Agnostics

"Q: President Macron, friend or foe? A: The jury’s out (applause). But if I become prime minister, I would judge him on deeds, not words."

"In 2015 Merkel in Germany made a radical gesture. After the failure of an EU plan to absorb refugees from the Syrian civil war flowing into Greece, she decided to offer them sanctuary in Germany. Over a million accepted. The reaction was fierce. An unashamedly right-wing group, Alternative for Germany, emerged in the 2018 German elections as the third largest party, strongest in the former East German provinces. Merkel, so long the queen of Europe, was almost toppled. A charismatic French president, Emmanuel Macron, elected in 2017, swiftly moved into lead position in the EU and promptly initiated yet another attempt to concentrate and reform the eurozone. Germany disagreed. Europe looked ever more divided and confused."

"My thoughts go out to the families of the victims of the terrible accident that took place last night near Larissa. France stands alongside the Greeks."

"These children are ready to deliver their moral verdict on the people and institutions who knew all about the dangerous, depleted world they would inherit and yet chose not to act. They know what they think of Donald Trump in the United States and Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil and Scott Morrison in Australia and all the other leaders who torch the planet with defiant glee while denying science so basic that these kids could grasp it easily at age eight. Their verdict is just as damning, if not more so, for the leaders who deliver passionate and moving speeches about the imperative to respect the Paris Climate Agreement and "make the planet great again" (France's Emanuel Macron, Canada's Justin Trudeau, and so many others), but who then shower subsidies, handouts, and licenses on the fossil fuel and agribusiness giants driving ecological breakdown."

"There is a sort of misunderstanding about what the European model is, and the French model in particular, American society used to be segregationist before it moved to a multiculturalist model, which is essentially about coexistence of different ethnicities and religions next to one another… Our model is universalist, not multiculturalist. In our society, I don't care whether someone is black, yellow or white, whether they are Catholic or Muslim, a person is first and foremost a citizen."

"But there was an even more surprising twist in the president’s March 12 address: Emmanuel Macron was suddenly and almost miraculously transformed into a staunch defender of the welfare state, and of . He even affirmed the impossibility of reducing everything to the logic of the market! Many commentators and politicians, several of whom are on the left, eagerly welcomed Macron's recognition of the irreplaceable importance of our . Yet what we witnessed here was really little more than a delayed response to Macron's public confrontation with a doctor during his visit to the on February 27. The doctor, a professor of neurology, insisted Macron provide the public hospitals with an "investment shock" ("choc d’attractivité"), and Macron assented to the doctor's demands, at least in principle. It was of course immediately recognized that Macron's subsequent pronouncements were completely hollow, and they in no way called into the question the neoliberal policies his government has methodically pursued for years."

"The COVID-19 pandemic is an unprecedented global health, social and economic crisis. Historical comparisons are few, particularly in recent decades. This tragedy constitutes nothing less than a trial for all humanity. [...] What has since become abundantly apparent is the destructive influence of behavioral economics and the so-called "nudge theory" of political decision-making, which relies on and stimuli to steer individual behavior, rather than coercion or restraint. [...] It is also worth recalling that French officials adopted this very same approach until March 14. Macron initially refused to adopt strict containment measures because, as he stated on March 6, "restrictive measures are not sustainable over time." As he exited the theater he had attended that very same day with his wife, he declared "Life goes on. There is no reason, save for vulnerable populations, to change our social behaviors." Lurking beneath these words, which seem utterly irresponsible today, one cannot help but detect a tactic in which this libertarian paternalism allowed governments to defer the measures they knew would necessarily disrupt their economies. Nonetheless, the eventual failure of libertarian paternalism to contain the virus compelled the political authorities to radically change course. In France, our first glimpse of this shift was Macron's Presidential Speech on March 12, in which he appealed to national unity, to our sacred union, and to the French people's "strength of character." Macron’s next speech on March 16 was even more explicit in its martial posture and rhetoric: it is time for general mobilization, for "patriotic self-restraint," because "we are now at war." The figure of the sovereign state now manifests itself in its most extreme but also its most classic form: that of the sword that strikes the enemy, "who is there, invisible, elusive and advancing.""

"So when I see, in that context, several newspapers which I believe are from countries that share our values — journalists who write in a country that is the heir to the Enlightenment and the French Revolution — when I see them legitimizing this violence, and saying that the heart of the problem is that France is racist and Islamophobic, then I say the founding principles have been lost."

"Macron is responsible for Haftar's mass graves. Macron is now trying to play the colonial game in the Eastern Mediterranean using Greece."

"Patriotism is the exact opposite of nationalism."

"Brexit has been pushed by certain people who predicted easy solutions. Brexit has shown us one thing - and I fully respect British sovereignty in saying this - it has demonstrated that those who said you can easily do without Europe, that it will all go very well, that it is easy and there will be lots of money, are liars. This is all the more true because they left the next day, so they didn't have to manage it."

"In the political debate we often ask ourselves the question of our identity. But our identity is never built on narrow-mindedness, or on first names or crampedness."

"Nationalism is a betrayal of patriotism. By saying our interests first, who cares about the others, we erase what a nation holds dearest, what gives it life, what makes it great and what is essential: its moral values."

"I'm not the candidate of one faction anymore, but the president for all of us. … I know full well that many in this country voted for me not because they support my ideas but to block the far-right. I want to thank them tonight, and know I owe them a debt in the years to come. … We have so much to do, and the war in Ukraine reminds us that we are going through tragic times, times where France must be heard, France must clearly make its choices, and France must anchor its strength in all fields, and we will do just that. … We also need to be careful and respectful because our country is full of division and doubt. Therefore we must be strong and no one will be left by the wayside. Together we must work towards that unity which is the only way through which we can live happier in France, and can overcome the challenges of the coming years. The coming years won't be easy for sure, but they will be historic, and together, we will write that story for the coming generations."

"If it wasn't for France, you’d be 10,000 times deeper in shit."

"No major US ally has been spared from the president's indignities. In private, he pillories partner nations and their leaders and is not shy about doing the same in the open, as in the case of his comment about the Canadian prime minister being "very dishonest & weak," only hours after being hosted by the northern neighbor. He's done the same with France, mocking President Emmanuel Macron on Twitter for his low approval ratings and high unemployment, and with Germany, criticizing Chancellor Angela Merkel's administration for failing to reduce crime and accusing its leaders of being freeloaders that take advantage of US generosity."

"We will never abandon Ireland or the Irish people no matter what happens, because this solidarity is the very purpose of the European project."

"Il faut pouvoir tenir. Si on prend des mesures qui sont très contraignantes, ce n'est pas tenable dans la durée."

"La vie continue. Il n'y a aucune raison, mis à part pour les populations fragilisées, de modifier nos habitudes de sortie."

"Déléguer notre alimentation, notre protection, notre capacité à soigner notre cadre de vie au fond à d'autres est une folie. Nous devons en reprendre le contrôle, construire plus encore que nous ne le faisons déjà une France, une Europe souveraine, une France et une Europe qui tiennent fermement leur destin en main."

"Our country, our nation is built by two institutions, the state and the language. A language whose epicenter today is no longer on these banks of the Seine, but probably much more towards the Congo River basin."

"Nous sommes entrés dans un monde de grandes migrations. Et on en aura de plus en plus. Parce que la planète est en profond déséquilibre, nous auront dans les décennies qui viennent des migrations dues à des conflits géopolitiques qui vont continuer à se jouer et nous aurons des migrations climatiques... La France ne pourra pas l'endiguer... des phénomènes migratoires beaucoup plus forts que ce qu'on a vécu avec la Syrie."

"Ce soir, on sait qu'au moins un policier a été tué, qu’un autre a été blessé. Cet impondérable, cette menace fera partie du quotidien des prochaines années. Je témoigne toute ma solidarité à l’égard de nos forces de police, de nos forces de l’ordre. J'ai une pensée pour la famille de la victime."

"Make our planet great again."

"E cada instante é diferente, e cada homem é diferente, e somos todos iguais."

"Tenho apenas duas mãos e o sentimento do mundo, mas estou cheio de escravos, minhas lembranças escorrem e o corpo transige na confluência do amor."

"Eu preparo uma canção em que minha mãe se reconheça, todas as mães se reconheçam, e que fale como dois olhos.'Caminho por uma rua que passa em muitos países. Se não me vêem, eu vejo e saúdo velhos amigos.'Eu distribuo um segredo como quem ama ou sorri. No jeito mais natural dois carinhos se procuram.'Minha vida, nossas vidas formam um só diamante. Aprendi novas palavras e tornei outras mais belas.'Eu preparo uma canção que faça acordar os homens e adormecer as crianças."

"Eu não vi o mar. Não sei se o mar é bonito. Não sei se ele é bravo. O mar não me importa.'Eu vi a lagoa. A lagoa, sim. A lagoa é grande e calma também.'Na chuva de cores da tarde que explode, a lagoa brilha. A lagoa se pinta de todas as cores. Eu não vi o mar. Eu vi a lagoa..."

"Amor é o que se aprende no limite, depois de se arquivar toda a ciência herdada, ouvida. Amor começa tarde."

"She broke down barriers … She became part of the hearts and minds of French people ... Josephine Baker, you enter the Pantheon because while you were born American, deep down there was no one more French than you."

"The fight against climate change is by far the most significant struggle of our times."

"Climate change adds further injustice to an already unfair world."

"Quando nasci, um anjo torto Desses que vivem na sombra Disse: Vai Carlos! Ser gauche na vida. (...) Meu Deus, por que me abandonastes se sabias que eu não era Deus, se sabias que eu era fraco. Mundo mundo vasto mundo, se eu me chamasse Raimundo seria uma rima, não seria uma solução. Mundo mundo vasto mundo, mais vasto é meu coração. Eu não devia te dizer mas essa lua mas esse conhaque botam a gente comovido como o diabo."

"I believe in a form of transcendence, that's why I thoroughly respect the role of religions in society."

"[T]he Five Ways fail […] principally because it is much more difficult than at first appears to separate them from their background in medieval cosmology. Any contemporary cosmological argument would have to be much more different from the arguments of Aquinas than scholastic modernizations customarily are."

"There is no reason why someone who is in doubt about the existence of God should not pray for help and guidance on this topic as in other matters. Some find something comic in the idea of an agnostic praying to a God whose existence he doubts. It is surely no more unreasonable than the act of a man adrift in the ocean, trapped if a cave, or stranded on a mountainside, who cries for help though he may never be heard or fires a signal which may never be seen."

"The predicate of a sentence may tell you what kind of a thing something is, or how big it is, or where it is, or what is happening to it, and so on. We may say, for instance, of St Thomas Aquinas that he was a human being, and that he was fat, clever, and holier than Abelard; that he lived in Paris in the thirteenth century, that he sat when lecturing, wore the Dominican habit, wrote eight million words, and was eventuarlly poisoned by Charles of Anjou. The predicats we use in saying these things belong, Aristotle would say, in different categories: they belong in the categories of, respectively, substance, quantity, quality, relation, place, time, posture, vesture, action, and passion."

"Philosophy is not a matter of knowledge; it is a matter of understanding, that is to say, of organizing what is known."

"Buddy, you're a young man, hard man Shouting in the street, gonna take on the world someday You got blood on your face, you big disgrace Waving your banner all over the place We will, we will rock you, sing it! We will, we will rock you, yeah."

"When I'm gone, people will no doubt remember me for Queen, but I would much rather be remembered for attempting to change the way we treat our fellow creatures."

"There's no chance for us It's all decided for us This world has only one sweet moment Set aside for usWho wants to live forever? Who wants to live forever? Who dares to love forever Oh, when love must die?"

"Delving into my history, preparing for the imminent re-release of this epic, I have been a kind of father-figure looking back kindly on a young man who was fighting his way out of a kind of emotional black hole... For me, it’s been a nice thing to explore. Again, probably if Covid hadn’t have happened I wouldn’t have had the time... it’s been a discovery of where my brain was at the time."

"We will, we will rock you We will, we will rock you."

"I think that if you get too close to the character, if you do too much historical research, you may find yourself defending your view of a character against the author's view, and I think that's terribly dangerous."

"My career has evolved at its own peculiar pace, American careers are supposed to have a much more singular direction than I've been able to... stomach. Really. In most careers you find something you do well and you tie an increasingly larger bow on the package. My interests and obsessions have always been so wide-ranging that I keep popping my head out of different boxes as much as possible.That's far more interesting for me."

"It's much more a matter of playing the characters as they were written by the authors, because of the liberties that have been taken with pretty much all of them. They've all been distorted in one way or another, because the authors have hardly stuck to the facts."

"The Orientalists and their indefatigable intellectual curiosity, scholarship, and translations had incalculable consequences for the development of art, philosophy, and politics in Europe, an influence passionately chronicled by Raymond Schwab in The Oriental Renaissance. Orientalists changed forever the intellectual and spiritual landscape of Europe, and allowed artists, writers, and composers to enter imaginatively and sympathetically into civilizations hitherto unfamiliar to Westerners, to accord the Orient dignity and respect, and to people European works with Orientals, seen as equals. It was in this intellectual and spiritual milieu that Mozart created some of his most sublime music. Perhaps Die Zauberflote, Il Seraglio, and cantata K.619 can be seen as reflections in art of Orientalist research."

"All the atrocities commited by the Pakistani army clearly shows that it was nothing but a religious war. When I read the Koran and compare the actions of the Pakistani army I find an absolute link between the killings and the provisions in the Koran. To the Pakistani military, the Bengalis were not true followers of Islam, but hypocrites. So they wanted to get rid of these nonbelievers (the Bengalis) as per the provision in the Koran and hadith. The whole world knows the truth. The truth is that the genocide in Bangladesh was conducted by the Islmic army of Pakistan to save Islam and to completely annihilate the unbelievers."

"There is no such thing as the Koran."

"Then came the topic of creation of Bangladesh. Naturally, they sided with the Pakistani Islamic army, although they expressed sorrow for the lives lost. When they heard that 3 million people were massacred and that the action of the Pakistani Islamic army could not be dismissed simply as an act of restoration of peace and order, they simply laughed. The reason was that they did not believe what had happened to our people in the occupied Bangladesh. When we asked them how many Bengalis were killed, they quoted a figure of three thousand. They also insisted that those killed were mostly Hindus, so we should not bother too much about the massacre. That was to say that the killing of Hindus was all right. We pointed out that the figure of 3 million was not invented by the government of Bangladesh but the figure was from reliable foreign sources such as the Agence France Presse, Reuters, and Time magazine. We also told them that a Pakistani journalist by the name of Anthony Mascarenhas has written a book titled The Rape of Bangladesh,' where he had quoted a similar figure. The Pakistanis simply dismissed those facts and said that the foreign journalists were bribed by India to write these figures. When we asked them how did they get the figure of three thousand, they said that that figure was released by the military authorities. And what about the two hundred thousand rape cases? They were adamant that not a single woman was raped. Such is the power of Pakistani Islamic oligarchy and Pakistani Islamic military to condition peoples' minds..."