People From London

"It is said that only when the Germans are weak and disunited are they great—great, that is to say, in art and letters, in science, in speculative thought."

"But Germans are not interested in freedom as the English understand it. When they say freedom, they do not mean the liberty of the individual to do what he likes within the limits imposed by the written and unwritten law, but the liberty of the nation to do what it pleases in defiance of international law."

"Justice is not humane if it is never severe."

"Every enlightened, humane, and patriotic Englishman has been ashamed, upon occasion, of what his country has done and will be fearful of what she may do yet. He would be a Pharisee were he to assume that there is a separate England of evil-doers: that this England is not his England, the real England, but another England."

"He who is never ashamed of his country has as little patriotism as he who is never proud of his country."

"National Socialism, like Marxism, lives on hatred. There is no easier method of concentrating hate than anti-Semitism. The Jew, made to look gross and hideous, becomes the symbol of all that is hateful, of the enemy in the abstract and in the concrete. The Jew of caricature, the Jew with the hooked nose, dark, curly hair and fleshy lips, is made to symbolize evil as such in the eyes of the Nazi, just as the capitalist of caricature is made to symbolize evil as such in the eyes of the Communists."

"Parliamentary government does not suit the Germans. They cannot conceive of loyal opposition or of opposition without personal animosity. They care little for individual freedom. But they do care for equality and they have a passion for justice. Egalitarian States tend to be despotic, and when the passion for justice becomes a frenzy that moves whole multitudes, it will lead to extreme injustice."

"Lenin and Hitler are haters of freedom and—in so far as they are capable of love at all—they are lovers of intolerance. They wanted freedom to establish unfreedom."

"All National Socialist writers are obsessed with race, blood, and nationhood, just as all Marxist writers are obsessed with class and class-warfare. Just as there is no history for the Marxist that is not a history of class-struggle, so there is no history for the National Socialist that is not a history of racial conflict. Hitler demanded that the history of the world be rewritten so that ‘the racial question’ may be ‘raised to dominating eminence.’"

"That the individual has any rights of his own, even the right to live, has no meaning at all to Lenin or Hitler."

"Lenin and Hitler are quite unashamed in their constant advocacy of ruthlessness, of the bloodiest wars and upheavals. Throughout all Marxian and National Socialist literature there is not a trace of pity, magnanimity, forgiveness, or of any generous feeling, not one word of respect for honor or for righteousness—not one trace of toleration, not the slightest appreciation for a foe who might be brave, or even right in his own way."

"The Marxian and National Socialist conception of history is not ‘historical’ at all, nor ‘scientific,’ nor ‘objective.’ It is sectarian and dictatorial. The myth, the ‘theory,’ the ‘ideology,’ or the ‘Weltanschauung’ is imposed upon the past, and ‘ideological’ dictatorship is established, all history being pressed, bludgeoned, and trimmed until it becomes a record of the transition from the primitive state of nature to the apocalypse that inaugurates the Millennium and brings history to an end."

"The Marxist really believes that Marxism is ‘scientific.’ The National Socialist really believes that the Racial Principle has something to do with serious biology."

"Lenin is a would-be destroyer of religion, Hitler a corrupter of religion. The National Socialist attack, accepting as it does much of liberal theology and natural religion, is far more dangerous to Christianity than the godlessness of its decay. Lenin would destroy the altar or at least promote its decay. Hitler would preserve the altar while replacing the Cross of Christ by the Swastika."

"Marxism has led to Fascism and National-Socialism, because, in all essentials, it is Fascism and National Socialism."

"Christianity is never safe, but where there is one atom of Marxism or National Socialism left, Christianity is in mortal danger—and so are Marxism and National Socialism wherever there is one atom of Christianity left."

"For twenty years the Russian people have been agonizingly stretched and bloodily mutilated to fit the Procrustean bed of the Marxian ‘theory.’ The attempt to impose Marxism has been abandoned. The theory itself remains sacrosanct, but those who would still put it into practice are shot, imprisoned, or exiled. The Soviet Union is a despotism working through a secret police and a subservient bureaucracy. This alone is the denial of a doctrine essential to Marxism, namely, the ‘withering away’ of the State. So far from ‘withering away,’ the Russian State has greater coercive power than any other in the world."

"We have referred to Marxism and National Socialism as secular religions. They are not opposites, but are fundamentally akin, in a religious as well as in a secular sense. Both are messianic and socialistic. Both reject the Christian knowledge that all are under sin and both see in good and evil principles of class or race. Both have enthroned the modern Caesar, collective man, the implacable enemy of the individual soul. Both would render unto this Caesar the things which are God’s. Both would make man master of his own destiny, establish the Kingdom of Heaven in this world. Neither will hear of any Kingdom that is not of this world."

"Believing as he does in force and determined to secure nothing by peaceful means that can be secured by violence, the Marxist lives in hope of wars and crises that will so unbalance the social order and so loosen the restraint imposed by law and custom, that violence can achieve a maximum breadth and intensity. The situation then arises which the Marxist terms ‘revolutionary.’ It is the situation he desires because he believes that only then is the ‘final and decisive battle possible.’ To Lenin —as to Hitler—the Great War was welcome because it promised to fulfill the revolutionary dream."

"For the ‘little man’ the Marxist feels far greater hatred than for the capitalist. The ‘little man’ is worse than counter-revolutionary.’ He is unrevolutionary, and to be unrevolutionary is, in the eyes of the Marxist, to be a kind of leper. Marxists are habitually contemptuous of the ‘petit bourgeois mind’ as not a mind at all, but something reptilian, something infinitely mean and ignominious."

"Marxism would be a phenomenon of little more than historical interest, seeing that it has failed even in its principal stronghold, were it not so closely akin to National Socialism. National Socialism would have been inconceivable without Marxism."

"Like Marx and Lenin, Hitler is an anti-capitalist. And as ‘capitalism ’ is evil, it is, in Hitler’s eyes, Jewish. Anti-Semitism and anti-Capitalism frequently go hand in hand—the Pan-German movement before the war and Austria’s anti-Semitism were strongly anti-capitalistic. Hitler made them indissoluble in Germany. He succeeded in bringing about a fusion of class hatred and racial hatred, of revolutionary socialism and revolutionary nationalism."

"We know that you, the organised workers of the country, are our friends ... As for the rest, they do not matter a tinker's cuss."

"As the words of my book, The Bloodless Revolution, accumulated, I envisaged a parallel growth: the stack of pages they would have to be printed on, thousands of times over; every page representing a slice of forest, a belch of fumes and a squirt of toxic ink."

"Food redistribution is economically sensible, ecologically pressing, and socially responsible; it is high time food corporations woke up to it and governments started funding the organisations that facilitate it."

"Food redistribution is one of the best win-win solutions for food waste avoidance. Food companies can often save money by donating food rather than paying the £80 or so per tonne in landfill tax and disposal costs."

"A thought struck me: if my new album sounds this good on a walkman, what would sound like? A mere two years later I bought one and found out. However, on a train, a few years later still, I had negative eating a bacon sandwich and listening to a solo Ferry album, which turned me vegetarian."

"Margoliouth was a great linguist and scholar and was for a long time a professor of Arabic at the University of Oxford. He wanted his book neither to be an indictment nor an apology, and be did not fail in this endeavour. He was writing for a "tolerant" twentieth-century audience and he decided, even before he wrote his book, to observe towards the prophet "the respectful attitude which his greatness deserves"; and even though the facts he cites sometimes do not do credit to his conclusion, in this resolve too he succeeded. Margoliouth was also a minister, of the Church of England, but he wanted his book to be "absolutely free" from the Christian bias; here too one can safely say that his book shows no conscious Christian bias. If a bias has to be mentioned, it is a European's imperial bias which regards all non-European manners and institutions--in this particular case, Bedouin manners and institutions--as savage."

"My heart is filled with endless gratitude. Just thinking I was born as a human and have the ability to practice in this life, with the opportunity to meet wise teachers and hear the Buddha's teachings, I am deeply moved by this unbelievable karmic affinity."

"It is not because there is a God outside me. But that I find the true Buddha-nature of my own heart."

"I do not mean to manipulate others with the motivation of self-interest. But with good use of wisdom, to benefit self and others while being empathetic to all sentient beings."

"It is not because I want to escape from the world and pursue nothingness. But to know everyday life is within Dharma, and to live in the present is to practice."

"It does not mean that my life will no longer experience setbacks. But with the Dharma, setbacks are transformed into a cause for my growth."

"It is not because I am better or worse than others, but because I understand all beings are equal."

"It doesn’t mean I have more wisdom than others. But it means I have been occupied by too much arrogance. I need to learn to be humble and to develop a broader perspective."

"I know I only love those to my taste, but Buddha loves even people he does not like, guiding them to be full of wisdom and compassion. That’s why I choose to follow Buddha’s teachings！"

"It is not with the goal of getting what’s in my interest. But for letting go of my personal clinging to all worldly desires."

"It doesn’t mean I’m purer and nicer than others. But it means I have too much ignorance and mental defilement to remove. I need Buddha's wisdom."

"It is not because I pursue a smooth life. But for the calm acceptance of impermanence, and be calm and confident like a king in any adverse circumstances."

"I'm interested in your answers to my questions, not to the questions you wished I'd asked."

"Those who have never fought for the colours they fly, should be careful about criticising those who have."

"Fundamentally I think soldiering is pretty similar to politics. It's not about you, it's all about the people you serve with. It's all about the results, it's all about the operation, it's all about the mission. The reason we're here at all in politics is to serve the people."

"We have a real choice: either we choose to shape events or we will be shaped by them. Over many centuries, the people of the United Kingdom have got into the habit of being actors in this world, rather than being acted upon by it."

"Leaders stand up for their men. They encourage them to try and defend them when they fail."

"This, if not an act of war, was certainly a warlike act by the Russian Federation…"

"“At most periods of her history India, though a cultural unit, has been torn by internecine war. In statecraft, her rulers were cunning and unscrupulous. Famine, flood and plague visited her from time to time, and killed millions of her people. Inequality of birth was given religious sanction, and the lot of the humble was generally hard. Yet our overall impression is that in no other part of the ancient world were the relations of man and man, and of man and the state, so fair and humane. In no other early civilisation were slaves so few in number, and in no other ancient lawbook are their rights so well protected as in the Arthasastra. No other ancient lawgiver proclaimed such noble ideals of fair play in battle as did Manu. In all her history of warfare Hindu India has few tales to tell of cities put to the sword or of the massacre of non-combatants…There was sporadic cruelty and oppression no doubt, but, in comparison with conditions in other early cultures, it was mild. To us the most striking feature of ancient Indian civilisation is its humanity.” (pp.8-9)]."

"“The ancient civilisation of India differs from those of Egypt, Mesopotamia and Greece, in that its traditions have been preserved without a break down to the present day. Until the advent of the archaeologist, the peasant of Egypt or Iraq had no knowledge of the culture of his forefathers, and it is doubtful whether his Greek counterpart had any but the vaguest ideas about the glory of Periclean Athens. In each case there had been an almost complete break with the past. On the other hand…to this day legends known to the humblest Indian recall the names of shadowy chieftains who lived nearly a thousand years before Christ, and the orthodox Brahman in his daily worship repeats hymns composed even earlier. India and China have, in fact, the oldest continuous cultural traditions in the world.”"

"Prof. Arthur Basham (d. 1986), the leading authority on ancient Indian culture and Oriental civilizations, writes about ancient Indian codes of war that ‘In all her history of warfare, Hindu India has few tales to tell of cities put to the sword or of the massacre of non-combatants. The ghastly sadism of the kings of Assyria, who flayed their captives alive, is completely without parallel in ancient India. To us the most striking feature of ancient Indian civilization is its humanity.’"

"In A Cultural History of India, A.L. Basham notes that “[by] the fifth century CE, Indianised states, that is to say states organised along the traditional lines of Indian political theory and following the Buddhist or Hindu religions, had established themselves in many regions of Burma, Thailand, Indo-China, Malaysia, and Indonesia”."

"The age in which true history appeared in India was one of great intellectual and spiritual ferment. Mystics and sophists of all kinds roamed through the Ganga Valley, all advocating some form of mental discipline and asceticism as a means to salvation; but the age of the Buddha, when many of the best minds were abandoning their homes and professions for a life of asceticism, was also a time of advance in commerce and politics. It produced not only philosophers and ascetics, but also merchant princes and men of action."