people-from-edinburgh

"Death at the headlands, Hesiod, long ago Gave thee to drink of his unhonied wine: Now Boreas cannot reach thee lying low, Nor Sirius' heat vex any hour of thine: The Pleiads rising are no more a sign For thee to reap, nor, when they set, to sow: Whether at morn or eve Arcturus shine, To pluck or prune the vine thou canst not know.Vain now for thee the crane's autumnal flight, The loud cuckoo, the twittering swallow—vain The flow'ring scolymus, the budding trees, Seedtime and Harvest, Blossoming and Blight, The mid, the early, and the latter rain, And strong Orion and the Hyades."

"Watch ', which goes on general release in the new year, and you'll leave the cinema feeling you know all about the complicated, scarred individual at its centre: , who was and eventually rescued from his torment through the love of his wife . But there are three names you won't hear during the film: those of Nan, Eric's first wife, and Linda and Charmaine, his daughters. The four of them were a family for 37 years yet they are completely missing from the film, which stars , and ."

"Mr. Lomax, who was born in Scotland, was 19 when he joined the in 1939. He was one of thousands of British soldiers who surrendered to the Japanese in . Many were relocated to Thailand and forced to build the , also known as the Death Railway. ... Mr. Lomax was repeatedly beaten and interrogated after his captors found a radio receiver he had made from spare parts. Multiple bones were broken and water was poured into his nose and mouth. One of his constant torturers stood out: , an interpreter. ... ... He learned that after the war Mr. Nagase had become an interpreter for the Allies and helped locate thousands of graves and mass burial sites along the Burma Railway."

"burnt in a furnace surrounded by water created ; steam confined in a cylinder pushed a , and linked to wheels by rods that turned the straight thrust of the piston into rotatory motion, the moved and worked. The idea that hordes of people and commodities could be carried at such shockingly powerful speeds by a sort of articulated kettle, in which the water could never be allowed to fall below the top of the furnace or there would be an explosion, seemed amazing to me. What made it all so different from today's s, which run at set speeds, was the need to be aware at every moment of the perilous balance of fire and water, which also gave the possibility of going a little faster if the engineman was good, or of disaster if he was incompetent."

"Sometime the hating has to stop."

"visited Thailand many times after that, and did charitable work for the surviving Asian labourers, many of whom were unable to return home to India or after the war and dragged out miserable lives in villages near the railway; and he opened a temple of peace on the , and spoke out against . It all seemed admirable, but I read about these things with a surprising sense of detachment. I had expected to feel some more powerful emotion, but apart from the eerie feeling of being present at my own torture as an onlooker I felt empty. And I wondered at his feeling that he had been forgiven. God may have forgiven him, but I had not; mere human forgiveness is another matter."

"Some things that humans make transcend their function; instruments can be magical. That explosive, rhythmic sound we call says more to us about getting under way, about departure, than a can ever do; perhaps it has something close to the beat of our pulse. Even if we were using up and heating the earth too much, and no-one knew that at the time, it would have been worth making an exception for steam engines. They were beautiful machines; the most beautiful machines produced in the ."

"... readers, remember that my account of what was happening in Sparta or Athens or even Egypt, is all based on real history, but the view was moulded by what I—and many another person—was thinking in the Europe of those days, with Mussolini and his fascists in Italy and already the shadow of Hitler in Germany. If I was writing this book now I might treat my characters and my story differently. But I cannot be certain, even of that."

"It occurred to the writer, a year ago, in thinking about modern Ireland, to wonder what light the record of Cæsar’s Gallic wars might throw on the causes of the present discontents. , , —were these leaders of the Gauls like the leaders of the Gael to-day? Did they feel the same blinding passion of nationalism? Were they, too, distracted by feuds and harassed by jealousies? Is the Celtic temper an undeviating possession of the centuries ; and is the character of a stock inherited as surely and as inevitably as the colour of eyes and hair ? To find an answer to these questions it would have been necessary to read those later books of the , to which (however skilled we may become in the structure of the bridge which Cæsar threw over the Rhine) few, if any, of us ever attain in our schoolboy days. For such reading no opportunity occurred; but the fortunate chance of an old friendship brought another solution. I was privileged to read the manuscript of Mrs. Mitchison’s work, and the answer came, irradiated by an historical imagination, and animated by a living sympathy, as I read."

"... Obviously my chief authority is Xenophon's ; if I can induce anyone to read this (the Loeb translation is very vivid on the whole) and get as much pleasure out of it as I did, then I shall be — as the good books say — amply rewarded. For actual history I have gone to Cavaignac or . ... 's The Greek Commonwealth is a good book to begin on."

"Mrs. Mitichison brings on her stage, and gives one the feeling of that bleak and terrible greatness. The impression which Cæsar has left on history is just the impression he made on his contemporaries. The shadow of a vastness had fallen coldly across them. Mrs. Mitchison knows how to make it fall across us. She has, as it were by miracle, got back into the air and mood of the time she writes about: she creates, and recreates. The splendor and the mystery come easy to her."

"My father was writing one paper after another in conjunction with various people, , , Butterfield, , and others, but especially ..."

"The first thing about science is asking questions; the next—and this includes the bulk of what is called scientific work—is measuring the knowledge and finding new standards of measurement; and the final thing is putting all this knowledge together."

"Loyalty is the Tory’s secret weapon."

"History is the study of the human past, through the systematic analysis of the primary sources, and the bodies of knowledge arising from that study, and, therefore, is the human past as it is known from the work of historians. The human past enfolds so many periods and cultures that history can no more form one unified body of knowledge than can the natural sciences. The search for universal meaning or universal explanations is, therefore, a futile one. History is about finding things out, and solving problems, rather than about spinning narratives or telling stories."

"For most countries involved in modern war the experience has resulted in, among other things, the testing of the cruder fallacies of economic liberalism, the testing of human reluctance to exploit the full potential of science and technology, and the testing of the general inadequacy of social provisions of the weaker members of the community: looking for the moment only at the broad perspective, one can detect change towards management of the economy, towards a more science-conscious society and towards a welfare state."

"Society has a right to demand from historians accounts which can, if so desired, be used in trying to understand the evolution of political ideas or institutions, or the origins of the many conflicts throughout the world, or to gain the necessary contextual information for enjoying more fully a painting or a poem or some favourite tourist attraction. Those seeking such understandings will not be helped by some speculative theory about the need to replace humanism with radical ideology, or of the inescapability of their situation within language, but will want to feel that the explanations, interpretations, and information they are provided with are based on serious study of the evidence; and it will do them no harm at all if they are also made aware that all sources are fallible, that all study of them must be carried out in accordance with the strictest principles, and that there are always things which we do not know with any certainty."

"If the historian finds himself resorting to metaphor or cliché, that may well be a warning that things have not been sufficiently worked out, and substantiated, to be conveyed in plain simple prose."

"The insistence that language determines ideas, and is itself a system arising from the existing power structure in society, is as grandiose a piece of speculative thought as ever dreamed up by Hegel or Nietzche."

"Historians do not, as too many of my colleagues keep mindlessly repeating, “reconstruct” the past. What historians do is produce knowledge about the past, or, with respect to each individual, fallible historian, produce contributions to knowledge about the past. Thus the best and most concise definition of history is: “The bodies of knowledge about the past produced by historians, together with everything that is involved in the production, communication of, and teaching about that knowledge."

"Primary sources did not come into existence to satisfy the curiosity of historians. They derive 'natural', 'organically', as it were, or, more straightforwardly, 'in the ordinary course of events', from human beings and groups of human beings, in the past society being studied, living their lives, worshipping, decision-making, adjudicating, fornicating, going about their business or fulfilling their vocations, recording, noting, communicating, as they go, very occasionally, perhaps, with an eye on the future, but generally in accordance with immediate needs and purposes. The technical skills of the historian lie in sorting these matters out, in understanding how and why a particular source came into existence, how relevant it is to the topic under investigation and, obviously, the particular codes or language in accordance with which the particular source comes into being as a concrete artefact."

"I'm glad to hear that Mridul Wadhwa is no longer the CEO of Rape Crisis Edinburgh but the appalling culture over which this man who identifies as a woman presided goes much deeper. This should not be an end of the matter. Others need to consider their position."

"Cherry has repeatedly expressed her conviction that independence can only succeed when its adherents address the aspirations and fears of Scotland’s pro-UK majority. What needs to be done to reassure those who voted No in 2014 – or a substantial number of them – that there is something in the independence offer for them, too?"

"A political party that allows male members to harass and abuse female members, including elected parliamentarians, without any censure whatsoever is not progressive. Those who run the SNP and indeed the Scottish Greens, the Labour party and the Liberal Democrats need to understand that men who abuse women and threaten violence against them often act on those threats. The conviction of former SNP branch equalities officer Cameron Downing for serious sexual assaults has underlined this eternal truth. This man was feted by some within the SNP despite repeatedly threatening extreme violence to feminists. The deafening silence since his conviction is shameful."

"If Nicola Sturgeon had devoted half the energy that she devoted to calling lifelong feminists like me a transphobe and devoted half that energy to governing well then the SNP would not be facing a rout this evening."

"I have been very upset. I've sat in my office in Westminster on many occasions and cried because of the really awful atmosphere that I had to work in. I have no doubt that the hatred that is directed towards me as a lesbian and as a feminist is homophobic and lesbophobic."

"I was one of a number of members elected on a manifesto to deliver better transparency and scrutiny over the party's finances and governance. I'm sad to say we failed to do that, and it wasn't for the want of trying. I just regret it's come to this. I would like those who stood in the way of reform back in 2020-21 to reflect on what they've done."

"[Cherry was concerned about the] absence of tailored defences for women who hold the view that sex is immutable and who wish to speak plainly about this."

"I have little doubt that this new law will be weaponised by trans rights activists to try to silence, and worse still, criminalise women who do not share their beliefs. A cursory look at social media shows that some of these activists already have one high profile woman in Scotland in their sights. Experience shows that working class women will also be targeted. There is no right not be offended but the muddled discourse about these issues currently in the public domain does not make that clear."

"In my view, it would be perfectly simple to have stronger safeguards in this Bill without causing any detriments to genuine trans people who wanted to get a gender recognition certificate. In holding this view, I'm not going against my party policy. The Scottish National Party has never voted for self-ID as a policy at conference and it wasn't in our manifesto. What it did promise to do was make the process of gender recognition easier for trans people which I support. What I don't support is opening it up to just anyone with minimal safeguards."

"We then went to a smaller town, Sant Andreu de la Barca, to a health centre, and when we arrived the Guardia Civil had just left. They had broken down the door of the health centre and attacked people with batons. There were a lot of older people crying ... We spoke to a local councillor who said that when the Guardia Civil came to take the ballot boxes, he asked them for a warrant, and they just pushed him out of the way."

"In my case, I was kicked off the SNP frontbench for speaking up for women's rights and for lesbian rights. And I've also received rape and death threats, as is a matter of public record. I've had no public support from my political party, despite those rape and death threats. So, I think many parliamentarians are just trying to keep out of this debate because they’re afraid to speak up."

"Anyone who hasn't noticed the violent misogyny of many so-called trans rights activists hasn't been paying attention. Women like me, JK Rowling, Rosie Duffield and others who have been on the receiving end of rape and death threats know this all too well. Signs such as those we saw on Saturday threatening murderous violence against any other group would cause outrage, but they are commonplace at such demonstrations. I'd like to see the leaders of the parties of all parliamentarians present on Saturday squarely condemn what occurred."

"To many people, it will look like this convicted rapist has gamed the system in order to try and garner sympathy, and to end up in a women's prison. And I think a lot of people will be shocked by that. So I think we should be talking about these cases. And women in prison are very vulnerable. Many women in prison have themselves been abused, and have suffered injuries over the years. ... But the point about human rights is that they're universal, and they apply to everyone. So I'm very concerned about the safety of women prisoners, with whom a convicted rapist has been placed. And under Scots law, the crime of rape can only be committed by somebody with a penis, and that's a man. And I think we should call out what's happened here."

"It should not be possible for venues or their staff to no-platform lesbians or feminists who believe that sex is an immutable biological fact just because of our sexuality or our beliefs. [...] That sort of discrimination is unlawful and I'm sure most people would agree it's not acceptable"

"[Advocating for the protection of free speech from "the heckler's veto"] The failure to do so and the actions of some political figures in fostering an intolerant and hateful climate where small groups of activists now decide who can speak and what can be discussed needs to be called out. What does it say about the Fringe and Edinburgh, the home of the enlightenment, when an elected Edinburgh politician can’t be asked questions on stage in the city they represent?"

"I've always argued that the way to win a referendum was to persuade people who voted no in 2014 of the merits of our case. The SNP needs to discuss both how we convince people to the cause of independence and also how we actually win our independence. We need to put the sovereignty of the Scottish people back to the front and centre of our debate."

"[Colleagues response to her participation in a LGB Alliance conference] They demanded I had the whip removed if I spoke at the conference and really whipped up an atmosphere, very unpleasant, and, to use someone else's words, toxic atmosphere against me within the Westminster group."

"Science in the twenty-first century does not encourage scientists to take risks in their pursuit of "the facts"—particularly when those facts call into question long-established notions."

"Archaeology is a deeply conservative discipline and I have found that archaeologists, no matter where they are working, have a horror of questioning anything their predecessors and peers have already announced to be true. They run a very real risk of jeopardizing their careers if they do. In consequence they focus—perhaps to a large extent subconsciously—on evidence and arguments that don't upset the applecart. There might be room for some tinkering around the edges, some refinement of orthodox ideas, but God forbid that anything should be discovered that might seriously undermine the established paradigm."

"We have severed our connection to spirit. That's what our society has done. It has sought to persuade us that the material realm is the only realm. And the only way we're going to recover is to reconnect with spirit. And I truly believe we need the help of the plants in order to do that."

"If ever a society could be said to meet all the mythological criteria of the next lost civilization—a society that ticks all the boxes—is it not obvious that it is our own? Our pollution and neglect of the majestic garden of the earth, our rape of its resources, our abuse of the oceans and the rainforests, our fear, hatred and suspicion of one another multiplied by a hundred bitter regional and sectarian conflicts, our consistent track record of standing by and doing nothing while millions suffer, our ignorant, narrow-minded racism, our exclusivist religions, our forgetfulness that we are all brothers and sisters, our bellicose chauvinism, the dreadful cruelties that we indulge in, in the name of nation, or faith, or simple greed, our obsessive, competitive, ego-driven production and consumption of material goods and the growing conviction of many, fuelled by the triumphs of materialist science, that matter is all there is—that there is no such thing as spirit, that we are just accidents of chemistry and biology—all these things, and many more, in mythological terms at least, do not look good for us."

"After the first Neanderthal skeletal remains were identified in Europe in the nineteenth century it was, for a very long while, one of the fundamental unquestioned assumptions of archaeology, a matter taken to be self-evidently true, that other "older", "less-evolved" human species never attained, or even in their wildest dreams could hope to aspire, to the same levels of cultural development as Homo sapiens. During more than a century of subsequent analysis, and despite multiple additional discoveries, the Neanderthals continued to be depicted as nothing more than brutal, shambling, stupid subhumans—literally morons by comparison with ourselves. Since the beginning of the second decade of the twenty-first century, however, and with increasing certainty as the evidence has become overwhelming, a new "image" of the Neanderthals as sensitive, intelligent, symbolic, and creative beings capable of advanced thought processes and technological innovations has taken root among archaeologists and is set to become the ruling paradigm."

"Indian thought has traditionally regarded history and prehistory in cyclical rather than linear terms. In the West time is an arrow—we are born, we live, we die. But in India we die only to be reborn. Indeed, it is a deeply rooted idea in Indian spiritual traditions that the earth itself and all living creatures upon it are locked into an immense cosmic cycle of birth, growth, fruition, death, rebirth and renewal. Even temples are reborn after they grow too old to be used safely—through the simple expedient of reconstruction on the same site.Within this pattern of spiralling cycles, where everything that goes around comes around, India conceives of four great epochs of "world ages" of varying but enormous lengths: the Krita Yuga, the Treta Yuga, the Davapara Yuga and the Kali Yuga. At the end of each yuga a cataclysm, known as pralaya, engulfs the globe in fire or flood. Then from the ruins of the former age, like the Phoenix emerging from the ashes, the new age begins."

"We might feel very sure that there is no more to reality that the material world in which we live, but we cannot prove that this is the case. Theoretically there could be other realms, other dimensions, as all religious traditions and quantum physics alike maintain. Theoretically, the brain could be as much a receiver as a generator of consciousness and thus might be fine-tuned in altered states to pick up wavelengths that are normally not accessible to us."

"We can no longer think of the so-called Fertile Crescent of Sumeria as the cradle of civilization. What seems more likely from the large body of evidence I have compiled is that there were a number of cities built before this time which were submerged by rising sea levels at the end of the last ice age... It proved that the methods I was using, the combination of deciphering ancient myths and new technology, actually worked. Of course I still keeping an open mind, but it does suggest I am on the right track after all. Its mainstream archaeology and science that are blinkered."

"Ancient Egypt, like that of the Olmecs (Bolivia), emerged all at once and fully formed. Indeed, the period of transition from primitive to advanced society appears to have been so short that it makes no kind of historical sense. Technological skills that should have taken hundreds or even thousands of years to evolve were brought into use almost overnight—and with no apparent antecedents whatever. For example, remains from the pre-dynastic period around 3500 BC show no trace of writing. Soon after that date, quite suddenly and inexplicably, the hieroglyphs familiar from so many of the ruins of Ancient Egypt begin to appear in a complete and perfect state. Far from being mere pictures of objects or actions, this written language was complex and structured at the outset, with signs that represented sounds only and a detailed system of numerical symbols. Even the very earliest hieroglyphs were stylized and conventionalized; and it is clear that an advanced cursive script was it common usage by the dawn of the First Dynasty."

"Our society values alert, problem-solving consciousness, and it devalues all other states of consciousness. Any kind of consciousness that is not related to the production or consumption of material goods is stigmatized in our society today. Of course, we accept drunkenness. We allow people some brief respite from the material grind. A society that subscribes to that model is a society that is going to condemn the states of consciousness that have nothing to do with the alert, problem-solving mentality.And if you go back to the 1960s, when there was a tremendous upsurge of exploration of psychedelics, I would say the huge backlash that followed that had to do with a fear on the part of the powers that be: that if enough people went into those realms and those experiences, the very fabric of the society we have today would be picked apart—and, most importantly, those in power at the top would not be in power at the top any more."

"Public opinion is broadly on our side, and the Social Democrats in particular believe that Europe will never work without Britain. So far, so good. But the real question is how hard the West Germans can fight for our interests against possible French resistance. And here, to begin with, there is a fearsome difficulty which forms the very foundation of the Grand Coalition. That astonishing alliance between Right and Left, between men as far apart politically as Willy Brandt and Franz-Josef Strauss, rests heavily on the basis of better relations with France. ... And if Bonn now quarrels with Paris over British, entry, its justification would be destroyed. Strauss, Rainer Barzel, Freiherr von Guttenberg and the other right-wingers might well then withdraw their support for Willy Brandt's Eastern policy and demand a return to cold-war rigidity. This may prove a fatal weakness, if France takes a strong stand against British entry. The Government can afford an argument, or energetic persuasion on our behalf, but not a head-on collision."

"We do not even know if the Soviet Union has won a battle. Staggered by the total Czechoslovak resistance and the hurricane of world criticism, the Soviet leaders seem on the brink of partial and disorderly retreat. Mr Dubcek is back in some sort of circulation, and a chink of hope seems to be opening. But we do know, whatever happens, that the Soviet Union is losing a world. What is being done to Czechoslovakia is a crime as appalling as that which was done to Hungary 12 years ago. But the disaster is even huger. From now on, the Soviet Union ceases to be the leader of world Communism in any effective sense. The passionate, stumbling march of millions of people across the earth towards justice goes on, through revolution here and through solemn parliamentary succession there. But the Soviet Union remains behind, leader now only of a humiliated and embittered corner of Europe which seems, today, to have nothing much to offer the human race."