people-from-hamburg

"On the whole, while many parts of the Koran undoubtedly have considerable rhetorical power, even over an unbelieving reader, the book, æsthetically considered, is by no means a first-rate performance... Mohammed, in short, is not in any sense a master of style. This opinion will be endorsed by any European who reads through the book with an impartial spirit and some knowledge of the language, without taking into account the tiresome effect of its endless iterations. But in the ears of every pious Moslem such a judgment will sound almost as shocking as downright atheism or polytheism. Among the Moslems, the Koran has always been looked on as the most perfect model of style and language. This feature of it is in their dogmatic the greatest of all miracles, the incontestable proof of its divine origin. Such a view on the part of men who knew Arabic infinitely better than the most accomplished European Arabist will ever do, may well startle us. In fact, the Koran boldly challenged its opponents to produce ten súras, or even a single one, like those of the sacred book, and they never did so. That, to be sure, on calm reflection, is not so very surprising. Revelations of the kind which Mohammed uttered, no unbeliever could produce without making himself a laughing-stock."

"It is not until we tour the city that we learn the extent of destruction. We come across corpses every 100 to 200 yards. The bodies of civilians that I examined had bullet holes in their backs. These people had been presumably fleeing and were shot from behind."

"Two Japanese soldiers have climbed over the garden wall and are about to break into our house. When I appear they give the excuse that they saw two Chinese soldiers climb over the wall. When I show them my party badge, they return the same way. In one of the houses in the narrow street behind my garden wall, a woman was raped, and then wounded in the neck with a bayonet. I managed to get an ambulance so we can take her to Kulou Hospital... Last night up to 1,000 women and girls are said to have been raped, about 100 girls at Ginling Girls' College alone. You hear nothing but rape. get the normal city life going as soon as possible. In the latter process we are glad to cooperate in any way we can. But even last night between 8 and 9 p.m. when five Occidental members of our staff and Committee toured the Zone to observe conditions, we did not find any single Japanese patrol either in the Zone or at the entrances!"

"We are sorry to trouble you again but the sufferings and needs of the 200 000 civilians for whom we are trying to care make it urgent that we try to secure action from your military authorities to stop the present disorder"

"Dear commander of the Japanese army in Nanking, We appreciate that the artillerymen of your army didn't attack to the Safety Zone. And we hope to contact with you to make a plan to protect general Chinese citizens who are staying in the Safety Zone... We will be pleased to cooperate with you in anyway to protect general citizens in this city."

"Soap prevented more deaths than penicillin. That’s technology, not science."

"We are more connected in more ways to more people than we ever have been at any point in human history. This is changing everything, and it would be deeply strange if it didn’t change money too."

": we tend to think of them as siblings, perhaps even as twins, as parts of stem (for “science, technology, engineering, and mathematics”). When it comes to the shiniest wonders of the modern world—as the in our pockets communicate with satellites—science and technology are indeed hand in glove. For much of , though, technology had nothing to do with science. Many of our most significant inventions are pure tools, with no scientific method behind them. Wheels and wells, cranks and mills and gears and ships’ masts, clocks and rudders and crop rotation: all have been crucial to human and economic development, and none historically had any connection with what we think of today as science. Some of the most important things we use every day were invented long before the adoption of the scientific method."

"You can trust that the phone is the property of the person who owns it, because the combination of sim card technology and pin numbers is very strong. Behind the user-friendly façade of chip and pin are cryptographic techniques of industrial strength. Indeed, the pin number technology used in cashpoint machines initially evolved as a question and response protocol to confirm nuclear weapon access codes. You can trust that this person who owns the phone is who they say they are: that basic act of trust is fundamental to the operation of all money systems."

"The internet is the most effective means of giving stuff away for free that humanity has ever devised. Actually making money from it is not just hard, it may be fundamentally opposed to the character and momentum of the net. And yet this is where the newspaper business now is."

"In no other type of warfare does the advantage lie so heavily with the aggressor."

"Nach Hitler kommen Wir."

"Ernest Thalmann was a devoted revolutionary, a good orator with a fine instinct for the worker's temper, he was an excellent medium for expounding theories and ideas laid down by others. He was a poor thinker, and not given to abstract study, even lacking enough self-discipline to reach the cultural and theoretical level of an average Party member."

"There were sometimes in our own ranks comrades who thought themselves cleverer and more capable of judging various questions than was done in the definite decisions of our World Party. Here I stress with the greatest emphasis: our relations with the Comintern, this close, indestructible, firm confidence between the C.P.G. and the C.I. and its Executive—this is one of our Party, the inner-political struggles and disputes in the past and of the higher political maturity of our Party generally."

"Was dich die Liebe nicht lehrt, das sollst du nicht wissen."

"Die Wolken gehören zur Erde, nicht zum Himmel."

"One cannot grasp freedom in faith without hearing simultaneously the categorical imperative: One must serve through bodily, social and political obedience the liberation of the suffering creation out of real affliction. ... Consequently, the missionary proclamation of the cross of the Resurrected One is not an opium of the people which intoxicates and incapacitates, but the ferment of new freedom. It leads to the awaking of that revolt which, in the "power of the resurrection" ... follows the categorical imperative to overthrow all conditions in which man is a being who labors and is heavily laden,"

"Christian identity can be understood only as an act of identification with the crucified Christ, to the extent to which one has accepted the proclamation that in him God has identified himself with the godless and those abandoned by God."

"[Jesus' Jewish contemporaries] are still thinking in terms of a temporal redemption and of an earthly kingdom that they had hoped from Jesus up until that time. Israel or the Jewish people was to be redeemed, but not the human race... Thus it was not a savior of the human race who would expiate the sins of the whole world through his Passion and death, but one who would redeem the people of Israel from temporal servitude."

"[Jesus] was born a Jew and intended to remain one."

"It is foolish to sigh and complain about mankind's disbelief if one cannot furnish men with the persuasive evidence that the matter demands, based on a healthy reason."

"Jesus himself could not perform miracles where the people had not faith beforehand, and when sensible men, the learned and rulers of those times, demanded of him a miracle which could be submitted to examination, he, instead of granting the request, began to upbraid them; so that no man of this stamp could believe in him. It was not until thirty to sixty years after the death of Jesus, that people began to write an account of the performance of these miracles, in a language which the Jews in Palestine did not understand. And this was at a time when the Jewish nation was in a state of the greatest disquietude and confusion, and when very few of those who had known Jesus were still alive. Nothing then was easier for them than to invent as many miracles as they pleased, without fear of their writings being readily understood or refuted. It had been impressed upon all converts from the beginning that it was both advantageous and soul-saving to believe, and to put the mind captive under the obedience of faith; and consequently there was as much credulity among them as there was "pia fraud" or "deception from good motives" among their teachers; and both of these, as is well known, prevailed in the highest degree in the early Christian church."

"Other religions, indeed, are quite as full of miracles; the heathen boasts of many, so does the Turk; no religion is without them, and this it is which also makes the Christian miracles so doubtful, and provokes us to ask: "Did the events really happen? Were the attendant circumstances such as are stated? Did they come to pass naturally, or by craft, or by chance?"... those who would build Christianity upon miracles give it nothing firm, deep or substantial for a foundation."

"It is always a sign that a doctrine or history possesses no depth of authenticity when one is obliged to resort to miracles in order to prove its truth. Miracles do not possess in or by themselves any principle containing a single article of faith or conclusive fact. It follows not because a prophet has performed miracles that therefore he has spoken the truth, because false prophets and magicians also performed signs and wonders, and false Christs performed miracles by which even the elect might be deceived. It follows not because Jesus restored sight to a blind man and healed a lame one, ergo God is threefold in person, ergo Jesus is a real God and man. It follows not because Jesus awakened Lazarus from death that therefore he also must have arisen from death."

"He had no predecessors; neither had he any disciples. His work is one of those supremely great works which pass and leave no trace, because they are before their time..."

"That which is absurd and impossible, that which in any other history would be called falsehood, deception, outrage and cruelty, cannot be made reasonable, righteous, and true by the added words: "Thus saith the Lord.""

"Each person has his religion and sect impressed upon him as a child, merely as a prejudice, through memorized formulas that are not understood and a drilled-in fear of damnation."

"Jesus left us nothing in writing; everything that we know of his teaching and deeds is contained in the writings of his disciples. Especially where his teaching is concerned, not only the evangelists among his disciples, but the apostles as well undertook to present their master's teaching. However, I find great cause to separate completely what the apostles say in their own writings from that which Jesus himself actually said and taught, for the apostles were themselves teachers and consequently present their own views."

"[It is] evident that Jesus in no way intended to abolish this Jewish religion and introduce a new one in its place. From this it follows inevitably that the apostles taught and acted exactly the reverse of what their master had intended, taught, and commanded..."

"The apostles strayed completely from their master in their teaching and in their lives, abandoning his religion and his intention and introducing a completely new system."

"His work is perhaps the most splendid achievement in the whole course of the historical investigation of the life of Jesus, for he was the first to grasp the fact that the world of thought in which Jesus moved was essentially eschatological."

"We are justified in drawing an absolute distinction between the teaching of the Apostles in their writings and what Jesus Himself in His own lifetime proclaimed and taught."

"[Jesus] ended his life with the words, "Eli, Eli, lama sabacthani?" "My God, my God, why hast Thou forsaken me?"—a confession which can hardly be otherwise interpreted than that God had not helped him to carry out his intention and attain his object as he had hoped He would have done. It was then clearly not the intention or the object of Jesus to suffer and to die, but to build up a worldly kingdom, and to deliver the Israelites from bondage. It was in this that God had forsaken him, it was in this that his hopes had been frustrated."

"The essential parts of Christianity are the articles of faith by the denial or ignorance of which we cease to be Christians. The principal of these are: the spiritual deliverance through the suffering and death of Christ; Resurrection from death in confirmation of the sufficient suffering of Christ; and, the return of Christ for reward and punishment, as the fruit and consequence of the deliverance. He who grapples with or disproves these first principles attacks the substance (or essence) of the object."

"Before Reimarus, no one had attempted to form a historical conception of the life of Jesus."

"Reimarus had too much sense of truth to endeavour to explain away by artificial demonstration the punishment of eternal Hell fire. If salvation was alone to be found in the name of Jesus, if all who did not believe in him were to be everlastingly damned, and as this creed must have been handed down from the sayings of Jesus himself, it followed that ninety-nine hundredths of the human race, those who either had never heard of Christ or of salvation to be obtained through him, or those who had not been able to convince themselves of it, were unmercifully sentenced, after this short life, to everlasting torment; and this not for the sake of making them better, but to punish them, and to satisfy God's unquenchable wrath, for a sin committed in the beginning of Creation, and a sin of which they themselves were guiltless. This seemed to banish all Divine perfection, all that was lovable and noble in God, and transformed Him into the likeness of a Satanic and hideous demon."

"The first thing that struck him, and the first conclusion he came to, was that the Bible is not a book of religious instruction or a catechism."

"The idea of God, as the most perfect of beings, existed full and warm in the heart of Reimarus, as we see by the following words:—"Far be it from Thee, great Judge of the World, most lovable, most kind, most charitable, most merciful God, to pronounce so unjust a sentence upon the poor creatures Thou hast created!""

"The unerring signs of truth and falsehood are clear, distinct consistency and contradiction. This is also the case with revelation, in so far as that it must, in common with other truths, be free from contradiction. And just as little as miracles can prove that twice two are five or that a triangle has four angles, can a contradiction lying in the history and dogmas of Christianity be removed by any number of miracles."

"By unessential things in reference to religion I mean first of all, the miracles, to which nevertheless such particular importance is attached by the Christian religion. No one can affirm that miracles of themselves establish a single article of faith. If we granted that articles of faith carried with them conviction and inherent credibility, how should we dare to require miracles in order to believe them? If we granted that the resurrection had been proved to be true by the most undoubted and unanimous witnesses, as in all fairness it ought to be, we could surely believe it without any assistant miracle. If we granted that Christ really did return in the clouds of Heaven, as according to promise he ought to have done, we should certainly want no miracles to prove it."

"If a prophecy is to be called infallible, I fairly demand that it should state beforehand legibly, clearly, and distinctly that which no man could previously have known, and that the same should thereafter take place at the time appointed, but that it should not take place because it has been predicted. If, however, such a prophecy can only be verified through allegorical interpretations of words and interpretation of words and things; if it be only composed of dark and dubious words, and the expressions it contains are commonplace, vague, and uncertain; if the matter was thought probable, or was foreseen by human cunning; if it occurs because it was predicted; if the words used refer to some other matter and are only applied to the prophecy by a quibble; if it is only written down after the event has occurred; if a prophetic book or passage is given out to be older than it is; or lastly, if the thing predicted does not take place at all, then the prophecy is either doubtful or false."

"In short, I may affirm that one cannot refer to a single quoted prophecy that is not false; or if you would have me speak more mildly, I will only say that they are all ambiguous and doubtful, and are not to be accepted from writers who trifle with things and words."

"Thus the existing history of Jesus enlightens us more and more upon the object of his conduct and teaching, which entirely correspond with the first idea entertained of him by his apostles, i.e., that he was a worldly deliverer. It enlightens us also upon the fact that they had good reason to believe in him as such so long as he lived. It also shows that the master, and how much more his disciples found themselves mistaken and deceived by the condemnation and the death, and that the new system of a suffering spiritual Saviour, which no one had ever known or thought of before, was invented after the death of Jesus, and invented only because the first hopes had failed."

"H. S. Reimarus, whose work was published posthumously in 1778, was the first to develop a picture of Jesus distinct from the Christ described in the Gospels."

"To say that the fragment on "The Aims of Jesus and His Disciples" is a magnificent piece of work is barely to do it justice. This essay is not only one of the greatest events in the history of criticism, it is also a masterpiece of general literature. The language is as a rule crisp and terse, pointed and epigrammatic—the language of a man who is not "engaged in literary composition" but is wholly concerned with the facts. At times, however, it rises to heights of passionate feeling, and then it is as though the fires of a volcano were painting lurid pictures upon dark clouds. Seldom has there been a hate so eloquent, so lofty a scorn; but then it is seldom that a work has been written in the just consciousness of so absolute a superiority to contemporary opinion. And withal, there is dignity and serious purpose; Reimarus' work is no pamphlet."

"Emil Sauer was also a good pianist, good technique, style. Very good fingers. He was a Liszt pupil. He was at his best in salon music — Chopin waltzes, things like that. But I heard him play a very good, very correct Op. 109. Some of the Liszt pupils were horrible. One I never could understand was Siloti. He played very badly. Another Liszt pupil was the famous Moriz Rosenthal, and I hated his playing. He couldn't make one nice phrase. I don't understand how he got his fame. Perhaps when I heard him he was too old to have any control. He had dexterity but he had no real technique, and I don't think he really knew how to play the piano. He didn't make music."

"During his recital last night I experienced so many contradictory emotions that it is difficult to define them. In the first instance, a profound joy when I realized that this artist had not altered (and I believe he never will). Nothing in his playing or attitude betrays his [nearly] eighty years loaded with success and achievement. At the same time I felt a great sadness. How is it possible that Emil Sauer must play in the small Salle Erard, despite his glorious past, when a Brailowsky or Uninsky can pack the Salle Pleyel? It must be due to public opinion, which remains eternally superficial, dependent on trends made fashionable by snobbery and publicity. In the case of Sauer, there may be another explanation - it is as strange as it is sad to reflect that the present generation has never heard of him, while his own generation has faded away. No matter how paradoxical it may seem this is the truth. Emil Sauer, the international virtuoso and pupil of Franz Liszt, is being forced, at the end of a brilliant career, to attempt to make a 'name' for himself. Such, at least, is the situation in France!"

"It will rightly be asked: What is the synthetic principle on which this obviously highly important product of y-methylcyclopentenophenanthrene is built up in nature, and why is it that this particular type which, as founda tion of many substances indispensable to life and of extreme physiological and biological importance, plays such a vital role in the vegetable and animal kingdoms? However, the time has not yet come when we can give an answer to questions so fundamental and so important to an understanding of the workings of Nature. But I am firmly convinced that this problem - like all others - will eventually be solved."

"One of the giants of classical music, Johannes Brahms appeared to arrive fully armed, found a style in which he was comfortable – traditional structures and tonality in the German idiom – and stuck to it throughout his life. He was no innovator, preferring the logic of the symphony, sonata, fugue and variation forms."

"I played over the music of that scoundrel Brahms. What a giftless bastard! It annoys me that this self-inflated mediocrity is hailed as a genius."