Civil Servants

"The world we live in has changed exponentially since the Legal Professions Act was passed 62 years ago, and there is an urgent need for its revision to reflect these changes and make the training of lawyers in Ghana more relevant and in tune with the world we live in today."

"Brand management is so important. Whilst not playing anything down, we must make sure that Ghana thrives in a competitive environment because things Ghanaian are known, loved and wanted. We must push and we will be okay. We are very modest as Ghanaians, we don’t blow our own trumpet. But in this competitive world, let’s put our Christian modesty aside and boast a little bit."

"The situation for women has improved since then. We see laws on gender equality, maternity leave and equal opportunity. Since Beijing a number of countries embraced the concept of the girl child and several have adopted policies to ensure that girls go to school. At the University of Ghana, where I am Chancellor, there are more women students than men."

"Ghana’s tremendous efforts aimed at revitalizing the economy. A good number of sectors of the economy have totally recovered. I am sure the economy will recover, the ultimate recovery of the economy rests on the shoulders of business owners."

"That point was, and still is, that all women are working women and their work should be valued. Women do housework, care work, looking after children but none of this is reflected in the statistics. Outside of the home, their work tends to be low paid and in segregated areas. I am an economist. We at the ILO were looking at how women’s work could be counted, because what is not counted is not valued."

"As a recipient of the National Honour of Officer of the Order of the Niger (OON) and other numerous awards for her works on education."

"Her autobiography, the Up-country Girl, should be a must-read for every aspiring young girl."

"All Nigerians, who drank from the fountain of knowledge of the endowed English teacher."

"In my personal interactions with her, she was passionate about Nigeria and hoping that things would get better. Unfortunately, like many compatriots of her time, the Nigeria of their dream remains a mirage."

"We believe that every word of adoration on the exploits of the departed heroine is well earned. Indeed, every lover of education should be thoroughly grateful to Mrs. Ogundipe for her contributions to education."

"Mrs Ogundipe through her books imparted generations of Nigerians of my age. In my personal interactions with her, she was passionate about Nigeria and hoping that things would get better."

"Ogundipe’s life was defined by her passion for education and uncommon dedication to serve others, stressing that her legacy would live on."

"Throughout the journey from the coast to Fatehpur, for instance, the Fathers found that the Hindu temples had been destroyed by the Mohammedans."

"The capacious space which Hindostan occupies on the face of the globe, the advantages it derives from soil and climate, and from its numerous rivers, some of them of the first class of magnitude, may be adduced as reasonable arguments of its having been peopled at a more early period of time than Egypt, which does not possess the like local benefits. If the degree of perfection which manufactures have attained, be received as a criterion to judge of the progress of civilization, and if it be also admitted as a test of deciding on the antiquity of a people, who adopt no foreign improvements, little hesitation would occur, in bestowing the palm of precedence on Hindostan, whose fabrics of the most delicate and beautiful contexture, have been long held in admiration, and have hitherto stood unrivalled. Let me conclude this comparative view, with observing, and I trust dispassionately, that when we see a people possessed of an ample stock of science of well digested ordinances, for the protection and improvement of society – and of a religion whose tenets consist of the utmost refinement, and variety of ceremony – and, at the same time, observe amongst other Asiatic nations, and the Egyptians of former times, but partial distributions of knowledge, law, and religion – we must be led to entertain a supposition, that the proprietors of the lesser, have been supplied from the sources of the greater fund…"

"Hindostan was overthrown by a fierce race of men, who in their rapid course of conquest, exerted the most furious efforts in leveling every monument of worship and taste. They massacred the priests and plundered the temples, with a keenness and ferocity, in which their first chiefs might have gloried. A people thus crushed, groaning under the load of oppression, and dismayed at the sight of incessant cruelties, must soon have lost the spirit of science, and the exertion of genius; especially as the fine arts, were so blended with their system of religion, that the persecution of the one, must have shed a baneful influence on the existence of the other. To decide on, or affix, the character of the Hindoo, from the point of view in which he is now beheld, would, in a large degree, be similar to the attempt of conveying an exact idea of ancient Greece, from the materials now presented by the wretched country.…"

"The Rohillas, especially the lower classes, were, with but few exceptions, the only sect of Mahometans in India who exercised the profession of husbandry; and their improvements of the various branches of agriculture, were amply recompensed by the abundance and superiour quality of the production of Rohilcund."

"This is the first and most essential thing to learn about India — that there is not, and never was an India, or even any country of India, possessing, according to European ideas, any sort of unity, physical, political, social, or religious ; no Indian nation, no “ people of India,” of which we hear so much. Until we rightly appreciate the significance of such facts we shall, among other things, never understand how our Indian Empire has come into existence, and how this vast dominion is maintained by a handful of Englishmen. There was never, as Professor Seeley has said, any conquest of India by the English, according to the ordinary sense of the word “ conquest.” The conquest was rather, to borrow his expression, “ in the nature of an internal revolution,” directed by English- men, but carried out for the most part through the Natives of India themselves. No superiority of the Englishman would have enabled England to conquer by her own military power the continent of India with its 300 millions of people, nor could she hold it in sub- jection if it had been occupied by distinct nations. In the words of Professor Seeley, “ the fundamental fact is that India had no jealousy of the foreigner, because there was no India, and therefore, properly speaking, no foreigner.” It is a consequence of all this, that in every great Indian province the political sympathies of large sections of the population towards men who, geographically speaking, are their own countrymen, are often as imperfect as they are towards their English masters. We have never destroyed in India a national government, no national sentiment has been wounded, no national pride has been humiliated; and this not through any design or merit of our own, but because no Indian nationalities have existed. They no more exist in the so-called Native States than in our own territories, and the most important of those States are ruled by princes who are almost as much foreigners to their subjects as we are ourselves."

"When this empire, its polished people, and the progress which science had made amongst them, are attentively considered; when, at the same period, a retrospective view is thrown on the states of the European world, then immersed in, or emerging from, ignorance and barbarity, we must behold Hindostan with wonder and respect; and we may assert without forfeiting the claims of truth and moderation, that, however far the European world now out-strips the nations of the East, the followers of Brimha in the early period of life, were possessed of a fund amply stored with valuable materials of philosophy and useful knowledge. The humane mind will naturally feel a sense of sorrow and pity for a people, who have fallen from so conspicuous a height of glory and fortune, and who probably have contributed to polish and exalt the nations, who now hold them in subjection."

"India, you know, hath ever been famed for affording convenient places of accommodation to the traveller, who, at the distance of eight or ten miles, seldom fails meeting with a public lodging, or a reservoir of water, where he may perform his ablutions, and quench his thirst. As the greater part of the inhabitants of India, from a simplicity of life, and the clement state of their climate, have but few superfluous wants, a slight defence against the sun and rain, a small portion of clothing, with plain food, constitute a large share of their real ones. In Upper India, the economy of Karawan Serah, or, as it is usually called, the Serauce, is conducted by better regulations, and its conveniences more sensibly felt, than in the southern parts of India. An inclosed area, the interior sides of which contain small apartments, fronting inwards with a principal gateway, is appropriated, in every village of note, to the use of travellers. The stationary tenants of the Serauce, many of them women, and some of them very pretty, approach the traveller on his entrance, and in alluring language describe to him the various excellencies of their several lodgings. When the choice is made (which is often perplexing, so many are the inducements thrown out on all sides of him) a bed is laid out for his repose – a smoaking pipe is brought, and the utensils cleaned, for preparing his repast. The necessary sum is delivered into the hands generally of a girl, who procures the materials and dresses his meal in a most expeditious man-ner. For two domestics and myself, the horse and his keeper, the whole of my daily expenditure amounted to a sum, which as you will not credit, I will not venture to note; and on days when I was inclined to feast, the addition of two or three pence procured a sumptuous fare, with the accompaniment of a sauce, which an alderman over his callipash might sigh for."

"Oatley embarked on an extremely dangerous — even foolhardy — programme of visiting hardline republican areas, to which the Army went only in armoured vehicles. He did it without telling anybody, in order to talk with people who could bring him closer to his objective. Frankly, he was extraordinarily lucky to get away with it, and would certainly have been stopped if anyone [in government] had realised what he was doing."

"But though India was never thoroughly subdued by the sword of Islam, and though the country only became partially Mahomedan, yet the whole framework of her institutions was shaken and dislocated by incessant resistance. The Mahomedans disorganized Hinduism without substituting any strong religious edifice of their own, as they managed to do elsewhere. The military adventurers, who founded dynasties in Northern India and carved out kingdoms in the Deklian, cared little for things spiritual; most of them had, indeed, no time for proselytism, being continually engaged in conquest or in civil war."

"Lecky, in his delightful "Map of Life," lays great stress on the advantages of Tact. No doubt it is a splendid asset in a man's character, smoothing his passage through life and leading to success, but I still maintain that work and the love of it is the noblest gift that can be granted and that best repays itself."

"Sir Algernon West ... is a good, genial gossip, whose recollections cover the whole period of English history that began with the . He was private secretary to Mr. Gladstone during his first Prime Ministership. ... He is a fervent Gladstonian, whose idolatry of his chief is quite refreshing in these days, in which the memory of this great man is the mark for so many cynical sneers."

"It was soon after my first acquaintance with Mr. Gladstone that he told me how impossible it was for a Minister and his secretary adequately to perform their respective duties unless there was established between them such an absolute confidence as in a happy domestic life should exist between a man and his wife."

"Society, which, at the beginning of the Queen's reign, was strict, formal, and circumscribed, has followed the trend of other things, and taken a hint from commercial legislation. It has entered into an enormous syndicate, under the rules of strictly limited liability. Individualism is stamped out; Collectivism has come in. The rush and rapidity of thought and action, supplemented by all the appliances of modern science, have largely increased."

"[Peter van der Veer writes:] ‘The huge significance of Risley’s work was duly noted by the doyen of Indian anthropology S. Ghurye, who severely criticized Risley’s correlation between race and caste. In Ghurye’s view a long history of racial mingling made this kind of correlation impossible. Ghurye had a fine eye for the politicization of caste that emerged as a consequence of the census operations: “The total result has been, as we have seen, a livening up of caste-spirit”. His focus and main concern was the rise of anti-Brahmin movements both in his state Maharashtra and also in Tamil Nadu. These movements, were fed by ideological division between Aryans and non-Aryans, a division scientifically supported by Risley’s findings’."

"When he [Sir Herbert Risley] became Commissioner for the 1901 Census of India, he was determined to carry out within its framework a grand experiment in classifying and ranking castes in the sub-continent as a whole. … Census-taking had often suffered … from the difficulty even of identifying discrete castes and foundered in some census regions over the impossibility of finding any meaningful way of classifying them that did not release a hornets’ nest of contention, as the Commissioner for the 1871 Madras Census put it. Commissioners in their reports often retreated from any greater ambition than providing a list of castes in English alphabetical order. It was clear … uniformity of classification across the country could not be hoped for. Risley’s scheme, therefore, was to send to every Census Commissioner, in each province, presidency, princely state, … a standard scheme, inviting them to set up committees of ‘native gentlemen’ to consider its local applicability and to propose modifications as required."

"Ex Occidente Imperium ; the genius of Empire in India has come to her from the West ; and can be maintained only by constant infusions of fresh blood from the same source."

"This sole possible description of the Dasa nose, however, like Pinocchio's nasal organ, was to have an expanded life of its own. By 1891, H. H. Risley, who was compiling his ethnological material on Indian tribes and castes, was able to say that "no one can have glanced at the Vedic accounts of the Aryan advance without being struck by the frequent references to the noses of the people whom the Aryans found in possession of the plains of India [whom] they spoke of as 'the noseless ones'". The solitary nasal reference had suddenly become a frequent one."

"No one can have glanced at the literature of the subject and in particular at the Vedic accounts of Aryan advance, without being struck by the frequent references to the noses of the people whom the Aryans found in possession of the plains of India. So impressed were the Aryans with the shortcomings of their enemies’ noses that they often spoke of them as “the noseless ones” and their keen perception of the importance of this feature seems almost to anticipate the opinion of Dr Collingnon, that the nasal index ranks higher as a distinctive character than stature or even the cephalic index itself. In taking their nose, then, as the starting point of our present analysis we may claim to be following at once the most ancient and the most modern authorities on the subject of racial physiognomy’."

"[Dr Ambedkar (1891–1956),... after studying the voluminous Nasal Index data of various castes across India that had been published by anthropologists, he came to a striking conclusion using Risely's own data to disprove his thesis: ] The measurements establish that the Brahmin and the Untouchables belong to the same race. From this it follows that if the Brahmins are Aryans, the Untouchables are also Aryans. If the Brahmins are Dravidians the Untouchables are also Dravidians. If the Brahmins are Nagas, the Untouchables are also Nagas. Such being the facts, the theory . . . must be said to be based on a false foundation. 33"

"[Clare Anderson provides one such instance:] ‘Risley’s ideas met with some opposition at the time, even from those sympathetic to anthropometric methodology. Crooke wrote that when anthropometry was applied to caste, there were only very slight differences between the high and low castes. This did not show that anthropometry was flawed, but that ‘the present races of India are practically one people’. According to Crooke, Risley’s Nasal Index table showed no appreciable differences between Brahmins and the so-called lower castes. Indeed, according to Risley’s own figures, the latter were more nasally refined than Rajputs in the northwest Provinces. Of course, Crooke linked caste to occupational differentiation rather than distinct racial origins. There have been hints that Crooke’s career suffered as a result of his dispute with Risley’."

"The racial theory of Indian civilization alludes to racial attitudes of whites towards blacks, found in the segregated southern United States after the Civil War and in South Africa, as a constant of history, or rather as a transcendent fact immune to historical changes that is as operative in the Vedic period as it is now."

"Nothing reduces the risks to zero other than standing in a meadow completely on your own ad infinitum with nobody coming within three metres of you."

"So this is like… getting to the end of the play-off final, it's gone to penalties, the first player goes up and scores a goal ... You haven't won the cup yet, but what it does is, it tells you that the goalkeeper can be beaten."

"Where was Michael Collins during the Great War? He would have been worth a dozen brass hats."

"Politically I was an "inevitable gradualist", basically rather to the left of the Prime Ministers, but with a faith free from any dogmatic finality or Utopian perfection. I had no credal difficulty in serving each Minister in turn; we were all infected with Liberalism. I had all the influence I could wield; the only limit was my own inadequacy. By tradition I was a Welsh radical nonconformist, by temperament I was a civil servant, law-abiding, a believer in ordered progress. I believed a little in each of the three Parties, more in the Left than in the Right—"a sort of Burke with a leaven of Shelley"."

"I am a Tory P.M., surrounded with a Tory Cabinet, moving in Tory circles. You don't let me forget or ignore the whole range of ideas that normally I should never be brought up against if you were not in and out of this room. You supply the radium... you have such an extraordinary width of friendships in all classes, and so many interests that through you I do gather impressions of what is being thought by a number of significant people whose minds I should not know, at any rate so well, but for your help. I think every Tory P.M. ought to have someone like you about the place."

"He is the liberal conscience of the party."

"Diary with Letters by Thomas Jones (1954), formerly assistant secretary to the cabinet, is incomparably the best source for the appeasers."

"...increasing our own source revenues or improving from the levels where we are will give us the freedom to budget and that will ultimately improve service delivery to the citizens."

"Van Praet and Devaux were not concerned with the Congo. They both expressed a desire to be kept out of the "African adventure." For Mr. Van Praet, laden with years and involved for half a century in the history of the dynasty, this abstention was natural. As for his nephew, he had not concealed from the King, with his usual frankness, the disappointments and the dangers he faced. The prevailing opinion at court was that the founding of a colony was beyond the strength of the Sovereign of a small country and that he would encompass his private fortune, without being able to create anything lasting. ... He (Leopold II) did not try to overcome Mr. Devaux's disbelief and did without his services."

"No one knows if Leopold I made Van Praet, or if Van Praet made Leopold I."

"A man of struggle and controversy, discussed and often vilified by the small press, I have always been an embarrassment to those who have employed me. My character and my faults are not an obstacle to my useful service in the active army, but they will make me ill-suited to fulfill the duties of the King's aide-de-camp which require extreme reserve and prudence."

"He is hardly interested in foreign matters, except when they are of direct and immediate interest to the country."

"I thought about it carefully and I remained convinced that there is no place in Belgium that it could be more desirable for me to represent than Antwerp. ... I have always been imbued with the conviction that matters which particularly affect the prosperity of Antwerp should have a large part in the care of the government. Belgium had its era of commercial activity, because at that time it had ready-made means of selling the products of its manufactures. I think that the efforts of the government must tend to restore life to maritime trade, to multiply the means of exchange with overseas countries, to replace the colonial outlets which we have lost, to facilitate commercial relations with a liberal legislation."

"In life there isn’t a single person that knows everything and there is no person that knows nothing. It’s not too late to learn because you just need to develop that interest, talk to people, share with them what you have and learn from them. There is no breakthrough in this world if you are isolated, you can only make a breakthrough by talking to people."

"Always tell the truth, even if it should make him jump out of his shoe."

"His Majesty has long been imbued with the immense utility which would result for Belgium from the possession of some commercial establishment outside her territory, outside the European continent. This thought constantly preoccupied the King."

"Successful women don’t reach their goals because they are geniuses but because they are determined to do so. Never be satisfied with small things. Ladies working in the same professional should develop forums where they can discuss issues."