People From England

"We are looking at legislating for the duty of care that social media companies in particular have towards the people on their sites - this is an important part of that duty of care alongside all the other things that social media companies need to do, like tackling material that promotes suicide and self-harm and, of course, terrorism."

"We need to take responsibility for delivering on the referendum result."

"[If Mr Corbyn became PM, the UK] could end up with the first anti-Semitic leader of a Western nation since the Second World War"

"The Conservative party is finished if it succumbs to a Trumpian-style takeover. These Conservative Corbynistas are as destructive to the Tories as leftwing activists were to Labour. The liberal conservative majority needs to now stand up for the centre ground to ensure this rightwing takeover doesn't succeed. We moderates can't let these extreme voices and divisive arguments win the debate or claim the soul of the party. They're not only wrong and deeply unattractive but bad for political discourse and the country. If the party decides that' what it’s going to stand for, it will be a massive mistake.”"

"[The creative industries would be] absolutely central to [the UK's] post-Brexit future"

"We want the UK to be the safest place in the world to live and be online, with our essential services and infrastructure prepared for the increasing risk of cyber-attack."

"Scottish independence would be bad for the UK, and ultimately bad for Portsmouth because Britain plays a crucial role in the world, we're seeing that now with Russia."

"There are real consequences of this [Brexit] for jobs and for livelihoods."

"We are working right across government to ensure that the health sector and the industry are prepared and that people's health will be safeguarded in the event of a no-deal Brexit. This includes the chain of medical supplies, vaccines, medical devices, clinical consumables, blood products. And I have asked the department to work up options for stockpiling by industry. We are working with industry for the potential need for stockpiling in the event of a no-deal Brexit."

"The new Data Protection Bill will give us one of the most robust, yet dynamic, set of data laws in the world. It will give people more control over their data, require more consent for its use, and prepare Britain for Brexit."

"Reform is about making sure where European money is spent it's spent properly."

"I don't know how likely 'no deal' is. It is what happens automatically unless Parliament passes something else. I very strongly feel that the best thing for the country, not just for the health service but for the country as a whole, is for Theresa May's deal to pass."

"We want the secure flow of data to be unhindered in the future as we leave the EU. So a strong future data relationship between the UK and EU, based on aligned data protection rules, is in our mutual interest."

"[The vaccine's approval was] a huge British success story, [and] the single biggest stride that we've been able to take since this pandemic began."

"So, right now, as long as you wash your hands more often, that is the number one thing you can do to keep you and the country safe. [...] The scientific advice is that the impact of shaking hands is negligible and what really matters is that you wash your hands more often."

"We need to solve Brexit and we cannot do it by threatening no deal"

"The king must not be under man but under God and under the law."

"I think it's a bit of an inconvenient truth about how big this problem is. If we are really nationally and in London have the scale of response that the threat to women and children from predatory men deserves, it will need a massively upscaled approach across multiple agencies. It's great that we in the Met in our corner of the system [are] improving and doing better, but those iterative improvements are nowhere near what the size of the problem requires."

"When you look across violence against women and children, there are millions of offenders in the UK. Some of the numbers are eye-watering. The scale of this is way beyond policing and the justice system and we need a frank conversation about it, that looks at prevention work, protective work, as well as enforcement ... work. This is largely men offending on women and children ... You’ve got millions of men in the country who pose a risk to women and children at some level. And requires a whole step up in approach."

"[When asked if women reporting violence and abuse from men could be assured they would be assisted by a police officer whose behaviour was not under review.] I can’t, I’m not going to make a promise that I can't stick to [...] I'm going to put in place ruthless systems to squeeze out those who shouldn’t be with us. Most of our officers are fantastic, the people who specialised in this area are great and they have the skills. But do I have some officers who shouldn’t be in the Met that I've got to identify and get rid of? Yes I do, and I'm completely frank about that."

"Islamist and right-wing extremism is reaching into our communities through sophisticated propaganda and subversive strategies creating and exploiting vulnerabilities that can ultimately lead to acts of violence and terrorism. Ten conspiracies of an Islamist nature were stopped since the Westminster attack. And I can tell you today that over the same period police have been able to prevent a further four extreme, right-wing inspired plots in the UK."

"For the first time we have a home-grown proscribed white supremacist, neo-Nazi terror group [National Action], which seeks to plan attacks and build international networks."

"The people who have done the most ghastly things overseas, the ones who don't fight to the death, we would all like to see them never able to do anyone any harm ever again. Locking them up and throwing away the key would be a great idea."

"This man abused women in the most disgusting manner. It is sickening. We’ve let women and girls down, and indeed we’ve let Londoners down. We have failed, and I’m sorry. He should not have been a police officer. We haven’t applied the same sense of ruthlessness to guarding our own integrity that we routinely apply to confronting criminals. I do know an apology doesn’t go far enough, but I do think it’s important to acknowledge our failings and for me to say I’m sorry."

"No one ever landed on English soil with more hatred in his heart for a race than I did for the English, and on this platform are present English friends who can bear witness to the fact; but the more I lived among them and saw how the machine was working - the English national life - and mixed with them, I found where the heartbeat of the nation was, and the more I loved them. There is none among you here present, my brothers, who loves the English people more than I do now. You have to see what is going on there, and you have to mix with them. As the philosophy, our national philosophy of the Vedanta, has summarised all misfortune, all misery, as coming from that one cause, ignorance, herein also we must understand that the difficulties that arise between us and the English people are mostly due to that ignorance; we do not know them, they do not know us."

"An Englishman is self-assured, as being a citizen of the best-organized state in the world, and therefore as an Englishman always knows what he should do and knows that all he does as an Englishman is undoubtedly correct."

"The home life of the English seems to me to be about as perfect as anything can be. Everything moves like clockwork. I was impressed, too, with the deference that the servants show to their "masters" and "mistresses" ... The English servant expects, as a rule, to be nothing but a servant, and so he perfects himself in the art..."

"Ask any man what nationality he would prefer to be, and ninety-nine out of a hundred will tell you that they would prefer to be Englishmen."

"The expression "as right as rain" must have been invented by an Englishman."

"What is the problem with you English? You killed millions of Indians and Africans, and yet you go nuts about the circumstances of the death of a single Serbian pigeon. I am touched you hold the lives of Serbian birds so dear, but you are crazy. I will never understand how your minds work."

"Mad dogs and Englishmen go out in the midday sun."

"Full of blood, loving life and all it's got to give Englishmen going insane"

"An Englishman is the unfittest person on Earth to argue another Englishman into slavery."

"The English take their pleasures sadly after the fashion of their country."

"He was an Englishman of Englishmen, of the old school of charming manners, flavoured by occasional downrightness of speech."

"Of all the races in the Galaxy, only the English could possibly revive the memory of the most horrific wars ever to sunder the Universe and transform it into into what I'm afraid is generally regarded as an incomprehensibly dull and pointless game."

"To be an Englishman is to belong to the most exclusive club there is."

"No man had once a greater veneration for Englishmen than I entertained. They were dear to me as branches of the same parental trunk, and partakers of the same religion and laws."

"[T]he English intelligentsia are Europeanized. They take their cookery from Paris and their opinions from Moscow. In the general patriotism of the country they form a sort of island of dissident thought. England is perhaps the only great country whose intellectuals are ashamed of their own nationality. In left-wing circles it is always felt that there is something slightly disgraceful in being an Englishman and that it is a duty to snigger at every English institution, from horse racing to suet puddings. It is a strange fact, but it is unquestionably true that almost any English intellectual would feel more ashamed of standing to attention during ‘God save the King’ than of stealing from a poor box. All through the critical years many left-wingers were chipping away at English morale, trying to spread an outlook that was sometimes squashily pacifist, sometimes violently pro-Russian, but always anti-British. It is questionable how much effect this had, but it certainly had some. If the English people suffered for several years a real weakening of morale, so that the Fascist nations judged that they were ‘decadent’ and that it was safe to plunge into war, the intellectual sabotage from the Left was partly responsible. Both the New Statesman and the News Chronicle cried out against the Munich settlement, but even they had done something to make it possible. Ten years of systematic Blimp-baiting affected even the Blimps themselves and made it harder than it had been before to get intelligent young men to enter the armed forces. Given the stagnation of the Empire, the military middle class must have decayed in any case, but the spread of a shallow Leftism hastened the process."

"The world is full of care, much like unto a bubble, Women and care, and care and women, and women and care and trouble."

"He that is willing to tolerate any religion, or discrepant way of religion, besides his own, unless it be in matters merely indifferent, either doubts of his own, or is not sincere in it."

"Jim didn't have a script – he didn't work that normal way. He wanted to have a laboratory of textures and designs and ideas and rehearsals. He had a story – but he wanted the script to work in conjunction with the laboratory of creating the characters."

"This is Jim – he said, "Would you direct Dark Crystal with me?" and I said, "Why? I don't know how to direct. You could do it yourself. Why would you want me to direct with you?" He said, "Because it would be better." And that's all that mattered. He didn't care about the credit. He knew that he had some weaknesses and he felt that I had some strengths, and so we worked together that way."

"It was not smooth at all, and it was because of me, not because of Jim. Jim should have ****in' fired me several times. Jim was extraordinarily patient. I was a young guy who wanted to make his mark in the world, and if I was the co-director, by God why wasn't I attending more meetings and why didn't I get more say in things? I had a problem of self-esteem and it came through that way. It was difficult for Jim, not for me. It was frustrating for me, but that was an unhealthy frustration. It worked because Jim was patient."

"It seems Mr. Mark Saltzman was asked if Bert & Ernie are gay. It’s fine that he feels they are. They’re not, of course. But why that question? Does it really matter? Why the need to define people as only gay? There’s much more to a human being than just straightness or gayness."

"What I don't like is describing Jim as that he was this wonderful, warm, sweet man because, yes he was a wonderful, warm, sweet man – but he was also the strongest man I ever met in character. He was very tough. He worked like a sonofabitch. He could get cranky and he got snarky at times. He would rarely get angry. I've seen him angry only about three times in my life. He was a very complex guy, but he was that noble spirit."

"I lost my health and the trouble returned. A doctor, urgently summoned, wanted to operate at once, but once again my wife was convinced that this would be the wrong thing to do. It was then that I met Dr. Gordon Latto, who had become so impressed by the efficacy of nature cure methods that he had switched over almost completely from his orthodox practice to natural healing. He said that he could stop the gallstone from forming, but that I must go on a strict vegetarian diet for a year, besides knocking off drink and tobacco (which he said was worse than drink). This was a tough regime; the gallstones could not survive it. I did, however, and at the end of the period I found that I was also cured of smoking, and that the vegetarian diet suited me so well that I have preferred it ever since."

"What Jim wanted to do, and it was totally his vision, was to get back to the darkness of the original Grimm’s fairy tales. He thought it was fine to scare children. He didn’t think it was healthy for children to always feel safe."

"I’m not involved in the slightest. I say “godspeed.” I am not involved. Nobody’s mentioned it in any way to me whatsoever. I’ll be very curious to see it."

"I helped him direct the movie, but he had the vision. It was because of Jim not accepting the impossible and as a result he would work harder than anybody I’ve ever known because he was the one who led the way by working harder. None of us could say no because he always worked harder than us. When you say special, I think that really is the memory that I have, the incredible upward hill journey that we had to do every single day. It was very tough."