These Characters are not drawn through any Spirit of Prejudice or Partiality, but from Experience and Observation, and the Faults of both do not so much arise from any Want of Parts, or Defect in their natural Talents, as from their respective Conditions, and the barbarous Severity and perpetual Instability of their Governments."
"It is hardly surprising that the Englishmen would try by every means to keep up the differences between the two communities. Sir Bamfylde Fuller, Lieutenant-Governor of East Bengal and Assam, admitted his preferential treatment of the Muslims and explained it by a_ parable. “I said,” writes he, “that I was like a man who was married to two wives, one a Hindu, the other a Muhammadan—both young and charming— but was forced into the arms of one of them by the rudeness of the other.“ (225)"
"I am sorry to hear of the increasing friction between Hindus and Muhammedans in the N.W.F.P. and the Punjab. One hardly knows what to wish for; unity of ideas and action would be very dangerous politically, divergence of ideas and collision are administratively troublesome. Of the two the latter is the least risky, though it throws anxiety and responsibility upon those on the spot where the friction exists."
"The writers of the Indian philosophies will survive, when the British dominion in IndIa shall long have ceased to exist, and when the sources which it yielded of wealth and power are lost to remembrances."
"I hesitate not to pronounce the Gita a performance of great origmality, of sublimity of conception, reasoning and diction almost unequalled; and a single exception, amongst all the known religions of mankind."
"[Hastings] recognizes that in public he is taken to be Christian but then, he admits, in "hipocricy [sic], . . . prudence or rather necessity imposed silence." But, "I am unable not unwilling to receive and understand. What my inability is founded on I cannot to a certainty determine." To me, though, it is very clear. He cannot see anything that distinguishes Christianity from the other religions about which he knows. "Is the incarnation of Christ more intelligible than . . . those of Bishen?" Europeans prevail over non-Europeans not because of the superiority of Christianity but for secular reasons: "a free government, cold climate and printing and navigation." Christianity does not make people "better." "Let those who know the lower uneducated class in England . . . say how much more rarely crimes are committed in England than in India.""
"We find that it (India) was visited for the purpose of acquiring knowledge by Pythagoras, Anaxarchus, Pyrrho, and others who afterwards became eminent philosophers in Greece."
"Many hundreds of years before the coming of the English, the nations of India had been a collection of wealthy and highly civilized people, possessed of a great language with an elaborate code of laws and social regulations, with exquisite artistic taste in architecture and decoration, producing beautiful manufactures of all kinds, and endowed with religious ideas and philosophic and scientific conceptions which have greatly influenced the development of the most progressive races of the West. One of the noblest individual moralists who ever lived, Sankya Muni was a Hindu; the Code of Manu, dating from before the Christian era, is still an essential a study for the jurist....and there are in India, in this later age, worthy descendants of the great authors of the Vedas, of the Mahabharata and the Ramayana... And yet, nine-tenths of what has been written by the British about India is so expressed that we are made to believe the shameful falsehood that stability and civilized government in Hindustan began only with the rule of the British."