Education Ministers

"Three reasons why young people don't have to worry about their future: education, politics and me."

"I'm younger than Donald Trump."

"I can not avoid my responsibility."

"They call me old, but I'm only 65-years old young man."

"Well, there must be the man in the house - and a mistress, too."

"Everyone has their own strengths. It just happens to be that in me, all these strengths are combined."

"I lost because of the "mediagame"."

"Can you die of being pissed off?"

"I can't remember the last time I was wrong."

"... Full eleven centuries have passed by since then. Islam has now as great a claim on the soil of India as Hinduism. If Hinduism has been the religion of the people here for several thousands of years Islam also has been their religion for a thousand years. Just as a Hindu can say with pride that he is an Indian and follows Hinduism, so also we can say with equal pride that we are Indians and follow Islam. I shall enlarge this orbit still further. The Indian Christian is equally entitled to say with pride that he is an Indian and is following a religion of India, namely Christianity.""

"I am a Musalman and proud of the fact. Islam’s splendid traditions of thirteen hundred years are my inheritance. I am unwilling to lose even the smallest part of this inheritance. The teaching and history of Islam, its arts and letters and civilization are my wealth and my fortune. It is my duty to protect them. […] I am proud of being an Indian. I am part of the indivisible unity that is Indian nationality. I am indispensable to this noble edifice. Without me this splendid structure of India is incomplete. I am an essential element which has gone to build India. I can never surrender this claim. […] Whether we like it or not, we have now become an Indian nation, united and indivisible. No fantasy or artificial scheming to separate and divide can break this unity. We must accept the logic of fact and history, and engage ourselves in the fashioning of our future destiny."

"Islam does not command narrowmindedness and racial and religious prejudice. It does not make the recognition of merit and virtue, of human benevolence, mercy and love dependent upon and subject to distinctions of religion and race. It teaches us to respect every man who is good, whatever his religion."

"In 1920–2 Abdul Kalam Azad and the Jamiyat were advocating the mental partition of India."

"Azad put forward or patronized proposals to preserve India's unity by reassuring the Muslim League with the provision that half of all members of parliament and of the government had to be Muslims (then 24% of the population), with the other half to be divided between Hindus, Ambedkarites, Christians, and the rest. This would have amounted to a state under Muslim hegemony."

"His plan for united India immediately after independence was a confederation of communities, with the Muslim community owing allegiance to a religious head, the Amir-i-Hind, himself a vassal of the Caliph in all matters covered by Islamic law. In Peter Hardy's explanation: "Jurisprudential apartheid was to be the rock against which the power of majorities would break.""

"There are other aspects to the Afghan connection of the Khilafatist fever which deserve consideration. Thus, a demythologizing light is thrown upon the motives of the ‘nationalist Muslim’ leader Maulana Abul Kalam Azad by the conclusion he drew from the doctrine that the British, in destroying the Caliphate, had become the enemies of Islam. To Azad, like to many Ulema, this meant that British India was a Dar-al-Harb, ‘land of strife’, i.e., a land controlled by infidel enemies of Islam, where Muslims had the duty either to wage jihad and overthrow the infidel regime or to emigrate to an Islamic state. Since British power was still too strong, Muslims had to emulate the decision of the Prophet to flee Pagan Mecca to Muslim-dominated Medina in AD 622, and therefore, the influential Maulana called on the Indian Muslims to migrate to Afghanistan. Thousands heeded his call, sold everything or simply left it behind, but found Afghan society to be inhospitable, incomprehending and hostile. Stricken by poverty, famine and religious anguish, they had to return to India in desperation. Some of them died on the way to and from Afghanistan. The man who had brought this misfortune on them with his obscurantist scheme was to become the leading Congress Muslim, Education Minister in Nehru’s Cabinet and one of the most powerful men in India after Independence."

"Understandably but unjustifiably, Azad has often been described as as moderate and nationalist Muslim: he rejected the Partition of India and the foundation of Pakistan, not because he rejected the idea of a Muslim state, but because he wanted all of India to become a Muslim state in time. When in the forties the Partition seemed unavoidable, Azad patronized proposals to preserve India's unity, stipulating that half of all members of parliament and of the government had to be Muslims (then 24% of the population), with the other half to be divided between Hindus, Ambedkarites, Christians, and the rest. Short, a state in which Muslims would rule and non-Muslims would be second-class citizens electorally and politically. The Cabinet Mission Plan, proposed by the British as the ultimate sop for the Muslim League, equally promised an effective parity between Muslims and non-Muslims at the Central Government level and a veto right for the Muslim minority. Without Gandhiji's and other Congress leaders' knowing, Congress president Azad assured the British negotiators that he would get the plan accepted by the Congress. When he was caught in the act of lying to the Mahatma about the plan and his assurance, he lost some credit even among the naive Hindus who considered him a moderate. But he retained his position of trust in Nehru's cabinet, and continued his work for the ultimate transformation of India into a Muslim State."

"The greatest 'nationalist Muslim' of our times, Maulana Azad too in his last days gave out his mind in the book India Wins Freedom in unmistakable terms. Firstly the whole of the book, from start to finish, is an unabashed egocentric narration which depicts all other leaders including Gandhiji, Nehru, etc., as simpletons and Patel as a communalist. Secondly, he has not a single word of censure for heinous massacres and atrocities committed by Muslims on Hindus in various places like Calcutta, Noakhali, etc. More than all, the entire burden of his opposition to the creation of Pakistan was that it would be against the interests of Muslims! In fact, Azad says, the Muslims were fools in following Jinnah, as thereby they got only a fraction of the land whereas if they had followed his advice they would have had a decisive voice in the affairs of the entire country, in addition to all the benefits of Pakistan! Sri Mehrchand Mahajan, ex-Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, had come out with the same comments about the book. For instance, he says, "The Maulana was more shrewed than Mr. Jinnah. Left to him, India would have become virtually a Muslim-dominated country.""

"Does Jinnah want unity?... What he wants is independence for Muslims and if possible rule over India. That is the old spirit.... But why is it expected that Muslims will be so accommodating? Everywhere minorities are claiming their rights. Of course, there may be some Muslims who are different, more nationalistic in outlook: even [Maulana] Azad has his own terms, only he sees Indian unity first and will settle those terms afterwards."

"A profound scholar and a pillar of India's freedom struggle, his commitment to education was commendable. His efforts in shaping modern India continue to guide many people."

"[They] would not oppose Gandhiji even when they were not fully convinced, ...were generally content to follow Gandhiji’s lead.... They rarely tried to judge things on their own, and in any case they were accustomed to subordinate their judgment to Gandhiji. As such discussion with them was almost useless. After all our discussions, the only thing they could say was that we must have faith in Gandhiji. They held that if we trusted him he would find some way out."

"The Czech people has never had any sensitivity to current affairs. They were always prepared to defend the stale and unviable. In the Middle Ages, they wanted to reform the moribund Western Gothic with the Hussite movement. In the Great War, they lapsed into a primitive Slavophile doctrine and then they began to throw in their lot with morally putrid Western democracy."

"Why does everybody not sing a national anthem all together? The player who cannot sing a national anthem is not a Japanese representative."

"When I was greeting farmers from my car, they all went into their homes. I felt like I had AIDS."

"A nation of deities with the Emperor at its center."

"Ensure Japan's security and defend the kokutai."

"Language is articulated, limited sound organized for the purpose of expression."

"All history is contemporary history."

"Poetry is produced not by the mere caprice of pleasure, but by natural necessity. It is the primary activity of the human mind."

"[...] Croce always felt at ease with artists who were fully “sliricati”, totally adhering to a fundamental motif, to a unified state of mind. Artists such as Ludovico Ariosto and Giovanni Verga seemed to have been born especially for him because every page they wrote contained him in his entirety. (p. 43)"

"When my friends at Il Mondo asked me to speak in commemoration of Benedetto Croce, I hesitated at first. “Every true story,” Croce confessed in one of his last great works, Il carattere della filosofia moderna (The Character of Modern Philosophy), “is always autobiographical.” I became acquainted with Croce's writings in prison and in exile. Reading them revealed to me dialectical, historicist thinking. At the time, it seemed to circulate better than in other areas in the philosophy of praxis, as interpreted by Croce's teacher, Antonio Labriola, and developed by the leading figure of revolutionary anti-Fascism, Antonio Gramsci. It is no coincidence that, commenting on Gramsci's Lettere dalla prigionia (“Letters from Prison”), Croce himself wrote that “as a man of thought, he was one of us”."

"In reality, Croce made a graft. The distinction became dialectical transition, opposition and overcoming. The vital and economic moment, innocent in itself, became, in its collision with other forms, the negative, the ugly, the error, the evil. Humanistic harmony was broken, and the rupture of equilibrium, the internal contrast, became the driving force of becoming and overcoming... But above all, one must ask whether the “graft”, which is always an artificial operation, has really been successful. This is the question that dramatically troubled Benedetto Croce until the very end."

"[...] in the first rift between Croce and Gentile, Croce is the closest to original fascism. It is Croce who introduces Georges Sorel, one of the first cultural references of Fascism, into Italian culture; it is Croce who speaks, albeit in a critical dimension, of the ethical state; it is Croce who even encourages fascism and compares it to Cardinal Ruffo's Sanfedist hordes, believing that fascism has the function of sweeping away Bolshevism and the spiritual crisis and restoring the authority of the Italian state. Finally, I recall that it was Croce who suggested Gentile as Minister of Education to implement the school reform project that he, as minister, had initiated during the Giolitti era. In this vision, Fascism has a preparatory function for Croce in restoring true liberalism."

"The mere economic action, the satisfaction of our immediate pleasure, though it satisfies us in relation to our individual end, yet it leaves constantly unsatisfied that which we are beside and beyond our individual determinations, our deepest and truest being. And this dissatisfaction will last until we succeed in lifting ourselves above the infinite succession of individual ends, and in inserting in them a universal value. This passage or conversion from the purely economic to the ethic, from pleasure to duty, is designed by Croce as the conquest of that peace which is not of a fabulous future, but of the present and real: in every instant is eternity, to him who knows how to reach it. Our actions will be always new, because always new problems are put before us by the course of reality; but in them, if we accomplish them with a pure heart, seeking in them what lifts them above themselves, we shall each time possess the Whole. Such is the character of the moral action..."

"in the mainland, a university has a party committee secretary (黨委書記). Do they want a party committee secretary at HKU? Is he a party committee secretary? They want to put him here as party committee secretary."

"The dean, the vice chancellor illuminated, in those old days was elected by the faculty. So all you have to do is to be a nice guy to everyone. And I think Johannes Chan is a very nice guy. And at this point I like to declare my interest, because of one of the referees is my cousin (Andrew Li Kwok-nang). My cousin said he is a very, very nice guy... My main worry on the academic side is that he has no higher degree of PhD or MD or LLD. You may say in law it is not necessary. Well, if it is not necessary, why is there such a degree in the first place?"

"And if you look at other referee professors, they all have LLDs. Therefore, either he hasn’t tried or he is too busy or he doesn’t think it’s important. But if that’s the case, he will be devaluating [sic] … maybe of the lecturers or professors who have got PhDs who have gone through the rigors of academic pursuits. Now can you … can someone be in charge of the promotion of other persons who actually has not gone through same rigors as that other person and give an honest, independent, objective view?"

"On my list there are people who are charged with nonsense."

"When governments are austere, societies are prosperous."

"When socialism comes through the door, employment jumps out the window."

"Socialism fails when it run out of money of others."

"We will rule by ourselves. In two years or in six years. Patiently, substantially, at ease."

"Can we continue to ask our children to put their studies behind and homework aside in order to fulfill traditional obligations, yet blame other races and the circumstances in which we live, when we fall behind in education, professional education, trade and other fields of personal endeavour," she asked."

"We must examine the traditional demands of our race and social structure in light of the resources we have at hand and strike a workable balance."