Socialists

"I believe whoever is in power, people should fight the establishment over issues. This is the weakness of our democracy. We vote, then for five years we remain dormant. The farmers’ movement will remain but we need a formal political party to fight elections."

"I would be a disaster as a prime minister."

"In giving to the world "Merrie England," Robert Blatchford has rendered a service of inestimable value to humanity. It has been read, and is being read and will continue to be read by millions. No book has done so much to convert the masses to Socialism."

"Blatchford's chief charm as a writer is that he wins into our affections... Blatchford in all he writes is impelled always by a great human kindness and love of man... Incapable of a dishonesty, intellectual or moral, loving the people with a great love, he never hesitates to whip its follies or to point out its weaknesses. Blatchford cannot be bought...the sad part of his splendid achievement for the good of man, the part of it that touches well-nigh the hem of the tragic, is that his broad humanity should have had to take up the sword—that this fervent lover of freedom and singer of the glory of peace should have had to put on the armour of the crusader and call civilization to battle."

"Now, remembering Germany's gospel of force and frightfulness, her plea that necessity knows no law, her carefully organized war and peace machines, her enormous and costly system of espionage and intrigue, her immense armaments, her avowed intention to conquer the world, her record of treacherous diplomacy, her hatred of Russia and Britain and France, her steady persistence on the Bagdad Railway, her secret alliances with Turkey and Bulgaria, her building of her Fleet, her expansion of her own and the Austrian army, her expenditure on Zeppelins and poison gas and flame throwers, her secret siege artillery, her pushing of strategic railways to the Belgian border, her fortification of Flushing, and her purchases of gold; and remembering her three sudden attacks on Denmark, and Austria, and France; and remembering her contempt for "scraps of paper," and her contempt for the law of nations; and remembering her savagery and lawlessness on land and sea; and remembering the Kaiser's speeches and the thousands of books and articles abusing Britain and France; and remembering all that Germany hungered for and hoped to gain; and remembering that Russia, and France and Britain coveted nothing, had threatened nobody, and were unready and unwilling for war, what conclusion can we come to as to which nation is to blame for the agony and ruin which have come upon Europe since the end of July, 1914? Who caused the war? Who threatened war, who preached war, who stood to gain by war, who had been for forty years preparing for war? Germany."

"I will venture to claim that I have been an honest writer and a loyal Englishman. England has many worthier sons; but few who more dearly love her."

"Very few intellectual swords have left such a mark on our time, have cut so deep or remained so clean... His case for Socialism, as far as it goes, is so clear and simple that anyone would understand it, when it was put properly; his genius was that he could put it properly ... his triumphs were triumphs of strong style, native pathos, and picturesque metaphor; his very lucidity was a generous sympathy with simple minds... For the rest, he has triumphed by being honest and by not being afraid."

"Having explained what my mother was like and what her child was like, it will not be difficult to understand that as a grown-up man, with a wife and children of my own, the thought of a hungry or unhappy child or ill-used woman infuriated me. I saw and felt what was going on all around me, and I searched and prayed for a remedy. And while I was searching someone sent me a pamphlet on Socialism and I jumped at it. It answered my questions. It was what I sought. It meant human brotherhood and co-operation. It meant the collective action of the Army. It meant esprit de corps, a larger, deeper, nobler esprit de corps. I snatched Socialism to my bosom. I went out into the highways and the by-ways and raved about it. I became notorious. I was no longer respectable. One of my friends told another of my friends that I was an ensanguined crackpot. Ah, well. I am older now, and wiser—perhaps. But it was a great adventure. After all, I was only acting up to the precepts of the Litany, and I don't regret it."

"I have never been converted from Socialism. But careful observation of the facts of for the last twelve years or so has convinced me that Socialism will not work, and a study of Mr. Ford's methods has provided what seems to me as good a substitute as we may hope in this imperfect world. Socialism as I knew it in past years was an excellent, almost a perfect, theory... But I have had to take towards Socialism the same regretful attitude which so many earnest Christians have had to adopt towards Christianity. The golden rule will not work in international politics, because the nations are not good enough to live up to it. Real Socialism strongly resembles real Christianity. It is a counsel of perfection and cannot be adopted and adhered to by our imperfect humanity. There is nothing the matter with Socialism, but the people are neither wise enough nor good enough to make it a success. Socialism implies the self-abnegation of the individual for the good of the community."

"I started on Britain for the British by Robert Blatchford, of whom I had heard only faintly up to that time... From its title I expected Britain for the British to be directed against foreigners in one way or another but to my surprise I found it a cogent and reasoned argument for Socialism. It was written with a clearness and bite which were unusual."

"I have always been a Tory Democrat... You remember that from the first the Clarion crowd and the Hardie crowd were out of harmony. It was a repetition of the old hostility between the Roundheads and Cavaliers. The Labour Leader people were Puritans; narrow, bigotted, puffed up with sour cant. They were nonconformist, self-righteous ascetics, out for the class war and the dictation by the proletariat. We loved the humour and colour of the old English tradition... I loathe the "top-hatted, frock-coated magnolia-scented" snobocracy as much as you do; but I cannot away with the Keir Hardies and Arthur Hendersons and Ramsay MacDonalds and Bernard Shaws and Maxtons. Not long ago you told me in a letter of some trade union delegates who were smoking cigars and drinking whisky at the House of Commons at the expense of their unions. You liked them not. Nor do I like the Trade Union bigots who have cheated J. H. Thomas of his pension... I am glad the Labour Party is defeated because I believe they would have disrupted the British Empire. I dreaded their childish cosmopolitanism; their foolish faith that we could abolish crime by reducing the police force. All the other nations are out for their own ends. American enthusiasm for Naval Disarmament is not dictated by a love of peace. It is an expression of naval rivalry. All the nations hated our naval supremacy. Do the Americans love us? Do the French love us? Is France, America, Italy, devoted to an unselfish and human peace? Can we dispel the bellicose sentiments of Russia and China and Japan by sending an old pantaloon to talk platitudes at Geneva, or by disbanding the Horse Guards and scrapping a few submarines? ... The England of my affection and devotion is not a country nor a people: it is a tradition, the finest tradition the world has ever produced. The Labour Party do not subscribe to that tradition; do not know it; could not feel it. And if that tradition is to survive, the policy of scuttle and surrender must be abandoned. You agree with all this I feel sure. You always upheld the Pax Britannica."

"To say that we could not work without capital is as true as to say that we could not mow without a scythe. To say that we could not work without a capitalist is as false as to say that we could not mow a meadow unless all the scythes belonged to one man. Nay, it is as false as to say that we could not mow unless all the scythes belonged to one man and he took a third of the harvest as payment for the loan of them."

"It is disturbing that, while Hobson and Brailsford were so penetrating about the present, they were wrong about the future... Brailsford...wrote...in March 1914: "the dangers which forced our ancestors into European coalitions and Continental wars have gone never to return"... It may be unfair to judge any writer in the light of what came after. Yet men with far less of Brailsford's knowledge and intellectual equipment foresaw the conflict of 1914, and even the shape that it would take. The true vision of the future was with Robert Blatchford, when he wrote his pamphlet, Germany and England, for The Daily Mail. This is a sad confession. Hobson and Brailsford are our sort. We think like them, judge like them, admire their style and their moral values. We should be ashamed to write like Blatchford, though he was in fact the greatest popular journalist since Cobbett. Yet he was right, and they were wrong. Their virtues were their undoing. They expected reason to triumph. He knew that men love Power above all else. This, not Imperialism, is the besetting sin."

"By all tokens of greatness made known to me in biographies of famous men, and in contact with illustrious idols of the time, Robert Blatchford, despite his contrariness as a journalist, is the greatest man I have known. If greatness is a quality of the heart, alive with splendid sympathies, not behind its age but just far enough ahead to lead its march, Robert Blatchford is a great man. In the thirty years of his fighting period, between 1890 and 1920, he has done more to improve the lot of our people than any statesman, general, or man of letters."

"For every convert made by Das Kapital, there were a hundred made by Merrie England."

"There are few men who can write as Nunquam does, with conscience and strong feeling; and yet without malice. Above all, he has that power of getting at other people's point of view which enables him, when he is not writing persuasives to Socialism, to follow the trade of Shakespeare and Dickens."

"In these years Mr. Blatchford gave invaluable help to Socialist propaganda. No man did more than he to make Socialism understood by the ordinary working man. His writings in them had nothing of economic abstruseness. He based his appeal on the principles of human justice. He preached Socialism as a system of industrial co-operation for the common good. His arguments and illustrations were drawn from facts and experiences within the knowledge of the common people. Socialism as he taught it was not a cold, materialistic theory, but the promise of a new life as full, sweet and noble as the world can give...Mr. Blatchford is still living, hale and hearty, his mental powers undiminished at the ripe age of eighty-three. I saw him recently, and we talked of those grand and inspiring times of forty years ago. Only the men who were in the Socialist movement in those days can know the great part Robert Blatchford took in making it popular, and of the personal devotion he inspired by his writings."

"[Blatchford is] the first genuine spokesman of the enfranchised working classes."

"We want friendship and co-operation with the people of Spain. But the people of Gibraltar said no to Joint Sovereignty in our referendum of 2002. By 98% we rejected Joint Sovereignty then. But that was obviously not loud and clear enough. So let me be unequivocal so that there is no mistake or any further foolish repetition of this warped notion for the transfer of our sovereignty: Gibraltarian is not for sale. The Gibraltarians will not be bribed. The Gibraltarians will never surrender!"

"Mr Tusk, who has been given to using the analogies of the divorce and divorce petition, is behaving like a cuckolded husband who is taking it out on the children."

"Although we will not deviate from our stated position that Gibraltar will never be Spanish, we reach out our hand in friendship and reiterate equally forcefully our desire to have a strong and positive relationship of cooperation with our Spanish neighbours."

"In fact, Mr Chairman, what is clear is that the Spanish Government are behaving like the last colonists in Europe! And as a Committee charged with the eradication of colonialism, what you and the C24 must do is prevent Spain’s neo-colonialism. You must stop if from taking root. You must not promote it."

"This committee is not established in the hierarchy of the United Nations or in international law as a body competent or empowered to resolve territorial disputes. It is the International Court of Justice that is there for that. But – as you know and we have repeated ad nauseam – the Spanish Government's bravado has never extended to elevating the territorial matters they boldly argue before you to the ICJ. You should tell them to do so."

"This week, a young Spanish Prince with an international education will become King. To Felipe VI Spain, Gibraltar offers a hand of friendship and respect as neighbours and supporters of democracy. This new Head of State must know that we seek only peace, understanding and co-operation."

"We, her people of Gibraltar, are perhaps the only ones in her reign who have chosen to remain British on two occasions... We’ve chosen her twice... So we can proudly say that she is our Queen by invitation and not imposition."

"Franco failed. He came up against the Gibraltarians and he lost. And everyone who has come after him has failed. The only thing his steel gates attracted was rust. But the last siege of Gibraltar forged the iron will of the people of Rock. It sealed our separate and distinct identity. It gave shape to our modern reality. Now anyone who attempts our economic strangulation, our forced subjugation is on notice that they too will fail."

"This is the Rock of the Gibraltarians. This is our land. This is our home. This is our Rock. Only we can decide its future. And we are not here to ask anyone for the right to self determination. We are here to assert that we have the right to self determination. And only we can decide the destiny of this Rock and no 300-year old treaty and no threats will ever intimidate us. So in case anybody needs reminding, we will never concede one grain of sand, one breath of our air, or one drop of our waters. Not one drop!"

"The position of the United Kingdom is as usual so nuanced that it's difficult to see where they are on the spectrum, but look, that's what Britain's like and we all love being British."

"What we have seen this weekend is sabre-rattling of the sort that we haven't seen for some time. The things that Mr García-Margallo has said are more reminiscent of the type of statement you'd hear from North Korea than from an EU partner."

"One of the top Spanish diplomats of recent generations, Snr Inocencio Arias – who was until ten years ago Spain's Permanent Representative at the UN - has recently recognised, in a memoir, that all of Spain's strategies for the recovery of Gibraltar have failed. We did not need to be told that, nor do we want any strategy to succeed, but he is right to have started a debate in Spain which in effect is telling Spanish diplomacy what we have been saying for generations: Wake up and smell the coffee: Gibraltar will never be Spanish! Yet in recent months, the attitude of Spain's foreign ministry appears to have ignored the failures of the past and is working hard to secure even greater failures for the future."

"Hell will freeze over before any other flags fly in Gibraltar that are not our flags. Red, white and blue. Red, white and proud. Red, white and free!"

"I have a desire to be part of the defence of our sovereignty against the aggression we face every day from our 'friendly neighbour' and those here on the Rock who do not understand the simple words "No Surrender". No surrender of our right to open government, no surrendering of our duties to care for our people, no surrender to the concept that Gibraltarians should find dignified jobs, no surrender of our hopes and dreams for Gibraltar and certainly no surrender of our sovereignty on land or sea."

"We don't claim that there is plenty of money. Greek people are not asking for money. They are asking for work and the ability to make a living."

"I want to be honest with you. We did not achieve the agreement we expected before the January elections... I feel the deep ethical and political responsibility to put to your judgment all I have done, successes and failures."

"What's needed is patience and composure. The bank deposits of the Greek people are fully secure. The same applies to the payment of wage and pension — they are also guaranteed."

"Sophocles taught us that the greatest of all human laws is justice… and I think that is something we have to remember."

"Millions of Europeans looked with hope to this country, and it was Alexis Tsipras’s Syriza government (elected that January) [2015] that had the responsibility for keeping that window open, and for opening it up further for others. What these millions wanted a break from was not even true neoliberalism, but what I would call bankruptocracy — a new regime in which the greatest power was wielded by the most bankrupt bankers. Tsipras’s surrender in July 2015 closed that window of opportunity... Ever since he surrendered to the troika, Tsipras... dilemma put to progressives: “Who do you want to torture you — an enthusiastic torturer, or someone like me who doesn’t want to torture you but will do it to keep his job?” This was his line in September 2015 [in that year’s second general election, after Syriza caved to the troika]. But four years later, after pushing through the most naked, harshest austerity policies anywhere in Europe... he can no longer blackmail progressives with lesser-evil arguments... Can you believe that Tsipras has become best buddies with Benjamin Netanyahu?"

"I once spoke to a politician, a man that I respect and I will say the name: Alexis Tsipras. And speaking of this and the accords not to let [migrants] in, he explained the difficulties to me, but in the end, he spoke to me from the heart and said this phrase: ."

"At all times pseudoprofound aphorisms have been more popular than rigorous arguments."

"Bunge: In September I will be 90 years old. Reporter: You look very youthful. Bunge: That's because I avoid alcohol, tobacco, and postmodernism."

"The fact that a great many scientists signed Faustian pacts with the war devil throughout the twentieth century has given science a bad name, and has discouraged many able youngsters from pursuing a scientific career."

"In academia much bogus knowledge is tolerated in the name of academic freedom – which is like allowing for the sale of contaminated food in the name of free enterprise. I submit that such tolerance is suicidal: that the serious students must be protected against the “anything goes” crowd."

"Logical positivism was progressive compared with the classical positivism of Ptolemy, Hume, d'Alembert, Compte, John Stuart Mill, and Ernst Mach. It was even more so by comparison with its contemporary rivals—, , , , , and existentialism. However, neo-positivism failed dismally to give a faithful account of science, whether natural or social. It failed because it remained anchored to sense-data and to a phenomenalist metaphysics, overrated the power of induction and underrated that of hypothesis, and denounced realism and materialism as metaphysical nonsense. Although it has never been practiced consistently in the advanced natural sciences and has been criticized by many philosophers, notably Popper (1959 [1935], 1963), logical positivism remains the tacit philosophy of many scientists. Regrettably, the anti-positivism fashionable in the metatheory of social science is often nothing but an excuse for sloppiness and wild speculation."

"We all would to know more and, at the same time, to receive less information. In fact, the problem of a worker in today's knowledge industry is not the scarcity of information but its excess. The same holds for professionals: just think of a physician or an executive, constantly bombarded by information that is at best irrelevant. In order to learn anything we need time. And to make time we must use information filters allowing us to ignore most of the information aimed at us. We must ignore much to learn a little."

"If one aims to judge political movements, their deeds are far more important than their speeches, which are often masking rather than revealing."

"A definitely undesirable rationale sustaining the cult of simplicity is of a metaphysical nature: namely, the wish to attain the ultimate atoms of experience and/or reality ... this drive, which feeds metaphysical fundamentalism, is dangerous because it leads to postulating the final simplicity of some form of experience or some kind of substance thereby barring any inquiry into their structure."

"The motto of science is not just Pauca but rather Plurima ex paucissimis — the most out of the least."

"When in the sciences or techniques one states that a certain problem is unsolvable, a rigorous demonstration of such unsolvability is required. And when a scientist submits an article to publication, the least that its referees demand is that it be intelligible. Why? Because rational beings long for understanding and because only clear statements are susceptible to be put to examination to verify whether they are true or false. In the Humanities it is the same, or it should be, but it is not always so. Nietzsche reproached John Stuart Mill's clarity. Henri Bergson, although an intuitionist himself, wrote clearly and declared that "clarity is the philosopher's courtesy". Obscurity is rude, because it assumes the interlocutor is incapable of understanding and dialoguing."

"For a good man to realize that it is better to be whole than to be good is to enter on a strait and narrow path compared to which his previous rectitude was flowery license."

"Whatever may have been our final judgment on the strange novel of M. Marcel Proust, 'Du Côté de chez Swann,' which appeared in the year before the war—and the book at least had this obviously in common with a great work of literature, that it lent itself to judgment on many different planes—the persistent element in all our changing opinions was that it marked the arrival of a new sensibility. We were being made aware in new ways, induced to perceive existence in new relations."