people-from-bristol

"I sometimes think, sir, that your fences might be in more thorough repair, and your roads in better order, if less time was spent in politics."

"Let no one who wishes to receive agreeable impressions of American manners, commence their travels in a Mississippi steamboat."

"A single word indicative of doubt, that any thing, or every thing, in that country is not the very best in the world, produces an effect which must be seen and felt to be understood. If the citizens of the United States were indeed the devoted patriots they call themselves, they would surely not thus encrust themselves in the hard, dry, stubborn persuasion, that they are the first and best of the human race, that nothing is to be learnt, but what they are able to teach, and that nothing is worth having, which they do not possess."

"Situated on an island which I think it will one day cover, it rises like Venice from the sea, and like that fairest of cities in the days of her glory, receives into its lap tribute of all the riches of the earth."

"The matinee witnessed the close of an era—an era which saw the birth and childhood of an English ballet. That era is past: English ballet has now reached the period of adolescence and a bright future stretches before it. How precarious its very existence was in the early days, and what a wonderful tonic the precept and example of Phyllis Bedells proved only the more elderly of us can know."

"There was a wonderful cast for 'Alice'. Stanley Brett, 's brother, played the ; Tom Graves, brother of , played the and ; Will Bishop, himself, was the First Lobster and the Golliwog; and was played by the beautiful . The rest of the cast were: as the and ; Florrie Arnold as the ; Rita Leggerio as the ; Harry Ulph as the and the ; as the Duchess and the ; Euphan Maclaren as the Cook; Marjorie West as the ; as the Dormouse; Margaret Fraser as the Second Lobster; Alice Dubarri as the First Fairy and the Rose; Julian Cross as the and the ; Florence Lloyd as the and the ; Harold Borrett as the and the . took the parts of the Executioner, the , and ; Carmen Sylva, the Lily; Dorrit MacLaxen, the Red Knight; Leslie Bilbe, the Lion; John Hobbs, the Unicorn; Tom Jones, the Leg of Mutton; Ethel Evans, the Plum Pudding. In Act I, I emerged from a large oyster shell, dressed as a little sailor boy, and danced a hornpipe. This seemed to me slightly incongruous, as I was supposed to be the First Oyster; but nobody minded."

"So our Heroe, Captain Teach, assumed the Cognomen of Black-beard, from that large Quantity of Hair, which, like a frightful Meteor, covered his whole Face, and frightened America more than any Comet that has appeared there a long Time."

"Bishops have a certain standing in the life of the life of the community, but when you're a sick person, then you're on par with everybody else, and that's a very good thing, I think, there's no privilege in that sense any longer, of status or office, or whatever it may be. You belong in the place where all human beings belong: in the hands of the Lord and waiting on his person and his love."

"The one thing you know after completing a degree in Philosophy is that you don’t know anything. That disqualifies you from almost every profession….. except perhaps being an actor!"

"I wouldn’t claim to have mastered my craft, part of the fun is that you are continually learning and reinventing yourself."

"I'm not one for the trappings of success. I drive a one-year-old Citroën Xantia and I hate shopping. I did have a share in a glider - that is as far as it goes."

"We use the word authenticity, it’s about being honest and uncynical. We strive to make the characters true; they believe the world they are living in, however ridiculous it is. We know how to make the films, but getting the story to land absolutely spot on – that’s the hardest bit."

"Once you start thinking about what kids will find funny it’s very dangerous territory and you’ll end up with a film that lacks sincerity."

"I like the process. It’s a very comfortable world to work in. I like the people as well. I’m surrounded by great artists and craftspeople who do it. Really experienced people. Finally, I’m really happy and proud to do something different. There’s a million CG movies out there and it’s good for the audience to have something different."

"[After reaching no. 7 in the best-seller lists] But a certain JK Rowling came along and you're never going to beat that. And there's always been one or two others much better than me. [Better or bigger?] Bigger! [laughs] Occasionally better."

"I don't think that girls would ever have wanted a grey-haired, wrinkly writer as a role model if they were wanting to feel good about maybe being gay…I'm sure they could find much more glamorous examples."

"I’ve tried hard…I don't know … my experience of my own dad and my own ex-husband possibly has some effect. I will remedy this. It is very unfair. I have tried harder, but I just can't quite get there yet."

"[Her mother stopped her daughter from wearing any jewelry. Wilson refers to a large rose quartz ring on her finger] I mean, isn't it pathetic when, even in your 70s, you wear things that a psychiatrist would point out is rebelling against your mother?"

"[Referring to Trish, her civil partner] I asked her about earlier girlfriends and she said she'd never had a year-after-year relationship, and I thought: "Right, I'm going to be that." And I have been, so far."

"It is strange…that sometimes people assume the worst of children if they come from poor families. I remember being astonished when I took my daughter to a party given by her schoolfriend’s parents. They lived in a lovely, big house very near the block of council flats where I grew up. The mother was very friendly to me, and said how pleased she was that our daughters were friends because obviously she could have nothing to do with ‘those dreadful scary rough children from the council flats’. I didn’t want to embarrass her by saying that I had once been one of those very children."

"My mum would have loved Shirley Temple as a daughter – full of confidence, tap-dancing all over the place in flouncy clothes, and showing off. [She had] A girl sitting there reading a book, looking gormless."

"I can't think of a book where there's a woman born into a working-class background, who in her 70s is living a very comfortable, upper-middle-class sort of life; a woman who married at 19, had a baby at 21, was a policeman's wife for years, but whose marriage broke up in late middle age and who became very well known for a time. She then met a woman and became very happy with her. There isn't one!"

"I’ve a kinship with women…That’s why I’ve always put women in strong positions in music."

"One of the biggest problems with my daughter is that I’ve never loved anybody that much before…I was there at her birth. And all of a sudden I started feeling things. And it was too much for me. Because I was emotionally numb, and it was easier for me to get through life being emotionally numb, but then suddenly I was feeling things…I’ve lost people before, like grandmothers, but I’ve bounced back…This is different. Everything looks different, even music doesn’t sound the same. I feel like I’m losing my mind. I was in Islington yesterday and I was hoping I was going to see her, hoping she’s gonna walk up to me."

"I never thought of my music as dark…It can’t be that dark to get people through a dark period, can it?"

"“This ain’t bad-guy talk, cos I’m not a bad guy…But people don’t realise what fear can do. I’ve had situations where I’ve been so scared, where I can’t sleep, I can’t eat, and it’s gone on for weeks and it’s ruining my life. It makes you sick, it makes you mentally ill."

"The first place he went into was the Royal Exchange, .... where men of all ages and all nations were assembled, with no other view than to barter for interest. ... David ... resolved to stay no longer in a place where riches were esteemed goodness, and deceit, low cunning, and giving up all things to the love of gain were thought wisdom."

"In the last few years there has been a harvest of books and lectures about the "Mysterious Universe." The inconceivable magnitudes with which astronomy deals produce a sense of awe which lends itself to a poetic and philosophical treatment. "When I consider thy heavens, the work of thy hands, the moon and the starts, whuch thou hast ordained: what is man that thou art mindful of him? The literary skill with which this branch of science has been exploited compels one's admiration, but also, a little, one's sense of the ridiculous. For other facts than those of astronomy, oother disciplines than of mathematics, can produce the same lively feelings of awe and reverence: the extraordinary finenness of their adjustments to the world outside: the amazing faculties of the human mind, of which we know neither whence it comes not whither it goes. In some fortunate people this reverence is produced by the natural bauty of a landscape, by the majesty of an ancient building, by the heroism of a rescue party, by poetry, or by music. God is doubtless a Mathematician, but he is also a Physiologist, an Engineer, a Mother, an Architect, a Coal Miner, a Poet, and a Gardener. Each of us views things in his own peculiar war, each clothes the Creator in a manner which fits into his own scheme. My God, for instance, among his other professions, is an Inventor: I picture him inventing water, carbon dioxide, and haemoglobin, crabs, frogs, and cuttle fish, whales and filterpassing organisms ( in the ratio of 100,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 to 1 in size), and rejoicing greatly over these weird and ingenious things, just as I rejoice greatly over some simple bit of apparatus. But I would nor urge that God is only an Inventor: for inventors are apt, as those who know them realize, to be very dull dogs. Indeed, I should be inclined rather to imagine God to be like a University, with all its teachers and professors together: not omittin the students, for he obviously possesses, judging from his inventions, that noblest human characteristic, a sense of humour."

"To suppose that chemistry and poetry are incompatible (as I am sure Prof Donnan would not do!), or that biology is inconsistent with a religious outlook on the world (I don not say with theology!) is to misunderstand entirely what the human mind, by contemplation and experiment, has achieved. By extreme specialization at intervals, by overloading the machine to its limit, discoveries and progress are made: but their bearing is best seen by letting the engine idle and giving oneself time to look around. The chemist and the poet are both right, the biologist and the saint: and each must pull up now and then to find whither he is going and to adjust his spectacles."

"All knowledge, not only that of the natural world, can be used for evil as well as good: and in all ages there continue to be people who think that its fruit should be forbidden. Does the future wlfare, therefore, of mankind depend of a refusal of science and a more intensive study of the Sermon on the Mount? There are others who hold the contray opinion, that more and more of science and its applications alone can bring prosperity and happiness to men. Both of these extremes views seem to me entirely wrong - though the second is the more perilous as more likely to be commonly accepted. The so-called conflict between science and religion is usually about words, too often the words of their unbalanced advocates: the reality lies somewhere in between. "Completeness and dignity", to use Tyndall's phrase, are brought to man by three main channels, first by the religiouos sentiment and its embodiment of ethical principles, secondly by the influence of what is beautiful in nature, human personality, or art, and thirdly, by the pursuit of scientific truth and its resolute use in improving human life. Some suppose that religion and beauty are incompatible: others, that the aesthetic has no relation to the scientific sense: both seem to me just as mistaken as those who hold that the scientific and the religious spirit are necessarily opposed. Co-operation is required, not conflict: for science can be used to express and apply the principles of ethics, and those principles themselves can guide the behaviour of scientific men: while the appreciation of what is good and beautiful can provide to both a vision of encouragement. Is there really then any special ethical dilemma which we scientific men, as distinct from other people, have to meet? I think not: unless it be to convince ourselves humbly that we are just like others in having moral issues to face. It is true that integrity of thought is the absolute condition of oour work, and that judgments of value must never be allowed to deflect our judgements of fact. But in this we are not unique. It is true that scientific research has opened up the possibility of unprecedented good, or unlimited harm, for manking: but the use is made of it depends in the end on the moral judgments of the whole community of men. It is totally impossible noew to reverse the process of discovery: it will certainly go on. To help to guide its use aright is not a scientific dilemma, but the honourable and compelling duty of a good citizen."

"Will [Self] loomed over my second marriage, lurked throughout my very enjoyable six months of lesbianism, and has seen considerable active service in my rich and strange inner life over the years since then."

"Tears are sometimes an inappropriate response to death. When a life has been lived completely honestly, completely successfully, or just completely, the correct response to death's perfect punctuation mark is a smile."

"We may be saddled with Bush and Blair, but you've got Prince Charles (a big friend of the Islamic world, probably because of its large number of feudal kingdoms and hardline attitude to uppity women), the Catholic church (taking a brief break from buggering babies to condemn any western attack as "morally unacceptable") and posturing pansies such as Sean Penn, Sheryl Crow and Damon Albarn."

"The problem is she doesn’t have any in-depth knowledge. I can imagine her endlessly watching the film Exodus with Paul Newman. She’s got a kind of Hollywood view of Jews. You know, ‘Jews are so clever, we’ve survived ..."

"A woman who looks like a girl and thinks like a man is the best sort, the most enjoyable to be with and the most pleasurable to have and to hold."

"I got through the sexual side of my first marriage - for six years! - by pretending that my husband was my friend Peter York."

"Writing is more than anything a compulsion, like some people wash their hands thirty times a day for fear of awful consequences if they do not. It pays a whole lot better than this type of compulsion, but it is no more heroic."

"The freedom that women were supposed to have found in the Sixties largely boiled down to easy contraception and abortion; things to make life easier for men, in fact."

"It has been said (by Shelley Winters) that a pretty face is a passport. But it's not - it's a visa, and it runs out fast."

"Whenever I am sent a new book on the lively arts, the first thing I do is look for myself in the index."

"[On the comment about Islam.] I could have done a big public exposure [...] But what I did was email her and said: "Julie, firstly this is deeply, deeply offensive. Both Jews and Muslims don’t eat pig. I don’t know what you’re doing but this is really unacceptable and offensive. I was incredibly polite.""

"Burchill divides up the chosen people into Good Jews (hardliners, Israelites) and Bad Jews (liberal Jews) with the enthusiasm of an antisemite. Hilariously, she sets herself up as the Jewishness Police, railing against Jews who are not Jewish enough; and one of those, it turns out, is her local rabbi, Elli Tikvah Sarah. Burchill rails against the rabbi for, in this order: ignoring a bottle of champagne Burchill gave her in favour of elderflower wine made by the rabbi’s girlfriend; "canoodling" with said girlfriend ("a Sapphic free-for-all", sneers the heretofore not exactly prudish Burchill), and advocating a dialogue with Islam. Burchill doesn’t include this in the book but, according to Rabbi Sarah, Burchill emailed the synagogue’s congregants railing that "your rabbi respects PIG ISLAM". Aww, being used as a launchpad for a British columnist’s racism – we’re living in the Promised Land now, fellow Jews!"

"Prostitution is the supreme triumph of capitalism.... Worst of all, prostitution reinforces all the old dumb clichés about women's sexuality; that they are not built to enjoy sex and are little more than walking masturbation aids, things to be DONE TO, things so sensually null and void that they have to be paid to indulge in fornication, that women can be had, bought, as often as not sold from one man to another. When the sex war is won prostitutes should be shot as collaborators for their terrible betrayal of all women, for the moral tarring and feathering they give indigenous women who have had the bad luck to live in what they make their humping ground."

"A good part — and definitely the most fun part — of being a feminist is about frightening men. American and Australian feminists have always known this, and absorbed it cheerfully into their act; one thinks of julienning men on phone- in shows, or telling us that a good feminist is rude to a man at least three times a day on principle. Of course, there's a lot more to feminism... but scaring the shit out of scumbags is an amusing and necessary part because, sadly, a good many men still respect nothing but strength,"

"Cherie Blair can call herself a feminist all she likes, but any feminist worth her salt would have made a point of having a termination - on the NHS, naturally - when she got knocked up the last time. . . Famous women would rather admit to having been sexually abused as children than to having had a termination. . . Myself, I'd as soon weep over my taken tonsils or my absent appendix as snivel over those [five] abortions. I had a choice, and I chose life - mine."

"The only kind of socialist to be is a Stalinist, and the only kind of woman to be is a Bitch."

"Cybernetics is concerned primarily with the construction of theories and models in science, without making a hard and fast distinction between the physical and the biological sciences. The theories and models occur both in symbols and in hardware, and by 'hardware* we shall mean a machine or computer built in terms of physical or chemical, or indeed any handleable parts. Most usually we shall think of hardware as meaning electronic parts such as valves and relays. Cybernetics insists, also, on a further and rather special condition that distinguishes it from ordinary scientific theorizing: it demands a certain standard of effectiveness... The concept of an effective procedure springs primarily from mathematics, where it is called an algorithm... The principal aims of cybernetics may be listed under three headings: (1) To construct an effective theory... [of] the principal functions of the human organism... (2) To produce the models and theory in a manner that realizes the functions of human behaviour by the same logical means as in human beings. This implies the simulation of human operations by machines... (3) To produce models which are constructed from the same colloidal chemical fabrics as are used in human beings."

"The title of the book, The Brain as a Computer, is intended to convey something of the methodology involved; the idea is to regard the brain itself as if it were a computer-type control system, in the belief that by so doing we are making explicit what for some time has been implicit in the biological sciences."

"The sudden recent rise to prominence of cybernetics was due, immediately, to World War II. There existed then a series of problems which had not previously been met. The main one was that of range-finding for anti-aircraft guns in high-speed aerial warfare. The older systems involved human computers and these, with manually controlled locators, were wholly inadequate for the job in hand. The essence of the process involved was to track and predict the direction, velocity, and height of enemy aircraft. The human being's part in the operation was much too slow and inaccurate, and there were people available with machines already developed to do the job adequately; these machines were, of course, computing machines."

"In many ways it is true to say that syntax is mathematical logic, semantics is philosophy or philosophy of science, and pragmatics is psychology, but these fields are not really all distinct."