People From London

"Christianity regarded all earthly existence as transient, while the Nazi thought in terms of rendering life eternal through a sort of biological Great Chain of Being. The individual was nothing, but the racial collective would endure through the aeons."

"The Enabling Law permitted the government to pass budgets and promulgate laws, including those altering the constitution, for four years without parliamentary approval. In democracies, constitutional amendments are especially solemn moments; here they were easier than changing the traffic regulations. None of the guarantees Hitler extended to the Churches or the judiciary in his address to the Reichstag amounted to a hill of beans."

"For, despite its egalitarian rhetoric, Nazi Germany eschewed the doctrine of aggressive class war, whatever revolutionist animosities lingered, against the limp bourgeoisie in general."

"The Social Democrats were adamant that they did not want ‘a deformed socialism that creates a mass prison’: ‘we want to liberate, not oppress.’ The Stalinised Communists, since 1929 committed to their ‘social fascists’ line, were convinced that the ‘Nazis and Social Democrats stand on the foundation of capitalist private property and were slaves of capital and enemies of the workers… According to the Stalinist view that the most insidious enemy were immediately to the left – which had Stalin’s ( NKVD) imposing discipline on Trotskyites with a bullet to the head – leftist Social Democrats were the most dangerous of the ‘social fascists.’"

"If faith and hope were integral to National Socialism, so too, surprisingly enough, was charity. This ceased to be an uncomplicated reflection of human altruism, still less something individuals do discreetly for the good of their souls, or to reap tax exemptions and titles. Instead, it became a favoured means of mobilising communal sentimentality, that most underrated, but quintessential, characteristic of Nazi Germany."

"The Nazis offered a combination of economic nationalism with unorthodox anti-cyclical measures to stimulate employment."

"Workers were encouraged to overcome a trades union mentality – Ley’s Germany Labor Front (DAF) rapidly ceased to describe itself as such – and to think in terms of a ‘socialism’ transcending mere bread and butter issues. In a departure from labourist economism, the Nazis recognized the workers’ need for respect, and the pride they took at their work, their skill, their tools, and the products of their labour, attitudes already evident in the modern technological sectors, such as aircraft or optical manufacturing. This lends plausibility to the idea that they were embarked on a revolution in consciousness, changing the way people perceived the world, rather than its material circumstances."

"Apparently inspired by the tidy coalmines of the Netherlands, the ‘Beauty of Labour’ section of the Labor Front tackled physical surroundings, providing improved air, light and space; decent canteens and washing facilities, and exteriors designed to make factories less forbidding. Employers with scruffy premises were warned and then stigmatized by inspectors. Each campaign was conducted under a slogan such as ‘Clean people in a clean plant’ or ‘Struggle against noise.’ Holistic talk of factory communities and of the whole man replaced over-emphasis upon the more limited question of enhancing worker productivity."

"Although Christianity was an integral aspect of many early socialist movements – and in Britain remains so to this day – in general the Churches arranged themselves on the side of conservatism, partly as a result of their traumatic experience at the hands of democratic mobs in revolutionary France and elsewhere. This alliance of throne and altar duly broke down as the temporal power of the Churches was challenged by the nation states which vied for ultimate human loyalties."

"The advent of Bolshevik, Fascist and National Socialist regimes in Russia and Europe successively between 1917 and 1933 led some contemporary intellectuals to wonder whether their own terminology adequately conveyed the scope of these regimes’ pretentions or the horrors they were responsible for. Of course, many intellectuals did not view them as horrors at all, but rather collateral costs of supposedly bright future."

"Marxist socialism also had dark nooks and crannies where Jews were regarded as money-mad capitalists or as an ‘obsolete’ people who refused to join the onward march of secular progress towards a moneyless society. Anarchists also suffered from this contagion,…"

"Nazi ideology offered redemption from a national ontological crisis, to which it was attracted like a predatory shark to blood."

"Within a remarkable short time totalitarian rule had been reimposed on half a continent using a combination of force and fraud. . . Although they were subjected to relentless assault from state-sponsored atheism, the Christian Churches remained the only licensed sanctuaries from the prevailing world of brutality and lies. Appropriately enough . . . they played an important role in the overthrow of Communism forty years later."

"Power was briefly seized by the Communists, who proclaimed a Bavarian Soviet Republic. Their leader, Eugen Levine, received the blessing of Lenin, who characteristically wished to know how many bourgeois hostages had been taken. A ‘classist’ tone was soon apparent. Milk shortages were rationalized with the argument: ‘What does it matter? . . . Most of it goes to the children of the bourgeoisie anyway. We are not interested in keeping them alive. No harm if they die – they’d only grow into enemies of the proletariat.’"

"It's nonsense to talk about the war on Islamic terrorism as a clash of civilisations. The distinction is between civilisation and chaos. Whatever people may claim - and the desire to cut through the political processes can be very powerful - there is never any justification for violence."

"It's no coincidence that most terrorists are males aged between 18 and 30. One terrorist from the 1960s recently said, 'we half-read a whole lot of theories that we fully understood' - and the same probably applies to Islamic terrorists today. Few have any background in religion, and most are ignorant of Islam. They've just ingested it as slogans, either from the internet or radical clerics, and attached it to some grievance about the persecution of Muslims in other parts of the world."

"Between 1939 and 1945 the Nazis systematically murdered as many as 200,000 mentally ill or physically disabled people whom they stigmatised as 'life unworthy of life'. This covert and complex series of operations was known as the ‘euthanasia programme.’"

"Roman Catholic priests in Germany were enjoined to shun National Socialism, and the Nazis did not get from them the clerical endorsement they often enjoyed in Protestant areas. Only a handful of priests supported Nazism, mostly malcontents or naifs, like Abbot Schachleiter, who argued that ‘if the Catholics do not co-operated with the NSDAP, there is a danger that National Socialism will become a purely Protestant movement.’"

"By 1930, Nazi students had a majority in the unions of nine universities; by 1931 they had seized control of the national Deutsche Studentenschaft"

"In northern and western Germany, dynamic leaders such as Gregor Strasser and the Elberfeld journalist Joseph Goebbels wanted to concentrate on breaking into the urban socialist vote… These men espoused a Prussian socialism. Whereas Hitler had recently vented his animosity towards Russia, they regarded it ‘as the socialist nationalist state for which consciously or unconsciously the younger generation in all countries long.’"

"The National Socialists not only joined the Communists in denouncing Social Democratic bosses, but also practiced egalitarianism, unlike bourgeois parties. One should not underestimate the extent to which working-class people bitterly resented being treated as infantile inferiors by the middle and upper classes."

"Nazi infiltration of interest groups and also the creation of parallel organizations, which gave the impression of a party listening attentively to particular grievances. It also reflected a totalitarian aspiration, in the sense that Nazis believed that no area of life was to remain unpolitical, and a very modern view that an aggregation of interests would facilitate an eventual political takeover."

"All I can say is that the case against me would have been thrown out by any court in the land since it is based on the flimsiest of evidence, rooted in hearsay and baseless rumour, and advanced by old school dogmatists once intent on resisting change at all costs and now settling some ancient scores with me. Add to that a dash of personal spite and you have some idea of the vengeful vendetta mounted against me. It is a travesty of justice and brings shame on the House of Commons. This has been a protracted, amateurish and unjust process which would not have survived five minutes' scrutiny in court. To describe what I have experienced as a kangaroo court is grossly insulting to kangaroos. None of the investigators is a lawyer and the Commissioner overseeing them has no expertise whatsoever in the consideration of alleged bullying."

"At the 2017 election, I promised my wife and children that it would be my last. This is a pledge I intend to keep. If the House votes tonight for an early general election, my tenure as Speaker and MP will end when this Parliament ends. If the House does not so vote, I have concluded that the least disruptive and most democratic course of action would be for me to stand down at the close of business of Thursday, October the 31st. Least disruptive because that date will fall shortly after the votes on the Queen's Speech expected on 21st and 22nd October. The week also after that may be quite lively and it would be best to have an experienced figure in the chair for that short period."

"They are entitled to their opinion, but they suffer from the notable disadvantage of being completely wrong."

"Difference of opinion is of the essence of politics. There is an elaborate combination of finger wagging and head shaking going on which may be personally therapeutic but is institutionally disadvantageous."

"Well I'm sure he's got a great many merits, but thus far they've been fairly effectively concealed from public view."

"It’s a point so blindingly obvious that only an extraordinarily clever and sophisticated person could fail to grasp it."

"The ICGS Bullying and Harassment Policy was breached repeatedly and extensively by the most senior Member of the House of Commons. In all, 21 separate allegations were proved and have been upheld. The House may feel that his conduct brought the high office of Speaker into disrepute. This was behaviour which had no place in any workplace. Members of staff in the House should not be expected to have to tolerate it as part of everyday life. ... [T]he respondent [Mr Bercow] has been widely unreliable and repeatedly dishonest in his evidence. He has attempted to defeat these complaints by false accusations of collusion and by advancing lies. ... The findings of the Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards, which we have upheld, show that the respondent has been a serial bully. [...] His evidence in the investigations, the findings of the Commissioner, and his submissions to us, show also that the respondent has been a serial liar. His behaviour fell very far below that which the public has a right to expect from any Member of Parliament. The respondent’s conduct was so serious that, had he still been a Member of Parliament, we would have determined that he should be expelled by resolution of the House. As it is, we recommend that he should never be permitted a pass to the Parliamentary estate."

"You need to write out a thousand times, "I will behave myself at Prime Minister’s Questions"."

"You are an incorrigible delinquent at times. Behave yourself, man!"

"Religion always poses a problem for capitalism because, by saying that some things are sacred, it insists that not everything is saleable."

"Most atheists, if they worship anything, worship something which really exists but is not worthy of worship."

"In order for capitalism to have a clear path, it needs to profane all that is sacred; there must be no limits to what is saleable. The totalitarian commercialism which is now the established Church throughout the West has come close to achieving this."

"The tradition that they originally came from Lydia, reported as a Lydian story by Herodotus, is based on erroneous etymologies, like many other traditions about the origins of 'fringe' peoples of the Greek world. Although the (no doubt numerous) early group movements in and out of Italy, and within its borders, are irretrievably lost, the Etruscans must be regarded as an Italian people."

"Arabs are not the sons of the desert, but its father."

"Wil had learned as a child that the best way to deal with goons—the more muscle-bound the better—was to confuse them. For while the human bicep was something anyone with a little patience could build up to an impressive size, the human brain was less a variable and more something a person was born with. Goons, in his experience, were rarely born with very large ones."

"He’d carefully judged the measure of his opponent’s resolve, and knew that a man as greedy and weak willed as Marcus James would always be the one to crack first under duress."

"“Wil,” said Barry with a weight of sadness that only a parent can know, “I tried as hard as I could.”"

"You know, Mr. Dinsdale, this all sounds delightfully bananas but I’m kinda monkeyed out this week."

"The Quantum Needle was theoretically used to repair any tears in the fabric of the space-time continuum, though how it actually worked in the field was a matter of some debate. When Wil had pressed the question, Mr. Dinsdale had simply mumbled, “quantum physics,” which seemed to be his standard response to any question he didn’t know the answer to."

"That’s it! That’s the utterly random mental chaos I was looking for! No one’s going to predict that response! Anything Else?"

"“I see where you’re going with this, Wil. Bravo!” “Do you?” replied Wil. “Because honestly, Mr. Dinsdale, if you know where I’m going, perhaps you’d be kind enough to give me directions!”"

"Hindsight would later suggest to Wil that things coincidentally began to fall down at exactly the same time he began to relax. He wasn’t to know this at the time, of course. Otherwise it would’ve been foresight."

"Wil knew that he had done something that might never be undone: his Dad might forgive the years of lies, but he would never forgive this one moment of absolute truth."

"Wil allowed his voice to trail off. The chances of a rational explanation at this point were in exact proportion to the chances of Lucy believing it."

"But even a man who has paid his rent doesn’t have forever."

"Wil opened his eyes to find Thursday glaring in at him through his window; apparently, the universe was already in a foul mood."

"The next morning, Wil Morgan awoke from a fitful night’s sleep and a rather disturbing variation of his anxiety dream in which he’d arrived too late to register for the World’s Biggest Failure competition and had been disqualified."

"“I think you’re missing the point.” “I think I’m not alone in that.”"