University Of Oxford Alumni

"My mom was born in China, and she grew up in Scotland. And my dad was born in Macau. He grew up in Hong Kong. Then he had a kind of crazy life before he settled down and had kids and married my mom. But he ended up going to college in Scotland, where he met my mom. And then they moved down to London and had my sister and I."

"I think I have a quite holistic kind of approach to it all, which is that I think you should take care of yourself on the inside, but also take care of yourself on the outside, and they will feed each other. My beauty ritual is something that I find very calming. It can definitely give you a lift if you're feeling a bit tired or you're feeling a bit down. You can kind of go through your steps, and it's kind of quite meditative, really."

"As a little girl, I was quite self-conscious about my Asian features. A few kids made fun of the shape of my eyes. All the Barbies had blond hair and blue eyes, and I remember wishing I didn’t look the way I did – I was the only girl of colour in the area. But now I’ve got older, I’ve realised what makes you different is your strength."

"I think the appeal for me was several different things. I was quite shy when I was a child and I’d always done drama and music and that was really my outlet where I felt I could be really free. I’ve always been really interested in other people, and other people’s lives, and as an actor you get to experience, to a certain degree, walking in other people’s shoes and seeing things through their eyes. That, for me, was what appealed, I think initially."

"When I talk to my friends, there are a number of times little things that happen throughout the day can build up. They can weigh you down and they can get on top of you. That is the sad and terrifying reality that many of us women and men have to face. I think it’s important that we do call people out on it, but ultimately, it’s a pattern of behaviour. It’s all part of a system that I very much don’t see it as men versus women. It’s about us working together to dismantle a system that is really oppressive to all of us."

"Both my parents are immigrants. They came from nothing, had to work so hard, and so the idea for them, I suppose, of taking a risk, that wasn’t a luxury they had. I always knew that was the luxury and privilege that I had, that they had given me."

"I mean, God. I have friends who are so happily married with 3 children, on their third, some friends who’ve done it who are struggling with elements of it, and other friends who have no interest in it, are free and single. Yeah. It’s weird. I do find it strange that in your 30s, suddenly, you become more aware that, if I’m going to do it, try to have a biological child, I need to think about it now. Sorry, I don’t have anything to add to that."

"The rules of moral reasoning are, basically, two, corresponding to the two features of moral judgment...When we are trying, in a concrete case, to decide what we ought to do, what we are looking for...is an action to which we can commit ourselves (prescriptively) but which we are at the same time prepared to accept as exemplifying a principle of action to be prescribed for others in like circumstances (universalizability)...[I]f we cannot universalize the principle, it cannot become an ‘ought’."

"I had a strange dream, or half-waking vision, not long ago. I found myself at the top of a mountain in the mist, feeling very pleased with myself, not just for having climbed the mountain, but for having achieved my life’s ambition, to find a way of answering moral questions rationally. But as I was preening myself on this achievement, the mist began to clear, and I saw that I was surrounded on the mountain top by the graves of all those other philosophers, great and small, who had had the same ambition, and thought they had achieved it. And I have come to see, reflecting on my dream, that, ever since, the hard-working philosophical worms had been nibbling away at their systems and showing that the achievement was an illusion."

"I have mentioned three of Hare's achievements in moral philosophy: restoring reason to moral argument, distinguishing intuitive and critical levels of moral thinking, and pioneering the development of practical or applied ethics."

"It is said that the prescription to keep all black people in subjection is formally universal, and internally consistent, and so is not ruled out by the Categorical Imperative. But the point is: can somebody who has fully represented to himself the situation of black people who are kept in subjection go on willing that they should be so treated? For if he has fully represented this to himself, he will have formed a preference that he should not be so treated if he is a black person; and this is inconsistent with the universal form of the proposed maxim. There is of course the problem of the fanatical black-hater who is prepared to prescribe that the maxim should be followed even if he himself were a black person. I have discussed the case of this fanatic at length in my books...and I think I have shown that my theory can deal with him. At any rate the Kantian move can be used in arguments with ordinary non‐fanatical people."

"he [Hare] was never afraid to ask the most controversial questions, such as What is Wrong with Slavery? and his answers were always enlightening. (Indeed, that particular paper is one that he was able to write with an authority that few others could possess, since, as he notes, he had in a manner of speaking been a slave, when as a prisoner of the Japanese he worked on the Burma railway.)"

"...what the principle of utility requires of me is to do for each man affected by my actions what I wish were done for me in the hypothetical circumstances that I were in precisely his situation; and, if my actions affect more than one man...to do what I wish, all in all, to be done for me in the hypothetical circumstances that I occupied all their situations..."

"He [Hare] was thus, however exacting his standards, a most positive figure as a mentor, giving of himself in discussion in a manner that could be opinionated but was also self-forgetful...He was concerned about the case against eating meat; but his eventual virtual vegetarianism was rather caused, he said, by gardening than by argument. Some of his dislikes were distinctive: the music of Beethoven (which he came to find superficial), wearing socks (which he ascribed to commercialism), drinking coffee (which he said affected his temper), travelling by train (which caused him anxiety), giving and receiving presents (when the recipient best knows what he wants)...He had the courage, though not the extravagance, to be an eccentric."

"[In the bilateral case]...if I have full knowledge of the other person's preferences, I shall myself have acquired preferences equal to his regarding what should be done to me were I in his situation; and these are the preferences which are now conflicting with my original prescription. So we have in effect not an interpersonal conflict of preferences or prescriptions, but an intrapersonal one; both of the conflicting preferences are mine...Multilateral cases now present less difficulty than at first appeared. For in them too the interpersonal conflicts...will reduce themselves, given full knowledge of the preferences of others, to intrapersonal ones."

"What makes Hare arguably unique, though at the same time closer in approach to Kant than to the utilitarians whose ally he became, was that he combined this insistence upon the ineluctability of individual choice with an optimistic view of the possibilities of making choices rationally...What reconciles these two features of moral thinking, in his view, is nothing other than the logic of the practical “ought”."

"I should be as unwilling as any man to concur in anything injurious to the rights of the subject. The Habeas Corpus is a very wise and beneficial statute: and the Judges have always been disposed to put such a construction upon it as will favour the real liberty of the subject. But we must be careful that those Acts which have been made for the benefit of the subject are not turned into engines of oppression: nor must we, under the idea of promoting general liberty, withhold that degree of favour from individuals which is consistent with the security of the public."

"Those who make the attack ought to be very well prepared to support it."

"In this case the plaintiff does not come into Court with clean hands; he alleges his own turpitude, and is indictable for his fraud."

"The best way in which a jury can execute their duty is to give their verdict according to the evidence before them."

"Legal coercion is a course which the law allows."

"The Crown used to call a Parliament annually, but there was not an annual election. These words, annuo parliamento, relate to the time of their meeting, and not their election."

"If it were a doubtful point how the statute should be construed, I must consider myself as bound by the construction it has already received in two Courts in Westminster Hall."

"I am bound by my oath to abide by the law, and I cannot suffer anybody to derogate from it."

"Whatever doubts I had, I submit to the authority of the other Judges."

"God is in command of history. Each crisis has something to teach us; each crisis is overcome by particular virtues and by reference to particular truths. The way out of a crisis is often unexpected, and often combines a decisive historical intervention by God, and a new spirit in the Church, animating new movements and new thinking. With hindsight we can even see in some cases how the crisis itself solved intractable problems which could not be solved in any other way"

"We are all of us accustomed to exaggerate the successes and magnify the prospects of the cause we favor. It is a habit arising mainly from a desire to convert others to our way of thinking, and since by far the largest part of mankind not only submit to the accomplished fact as soon as it is recognised, but accept it as satifactory, we are tempted to resort to this method of conversion as the most potent and expeditious. In proportion, however, as the prestige created is ill-founded, it is sure to be followed by discouragement and reaction. A cause which has solid elements of strength, is best served in the long run by unexaggerated estimates of its past, and sober forecasts of its future."

"In an English court of justice every effort is made to narrow down the discussion to a simple issue of fact. Every irrelevant allegation on either side is jealously excluded by the presiding judge. Usage and public opinion prescribe a course to the jury from which they cannot deviate; though even in England, on political trials, the animus of jurymen leads them sometimes to disregard the evidence. But at Rome, a State trial, though technically relating to a specified act, virtually dealt with the whole life of the accused. Nor was this all. The jury looked on it as their duty to take into consideration other circumstances which we should deem still more foreign to the question. Among these notoriously was the political bearing their verdict would have. A Roman jury never forgot that it was in some sort a committee of the Legislative Assembly."

"The government, worship, and doctrine of the Established Church are the most abiding works left by Elizabeth on the national life of England. Logically it might have been expected that the settlement of doctrine would precede that of government and worship. It is characteristic of a State Church that the inverse order should have been followed. For the Queen the most important question was Church government; for the people, worship."

"The secret of science is to ask the right question, and it is the choice of problem more than anything else that marks the man of genius in the scientific world."

"We persist in regarding ourselves as a great power, capable of everything and only temporarily handicapped by economic difficulties. We are not a great power and never will be again. We are a great nation, but if we continue to behave like a great power we shall soon cease to be a great nation."

"A society that acquiesces in the presence in its midst of a vast permanent army of unemployed is a society that has ceased to believe in itself."

"We shall never get a chance of building socialism unless we carry with us in the process the consent of the ordinary man. And he, very naturally, takes short views ... We can be at once opportunist and constructive; but we must never, in the search for constructiveness, forget the need for building on the opportunities of the moment, of offering the plain man realities and not mere promises post-dated to the Socialist future."

"Economy à la Sir George May will not help much; for it means nothing positive. ... We need, if not a Five Years Plan, at any rate a centrally controlled attempt to readjust industry and agriculture to the changing needs of the British consumer and of the world market, with less exclusive concentration on the old staple industries and far more attention to the development of those which have a real capacity for expansion."

"Gradualism, in this sense, however much it appeals to the first thoughts of the electorate, fails because in the event it is unable to deliver the goods. It may put a Labour Government into office; but it will also ensure its subsequent discredit."

"I became a Socialist, as many others did in those days, on grounds of morals and decency and aesthetic sensibility. I wanted to do the decent thing by my fellow-men. I could not see why every human being should not have as good a chance in life as I, and I hated the ugliness both of poverty and of the money-grubbing way of life that I saw around me."

"In any socialised enterprise, no matter what its form, socialisation requires that proper provision be made for the democratic participation of the workers in determining the conditions and allocation of work, both at the work place level and at the higher levels of management and control."

"I discovered how much more he hated the liberals than the tories. This came out vividly when we were walking past the ground of the Highclere Estate. ... At this point Douglas, to my astonishment, launched into a panegyric of the English aristocracy. It might not have been wholly serious, but it did, I think, reflect a certain nostalgia for pre-industrial Britain."

"We afterwards went on to see G. D. H. Cole. ... He struck me as a genuine British Bolshevist, disbelieving in Parliamentary action, disbelieving in the trades union movement and the trades unionist leaders, and waiting only till the shop-stewards movement...was further developed...in order to use the weapon of the general strike, or some approach to it both for political and for industrial purposes. When I suggested that Parliamentary action was the appropriate weapon and that a general election...ought to give Labour a great accession of strength he objected that there were no leaders and no prospect of any. ... Professed himself a thorough "Pacifist"...so that it would seem he was preparing...for a stop-the-war movement by industrial pressure. At the same time he professed to be against the violence which such a movement if carried far enough would necessarily provoke. Personally I should doubt if he has the moral qualities needed for the enterprise."

"Professor Cole is a fluent and engaging writer with a natural sense of style, and avoids like the plague anything that smacks of obscurity or pseudo-profundity. His conversational manner, which probably owes something to the lecture-room, makes him always easy to read, though it is also responsible for a certain looseness of texture which sometimes seems more appropriate to the spoken than to the written word. Any impression, however, that Professor Cole is only skimming the surface of his subject may be corrected by consulting the very thorough and systematic bibliography at the end of the volume. This is a work of encyclopaedic learning, however lightly the learning may be worn. Few people to-day have browsed so widely and so far afield as Professor Cole among these lesser known French and British progenitors of socialist ideas."

"Douglas is a strong Tory in everything but politics!"

"However much on the intellectual plane Douglas was an internationalist, emotionally—and he never attempted to hide it—he was profoundly attached to England. He was not even a little Englander—really a little Southern Englander!"

"I actually wanted to be an astronaut more than an astronomer for a quite a long time. Then I learned this would require I somehow become a US citizen (at the time Brits could not be ESA Astronauts because of the UK’s refusal to fund the human spaceflight part of ESA – although this has recently changed), and I also discovered how much detail I would be required to know about the space shuttle and just how fit I would have to be. I’m not really a detail oriented person, and I’m not that keen on the gym, so I gently switched my goal to becoming an astronomer! This also has the advantage of letting me keep my feet on the ground!"

"Did he not appear to you to be a public man of no little courage, no little candour and no little ability."

"It is not merely of some importance but is of fundamental importance that justice should not only be done, but should manifestly and undoubtedly be seen to be done"

"Tucker was a parson and a Tory, but, for the rest, an honourable man and a competent political economist."

"The conservative demands less of his "principles" and puts less into them; they will resemble less a comprehensive theory of government than a pragmatic justification of existing arrangements. Indeed, they may turn out on inspection to contain little more than the pragmatic statement that arrangements must be continued if they exist and must be made if they do not exist, and that somebody must attend to continuing or constructing them. There is certainly little more to the conservatism of that admirable eighteenth-century curmudgeon Josiah Tucker."

"I have often proved in several of my Writings both Commercial and Theological:- We[England], I say, the boasted Patrons of Liberty, and the professed Advocates for the natural Rights of Mankind, engage deeper in this murderous inhuman Traffic[slavery] than any nation whatever:- And to shew our Confidence, we glory in it!"

"I say, I am glad, that America has declared herself independent of us, though for Reasons very opposite to theirs. America, I have proved beyond the Possibility of a Confutation, ever was a Millstone hanging about the Neck of this Country, to weigh it down: And as we ourselves had not the Wisdom to cut the Rope, and to let the Burthen fall off, the Americans have kindly done it for us."

"I am not for having Recourse to Military Operations. For granting, that we shall be victorious, still it is proper to enquire, before we begin, How we are to be benefitted by our Victories? And what Fruits are to result from making you a conquered People?—Not an Increase of Trade; that is impossible: For a Shop-keeper will never get the more Custom by beating his Customers: And what is true of a Shop-keeper, is true of a Shop-keeping Nation."