University Of Oxford Alumni

"We should not, however, fall into the common error of imputing a false parallelism between the two great warrior ideologies."

"Nazism, for all its revolutionary jargon, represented in its essence a reaction against the nine-teenth-century faith in human progress. It was an attempt to seize history by the collar and frog-march it in a direction determined primaly by the selfish interests and obsessive beliefs of those in power. From the outset it wan an movement, offering its adherents the spurious solidarity of the street gang and the prospecive enjoyment of stolen booty."

"Oppenheimer is a medical doctor who has lived in Southeast Asia for decades. Like most of us, he is vaguely influenced by Marxism, e.g. where he dismisses religion as a means to “control other people's labour”, with explicit reference to Karl Marx’s Das Kapital. His book is based on solid scientific research (genetic, anthropological, linguistic and archaeological), and is in that respect very different from the numerous Atlantis books which draw on “revelations” and “channeling”... Stephen Oppenheimer makes a detailed and strong case for the importance of the culture of sunken Sundaland for the later cultures in the wide surroundings. India too must have benefited of certain achievements and human cargo imported from there."

"First, that the Europeans’ genetic homeland was originally in South Asia in the Pakistan/Gulf region over 50,000 years ago; and second, that the Europeans’ ancestors followed at least two widely separated routes to arrive, ultimately, in the same cold but rich garden. The earliest of these routes was the Fertile Crescent. The second early route from South Asia to Europe may have been up the Indus into Kashmir and on to Central Asia, where perhaps more than 40,000 years ago hunters first started bringing down game as large as mammoths."

"We find the highest rates and greatest diversity of the M17 line in Pakistan, India, and eastern Iran, and low rates in the Caucasus. M17 is not only more diverse in South Asia than in Central Asia, but diversity characterizes its presence in isolated tribal groups in the South, thus undermining any theory of M17 as a marker of a “male Aryan invasion” of India. One average estimate for the origin of this line in India is as much as 51,000 years. All this suggests that M17 could have found his way initially from India or Pakistan, through Kashmir, then via Central Asia and Russia, before finally coming into Europe. (Oppenheimer, 2003: 152)"

"Another geneticist, S. Oppenheimer, offers independent confirmation (2003) that there was no Aryan entry, either male or female; he focuses on the M17, or so-called “Caucasoid” (=Aryan!), genetic marker: “South Asia is logically the ultimate origin of M17 and his ancestors; and sure enough we find highest rates and greatest diversity of the M17 line in Pakistan, India and eastern Iran, and low rates in the Caucasus. M17 is not only more diverse in South Asia than in Central Asia but diversity characterizes its presence in isolated tribal groups in the south, thus undermining any theory of M17 as a marker of a ‘male Aryan invasion’ of India” ."

"Oppenheimer, a leading advocate of this scenario, summarizes it in these words: “For me and for Toomas Kivisild, South Asia is logically the ultimate origin of M17 and his ancestors; and sure enough we find the highest rates and greatest diversity of the M17 line in Pakistan, India, and eastern Iran, and low rates in the Caucasus. M17 is not only more diverse in South Asia than in Central Asia, but diversity characterizes its presence in isolated tribal groups in the south, thus undermining any theory of M17 as a marker of a ‘male Aryan invasion’ of India. One average estimate for the origin of this line in India is as much as 51,000 years. All this suggests that M17 could have found his way initially from India or Pakistan, through Kashmir, then via Central Asia and Russia, before finally coming into Europe.”"

"Yet the class structure which cripples Britain more than any other European state, is as nothing compared with the stratified hierarchies in Austronesian traditional societies from Madagascar through Bali to Samoa. (...) This consciousness of rank is thus clearly not something that was only picked up by Austronesian societies from later Indian influence.” (p.484)"

"Barley cultivation was developed in the Indus Valley."

"As in its original language, we see the roots and shoots of the languages of Greek and Latin, of Celt, Teuton and Slavonian, so the deities, the myths and the religious beliefs and practices of the Veda throw a flood of light upon the religions of all European countries before the introduction of Christianity. As the science of comparative philology could hardly have existed without the study of Sanskrit, so the comparative history of the religions of the world would have been impossible without the study of the Veda."

"When we think about the diet of early humans, we're often drawn to thinking about meat, but plant foods were more important than the archaeological record gives credit for. The food that could be relied on wherever you were was the plant food."

"The suffering that animals undergo while being caught and eaten may be intense and the process by which they are killed may last for a quarter of an hour or more. Because the number of predators worldwide is enormous, and because, like us, many of them must eat with considerable frequency, the aggregate amount of suffering in the world at any time that is caused by predation is unimaginably vast."

"[I]f suffering is bad for animals when we cause it, it is also bad for them when other animals cause it. That suffering is bad for those who experience it is not a human prejudice; nor is an effort to prevent wild animals from suffering a moralistic attempt to police the behavior of other animals. Even if we are not morally required to prevent suffering among animals in the wild for which we are not responsible, we do have a moral reason to prevent it, just as we have a general moral reason to prevent suffering among human beings that is independent both of the cause of the suffering and of our relation to the victims. The main constraint on the permissibility of acting on our reason to prevent suffering is that our action should not cause bad effects that would be worse than those we could prevent."

"It seems, moreover, that my argument has some relevance to choices we must make even now. There are some species of large predatory animals, such as the Siberian tiger, that are currently on the verge of extinction. If we do nothing to preserve it, the Siberian tiger as a species may soon become extinct. The number of extant Siberian tigers has been low for a considerable period. Any ecological disruption occasioned by their dwindling numbers has largely already occurred or is already occurring. If their number in the wild declines from several hundred to zero, the impact of their disappearance on the ecology of the region will be almost negligible. Suppose, however, that we could repopulate their former wide-ranging habitat with as many Siberian tigers as there were during the period in which they flourished in their greatest numbers, and that that population could be sustained indefinitely. That would mean that herbivorous animals in the extensive repopulated area would again, and for the indefinite future, live in fear and that an incalculable number would die in terror and agony while being devoured by a tiger. In a case such as this, we may actually face the kind of dilemma I called attention to in my article, in which there is a conflict between the value of preserving existing species and the value of preventing suffering and early death for an enormously large number of animals."

"Viewed from a distance, the natural world often presents a vista of sublime, majestic placidity. Yet beneath the foliage and hidden from the distant eye, a vast, unceasing slaughter rages. Wherever there is animal life, predators are stalking, chasing, capturing, killing, and devouring their prey. Agonized suffering and violent death are ubiquitous and continuous."

"Suppose that we could arrange the gradual extinction of carnivorous species, replacing them with new herbivorous ones. Or suppose that we could intervene genetically, so that currently carnivorous species would gradually evolve into herbivorous ones, thereby fulfilling Isaiah's prophecy. If we could bring about the end of predation by one or the other of these means at little cost to ourselves, ought we to do it?"

"Solar geoengineering, I’m afraid I think it’s a fool’s paradise, and I’ve been saying the same thing for many years."

"I think it is possible to get the carbon dioxide emissions down and to get the temperature increase slowed down. It just requires everybody to work together to do it."

"I think it’s going to be very, very, very difficult to get to 1.5C."

"She appears regularly on TV, radio and in print media, and as a result, gets a lot of emails – many from people who do not believe that humans are causing climate change. She tries to reply to them all unless they are directly offensive, but admits she has about a “two percent success rate” in positive responses to her explaining the science."

"The climate system takes decades to respond to changes in carbon emissions so decisions made now will affect future generations - for better or worse."

"Without concerted and swift international action to reduce emissions of greenhouse gases, the 1.5°C threshold is likely to be passed by 2040 and the report () sets out very starkly the costs of inaction."

"We were aware of it back in the late 1970s. There was a lot of talk about the greenhouse effect."

"I worry I don't see things the way everyone else does."

"I can't even remember Saving Agnes. I haven't read it in years and years. I don’t think I could read it. It's a strange thing about having been publishing for so long. As with any memory of yourself at twenty-five, it feels like your cellular being has completely changed. It's not just photographs of me with a weird hairstyle at twenty-five—a novel is such an intricate document."

"A journalist recently told me that she had been sent to find out who I was. [...] There seems to be some problem about my identity. But no one can find it, because it’s not there—I have lost all interest in having a self. Being a person has always meant getting blamed for it."

"I could almost divide my life on either side of this line, between the things that are real and the things that are imitating reality and are synthetic or inauthentic, and the awful pain of being in the synthetic life or the synthetic relationship, the one that is a bit like the thing you want but is not it. So that was that book."

"Cusk herself seems extraordinary — a brittle little dominatrix and peerless narcissist who exploits her husband and her marriage with relish. She tramples anyone close to her, especially [second husband [[w:Adrian Clarke (photographer)|Adrian] Clarke]], whom she has forced to give up his job in order to look after the kids. She pours scorn on his "dependence" and "unwaged domesticity", but won't do chores herself because they make her feel, of all things, "unsexed". She is horrified when he demands half of every­thing in the divorce: "They’re my children," she snarls. "They belong to me.""

"Once you have suffered sufficiently, the idea of making up John and Jane and having them do things together seems utterly ridiculous…"

"I annoy everybody, not just certain women…I think it is because I'm not interested in the group, only in the individual. What happens is my message enters the conflicted person reading it who is half self, half society but does not know where one begins and the other ends. I light up that conflict and it makes people angry."

"I never really see a book in the context of what went before because when I finish a book I try to press the delete button so that it’s wiped off the hard drive…"

"It felt uncomfortably foreign, I would say. Obviously, it was the first time I had been in a country where everybody looked like me. But obviously, culturally, it was completely alien. And I found people in the street in St. Kitts actually were calling me "English".."

"Questions of identity have always played a large part in my thinking and writing; and, of course, race is a key component of identity. Certainly for me, and certainly in Britain."

"A writer often wants to change a reader’s perception about the world, which is a political act. But we have to work through character, so helping the reader to feel close to fictional characters is the gate through which we have to usher the reader. I am one of those writers who hopes to use character as a way of introducing the reader to a new way of thinking about the world."

"Central to Green's thought, and most important to later new Liberal theorists, was Green's redefinition of freedom. The expansion of the idea of freedom to include economic as well as political rights concerned the later Mill. But it was in the works of Green that a new theoretical definition of freedom was first developed. Green was aware of the economic and social conditions which were leading men to question the traditional Liberal concept of freedom, but his own definition must be understood not only in terms of his reaction to the suffering of the poor and the working class, but more important, in terms of his moral concerns. Green's original interests were basically moral and religious, and his idealist metaphysics was meant to replace Christianity with a kind of undogmatic religion where men found God through service in this world."

"The inspiration for Toynbee, as for a whole generation of social reformers, came from the Oxford philosopher Thomas Hill Green (1836–82). Green's reappraisal of the central tenets of Liberalism makes him the most important figure of this period... [I]n his attempt to revise traditional Liberal theories to meet new situations, Green broke with traditional English empiricism and adopted an idealist metaphysics. His adoption of idealism allowed Green to redefine the Liberal ideas of freedom and society in order to permit state action."

"Green's brilliance was not confined to what many people saw as a secular faith. He also had the clearest idea of how this faith was to be spread. Balliol became a powerhouse for teaching Britain's elite a set of beliefs that would shape their own lives while becoming the prism through which public policy was refracted. The last prime minister to have known that he was an Idealist was Clement Attlee and Attlee's adherence to the hymn sheet was probably typical of most."

"At Oxford a leading mind between 1860 and 1880 was T. H. Green, a man remarkable both in mental power and influence. He first gave a shake to Mill's supremacy as logician and metaphysician. But, notwithstanding Mill's conviction that false philosophy is the support of bad institutions, his critic's intuitionist philosophy did not prevent Green from being an ardent reformer, with Cobden and Bright for idols. In 1858 he ventured on a motion at the Union in approval of Bright. "It was frantically opposed," he said, "and after two days' discussion I found myself in a minority of two. I am almost ashamed to belong to a university which is in such a state of darkness.""

"One of these innovators—perhaps the most stimulating to his contemporaries, though not the most successful in giving permanent form to his thoughts—was Thomas Hill Green. A sound instinct led him to a systematic, minute study of Hume; in his efforts to gain a sure footing he examined the works of the master of destructive criticism. Green did not construct a system, for one can scarcely term such his "Simplified Kantism"; at the end of his life he was groping in search of larger truths. But if an active, hopeful spirit in philosophy is abroad, he as much as anyone helped to bring it about. Far outside the realm of pure philosophy his influence extended; and many of those who have an idea of a life of "Christian citizenship"—those who hold fast to the doctrine that "only citizenship makes the moral man"—know not that they derive from him their creed."

"Green, profoundly dissatisfied with these meagre and arid dietaries, turned away from them, and gradually found that for which he was in quest—the basis of a spiritual philosophy—in the speculations of Kant and his successors, and in particular of Hegel. He was commonly called a Hegelian, but while he was steeped and even saturated in the dialectic of that illustrious teacher, he never lost his intellectual self-mastery, and his presentation of the Hegelian doctrine was always coloured, both in substance and in expression, by his own robust and independent personality. He had, indeed, another side to his life and activities. He was a man of affairs, a member for some time of the Oxford City Council, an ardent Liberal politician, and an energetic worker in causes, such for instance as that of temperance, in which he thought he could discern the germs of social progress. He was a layman, and could have passed none of the common tests of orthodoxy, but he had a profoundly religious mind. His lectures on St. Paul's Epistles were the best I ever heard."

"Green gave a superficial impression of reserve and even austerity, but no teacher in Oxford gathered around him, as time went on, such a band of wholehearted and enthusiastic disciples. His lectures were not easy to follow: his manner was apt to be jerky; and his style abounded in what Burke calls “nodosities.” It was a familiar gibe of those who looked on from outside the fold, that by the end of the hour he had become so contorted that he had to be untied by friendly hands. It must be admitted that, while he made a deep and indelible impression, not only upon the best intellects of the place, but upon the whole course of philosophic thought in the University then and thereafter, the less well-grounded of his neophytes began to talk a jargon or “patter” which lent itself to the ridicule of the unregenerate. Jowett looked on with a certain mild and mellow scepticism at these new departures, having himself (as I have said elsewhere) in his earlier days “déjà passé par là.” Between 1870 and 1880 Green was undoubtedly the greatest personal force in the real life of Oxford."

"The young were taught in sixth form and university all the fallacies in John Stuart Mill's Essay on Liberty and were encouraged to believe that T. H. Green's definition of positive freedom was superior. Gladstonian liberals declared that socialist plans to nationalize industry and control production infringed personal freedom. But Green argued that so far from diminishing freedom such measures could increase it. A few people's freedom would be curtailed but vastly more people would now be made free to do things that hitherto they had been unable to do. The sum of freedom would increase. "Freedom for an Oxford don," it was said, "is a very different freedom for an Egyptian peasant.""

"He was a thoroughgoing Liberal, or what used to be called a Radical, full of faith in the people, an advocate of pretty nearly every measure that tended to democratise English institutions, a friend of peace and of non-intervention."

"T. H. Green taught philosophy from his base at Balliol College in Oxford and his work resulted in lifting much of the honey from the Christian hive and securing it in a public ideology to which Christians and non-Christians could subscribe. He recognised that a literal belief in the New Testament miracles had become the tripwire into disbelief for all too many people. Green successfully divorced Christian morality from dogma and English Idealism was born. For a century our country's hymn sheet was based on Green's work. Most people were probably unaware of their debt to this obscure Oxford don but that did not stop them gustily singing the same songs as everyone else."

"[I]t is quite certain that only through the equal presence to successive feeling of a subject other than they, which holds them together, and thus held together regards them as its object, are there related things or relations at all. It is not that first there are relations then they are conceived. Every relation is constituted by an act of conception. This is not to be understood as meaning that there is 'nothing but the soul and its feelings,' or that realities are feelings, even feelings as determined by thought. It is through feeling as determined by thought that for us there comes to be reality, but the reality is not to be identified with the process by which we, as thinking animals, arrive at it. Even simple facts of feeling (e.g. the fact that a certain sweet smell accompanies the sight of a rose) are not feelings as felt: more clearly, the conditions of such facts are not feelings, even as determined by thought. A 'feeling determined by thought' would probably mean a feeling which but for thought I should not have, e.g. emotion at the spectacle of a tragedy. Objective facts are not of this sort, not feelings determined by thought, though but for the determination of feeling by thought they would not exist for our consciousness."

"Today we have economies that need to grow, whether or not they make us thrive. What we need are economies that make us thrive, whether or not they grow."

"Calling all economic rebels: humanity's future depends on you. Yes, really. Because, unless we transform the economic and public debate, we stand very little chance indeed of thriving in this century."

"People want an end to this, and the only way you can stop Brexit in a democratic exercise like a general election is to say you would revoke."

"[On the election of Donald Trump on 5 November] This is a dark, dark day for people around the globe. The world's largest economy and most powerful military will be led by a dangerous, destructive demagogue."

"This [ending EU migration rules] will hugely increase the damage cause by a no-deal Brexit"