People From London

"When we talk of parental influence we do not think of terror in connection with it—that is not the primary idea—it is not terror and coercion, but kindness and affection, which may bias the child's mind, and induce the child to do that which may be highly imprudent, and which, if the child were properly protected, he would never do."

"No doubt there are plenty of people in this world whom it is difficult to drive, but whom anybody can lead. It is well known that people who are generally most difficult to drive, are usually the most easily to be led by others who understand them."

"In questions of international law we should not depart from any settled decisions, nor lay down any doctrine inconsistent with them."

"I am not sure that Marr would agree, but I am tempted to add learning as the very top level of understanding, above the computational level. [...] Only then may we be able to build intelligent machines that could learn to see—and think—without the need to be programmed to do it."

"The hallmarks of a regime which flouts the rule of law are, alas, all too familiar: the midnight knock on the door, the sudden disappearance, the show trial, the subjection of prisoners to genetic experiment, the confession extracted by torture, the gulag and the concentration camp, the gas chamber, the practice of genocide or ethnic clansing, the waging of aggressive war. The list is endless, Better to put up with some choleric judges and greedy lawyers."

"When David Marr at MIT moved into computer vision, he generated a lot of excitement, but he hit up against the problem of knowledge representation; he had no good representations for knowledge in his vision systems."

"In a world divided by differences of nationality, race, colour, religion and wealth [the Rule of Law] is one of the greatest unifying factors, perhaps the greatest, the nearest we are likely to approach to a universal secular religion. It remains an ideal, but an ideal worth striving for, in the interests of good government and peace, at home and in the world at large."

"It's better to give than to lend, and it costs about the same."

"The abstract properties of this mapping are defined precisely, and its appropriateness and adequacy for the task at hand are demonstrated."

"In order to understand bird flight, we have to understand aerodynamics; only then does the structure of feathers and the different shapes of bird's wings make sense."

"[If] we can experimentally isolate a process and show that it can still work well, then it cannot require complex interaction with other parts of vision and can therefore be understood relatively well on its own."

"A representation is a formal system for making explicit certain entities or types of information, together with a specification of how the system does this. And I shall call the result of using a representation to describe a given entity a description of the entity in that representation."

"The critical act in formulating computational theories turns out to be the discovery of valid constraints on the way the world is structured -- constraints that provide sufficient information to allow the processing to succeed."

"Vision is a process that produces from images of the external world a description that is useful to the viewer and not cluttered with irrelevant information."

"The primitives of a representation are the most elementary units of shape information available in a representation."

"Vision is the process of discovering from images what is present in the world, and where it is."

"To understand the relationship between behavior and brain one has to begin by defining the function, or computational goal, of a complete behavior. Only then can a neuroscientist determine how the brain achieves that goal."

"And now from the window of a four-wheeled cab the Queen of Babylon beheld the wonders of London. Buckingham Palace she thought uninteresting; Westminster Abbey and the Houses of Parliament little better. But she liked the Tower, and the River, and the ships filled her with wonder and delight. ‘But how badly you keep your slaves. How wretched and poor and neglected they seem,’ she said, as the cab rattled along the Mile End Road. ‘They aren’t slaves; they’re working-people,’ said Jane. ‘Of course they’re working. That’s what slaves are. Don’t you tell me. Do you suppose I don’t know a slave’s face when I see it? Why don’t their masters see that they’re better fed and better clothed? Tell me in three words.’ No one answered. The wage-system of modern England is a little difficult to explain in three words even if you understand it—which the children didn’t. ‘You’ll have a revolt of your slaves if you’re not careful,’ said the Queen. ‘Oh, no,’ said Cyril; ‘you see they have votes—that makes them safe not to revolt. It makes all the difference. Father told me so.’ ‘What is this vote?’ asked the Queen. ‘Is it a charm? What do they do with it?’ ‘I don’t know,’ said the harassed Cyril; ‘it’s just a vote, that’s all! They don’t do anything particular with it.’ ‘I see,’ said the Queen; ‘a sort of plaything.'"

"I do not know how far Nesbit consciously intended The Magic City to be an allegory of the human condition. It was only after I descended from the trees, and tasted the joys and sorrows of becoming a scientist, that I began to meditate upon the magic city and to see in it a mirror image of the big world that I was entering. I was plunged into the big world abruptly, like Philip. The big world, wherever I looked, was full of human tragedy. I came upon the scene and found myself playing roles that were half serious and half preposterous. And that is the way it has continued ever since."

"The important thing about mobile is, everybody has a computer in their pocket. The implications of so many people connected to the Internet all the time from the standpoint of education is incredible."

"Every time you make the hard, correct decision you become a bit more courageous and every time you make the easy, wrong decision you become a bit more cowardly. If you are CEO, these choices will lead to a courageous or cowardly company."

"It helps to have founded and run a company if you're going to help somebody run a company who is a founder."

"Note to self: It's a good idea to ask, 'What am I not doing?'"

"By far the most difficult skill I learned as a C.E.O. was the ability to manage my own psychology. Organizational design, process design, metrics, hiring and firing were all relatively straightforward skills to master compared with keeping my mind in check."

"In life, everybody faces choices between doing what's popular, easy, and wrong vs. doing what's lonely, difficult, and right. These decisions intensify when you run a company, because the consequences get magnified 1,000 fold. As in life, the excuses for CEOs making the wrong choice are always plentiful."

"Following conventional wisdom and relying on shortcuts can be worse than knowing nothing at all."

"Very proud of this moment that I'm going to be taking on my first job as a head coach. Yeah, so, of course, some apprehension but not in a nervous kind of way, more in a really-excited-to-get-started way."

"No statement about God is simply, literally true. God is far more than can be measured, described, defined in ordinary language, or pinned down to any particular happening."

"[No-deal Brexit is] not something I could ever sign up to"

"[No-deal Brexit would be] just as much a betrayal of the referendum result as not leaving at all"

"If the next government is sincere in its desire to reach an agreement with Europe, it must try to get more time. If it does not, the British parliament will insist on getting a new postponement. I will remain a member of the House of Commons. I will do everything in my power from my position to make sure that parliament blocks a Brexit without agreement."

"There is no mandate for a no-deal Brexit and a no-deal Brexit will be a catastrophe for the United Kingdom."

"We can make sure that goods flow inwards through the port of Dover without any friction but we can't control the outward flow into the port of Calais"

"There should be a new and sincere attempt to reach a consensus. If we do not find a solution with the members, we may have to ask the British to give their opinion again, in one form or another."

"I do agree with him, it would be wrong for a British government to pursue no deal as a policy and I believe it will be for the House of Commons, of which I will continue proudly to be a member, to ensure that doesn't happen."

"I have no doubt whatsoever that in a no deal exit we will need all of that money, and more, to respond to the immediate impacts of the disruption of a no deal exit,"

"[The Treasury has] built up fiscal headroom to protect against the cost of a no-deal Brexit"

"But let me go further - the government's analysis suggests that in a disruptive no-deal exit there will be a hit to the Exchequer of about £90bn. That will also have to be factored in to future spending and tax decisions."

"We are determined to get a deal. We recognise that a no-deal Brexit would be a very bad outcome for the UK and we are doing everything we can to avoid that,"

"Tomorrow [Thursday], we will have the opportunity to start to map out a way forward towards building a consensus across this House for a deal we can collectively support to exit the EU in an orderly way, to a future relationship that will allow Britain to flourish, protecting jobs and businesses."

"Parliament will not allow a no-deal exit"

"The Commons has been clear already that it does not support a no-deal exit. That is my position, and as a backbencher I will continue to argue against a no-deal exit."

"Once we get a good deal from the European Union and the smooth exit from the EU we will be able to show the British people that the fruits of their hard work are now at last in sight,"

"[The] era of austerity is finally coming to an end"

"the first sustained fall in debt for 17 years, a turning point in the nation's recovery from the financial crisis of a decade ago"

"I take the judgement that when there is a deal on the table that has very, very modest costs to the economy, which will allow us to move on as a nation both economically and politically, I judge that even narrowly, economically that will be in the best interests of the country"

"In the 2016 referendum, a promise was made to the majority who voted for Brexit - that they were voting for a more prosperous future. Not leaving would be seen as a betrayal of that referendum decision. But leaving without a deal would undermine our future prosperity, and would equally represent a betrayal of the promises that were made."

"No deal means we will have to spend the money, but not in a discretionary way"

"I remember 20 years ago we were worrying about what was going to happen to the million shorthand typists in Britain as the personal computer took over. Well, nobody has a shorthand typist these days, but where are all these unemployed people? There are no unemployed people because we have created 3.5m new jobs since 2010."

"A trade deal will only happen if it is fair and balances the interests of both sides. Given the shape of the British economy, and our trade balance with the EU27, it is hard to see how any deal that did not include services could look like a fair and balanced settlement."