People From Cape Town

"Many grand notions and titles have over time attached themselves to this place: a paradise at the southern tip of Africa, the world’s richest floral kingdom, a maritime fulcrum between West and East, a European outpost at the foot of the continent, the Tavern of the Seas. But the two names that are the most potent are also two of the earliest: the contradictory claims of this being both a Cape of Storms and a Cape of Good Hope. The tension between these ideas encapsulates many of the tensions of this city."

"But then again, Cape Town is an old lover. There are good days and bad days. Mostly, I think, I have made my peace. On the stormy days – perhaps a Cape Times report on gangland rape, or Sol Kerzner’s promise of a Noddyland hotel for the Waterfront, will trigger my unfaithfulness – Potchefstroom and Perth look suddenly greener. On the good days – maybe a school of Heaviside’s dolphins playing outside my window, full-moonrise from Signal Hill or a spring morning so unutterably blue it demands to be drunk, not written about – life here seems unrepeatable anywhere else in the world. As in all relationships, the dialogue is never over."

"Perched on the southern tip of Africa, far from the centre of anything, many writers have lamented the cultural backwardness, the oppression of living in a divided city. Even as Cape Town evolves, grows more cosmopolitan, holds its first Picasso exhibition, becomes an international convention hub, acquires its very own fashion week ... I still can’t help feeling the old unease. Is it the parochialism and cliquishness that outsiders comment on, joking that only third-generation Capetonians are really accepted? Is it the self-satisfied airheads basking at Camps Bay cafés, flicking golden curls and agonising over which cocktail to order? Is it the smug self-sufficiency that comes with having so much beauty on your doorstep that you don’t need to connect with your neighbour? Is it something to do with the schizophrenia of the city not being quite African, of holding onto Europe’s apron strings, of not knowing who or what it really is? Or is it the crime, that ubiquitous topic of so much conversation and so little action, which makes this one of the most violent cities on earth?"

"There’s a word the locals use for a backpacker: pachiça. It refers to those who carry their baggage or bundles on their heads. In the old days it applied to slaves – the dispossessed who were forced to make the long trek to the coast. Just then it seemed as though the old word had found a perfect match in these coast-bound, tourist slaves."

"It was not until my second year as a doctoral student that I began to understand that mathematics was an ever-expanding universe. My thesis advisor at Princeton was Emil Artin, one of the great algebraists of the century. Unfortunately, or perhaps fortunately, he offered me no advice in the selection of a thesis topic. I think it was a fluke that I got started at all. But once I did, a whole new world opened up, to which I would devote a vast amount of time and energy for over thirty years."

"Class field theory can be divided into two parts, local and global. In each part it is the study of all the abelian extensions of a certain base field. The underlying philosophy is to describe all abelian extensions in terms of objects residing within, or close to, the base field."

"The spinor genus is due to Eichler. His early results (1952) established the theory over the rational field and also, in certain special cases, over a number field. Kneser (1956) extended this to number fields in general. At about the same time Watson obtained Eichler's results by elementary methods over the rational field."

"The sinners would have included those who did not pay their tithes (one tenth of their income) to the priests, and those who were negligent about the sabbath rest and about ritual cleanliness. The laws and customs on these matters were so complicated that the uneducated were quite incapable of understanding what was expected of them. Education in those days was a matter of knowing .. the law and all its ramifications. The illiterate and uneducated were inevitably lawless and immoral. The ‘am ha-arez, or uneducated peasants, ‘the rabble who know nothing of the law’ (John 7:49) were regarded by even the most enlightened Pharisees, like Hillel, as incapable of virtue and piety."

"The sinners … did not even have the consolation of feeling they were in God’s good books. The educated people told them that they were displeasing to God and “they ought to know.”"

"Jesus wanted to liberate everyone from the law — from all laws. But this could not be achieved by abolishing or changing the law. He had to dethrone the law. He had to ensure that the law be man’s servant and not his master (Mark 2:27-28). Man must therefore take responsibility for his servant, the law, and use it to serve the needs of mankind."

"The leaders and scholars of Jesus’ time had first enslaved themselves to the law. This not only enhanced their prestige in society, it also gave them a sense of security. Man fears the responsibility of being free. It is often easier to let others make the decisions or to rely upon the letter of the law. Some men want to be slaves. After enslaving themselves to the letter of the law, such men always go on to deny freedom to others. They will not rest until they have imposed the same oppressive burdens upon everyone (Matt 23:4,15)."

"“Those who humble themselves will be exalted” is not a promise of future prestige to those who have no prestige now or to those who have given up all reliance upon prestige. It is the promise that they will no longer be treated as inferior but will receive full recognition as human beings. Just as the poor are not promised wealth but the satisfaction of their needs — no one shall want; so the little ones are not promised status and prestige but the full recognition of their dignity as human beings."

"The much quoted text, “My kingdom is not of this world” (John 18:36) does not mean that the kingdom is not, or will not be, in this world or on this earth. … When Jesus and his disciples are said to be in the world but not of the world, the meaning is clear enough. Although they live in the world they are not worldly, they do not subscribe to the present values and standards of the world. … The values of the kingdom [of God] are different from, and opposed to, the values of this world. There is no reason for thinking that it means the kingdom will float in the air somewhere above the earth or that it will be an abstract entity without any tangible social and political structure."

"The kingdom of God, like any other kingdom, cannot be within a man; it is something within which a man can live."

"Many Christians have been misled for centuries about the nature of God’s kingdom by the well-known mistranslation of Luke 17:21: “The kingdom of God is within you.” Today all serious scholars and translators would agree that the test should read: “The kingdom of God is among you or in your midst.” The Greek word entos can means “within” or “among.”"

"The Christian belief in heaven originated after the death of Jesus with the idea that he had been taken up into heaven or exalted to the right hand of God."

"There can be no doubt that Jesus was a remarkably cheerful person and that his joy, like his faith and hope, was infectious. This was in fact the most characteristic and most noticeable difference between Jesus and John. As we shall see later, Jesus feasted while John fasted (Luke 7:31-34)."

"Rejoicing and celebrating with sinners was incomprehensibly scandalous (Luke 15:1). They [the Pharisees] could only assume that he [Jesus] had become a pleasure-seeker, “a drunkard and a glutton” (Luke 7:34)."

"Miracles are very often thought of, both by those who believe in them and by those who do not, as events, or purported events, that contradict the laws of nature and that therefore cannot be explained by science or reason. But this is not at all what the Bible means by a miracle, as any Biblical scholar will tell you. “The laws of nature” is a modern scientific concept. The Bible knows nothing about nature, let alone the laws of nature."

"The remarkable thing about Jesus was that, although he came from the middle class and had no appreciable disadvantages himself, he mixed socially with the lowest of the low and identified himself with them. He became an outcast by choice. Why did Jesus do this? What would make a middle-class man talk to beggars and mix socially with the poor? What would make a prophet associate with the rabble who know nothing of the law? The answer comes across very clearly in the gospels: compassion."

"The sinners … had been taught to think of sin as the failure of observe laws of which they were usually quite ignorant. Sin was therefore not always a fully deliberate act."

"Our cricket was completely uninhibited by tactical thoughts or any other subtleties. We were never coached, all our practice came from playing in the streets of Signal Hill, where we lived, and some of us would get hauled off to jail by the police if we were caught. Playing in the street was an offence for us."

"If you told me I was nearer to 40 than 35 when I first played for England in 1966, I would not sue for slander."

"I do feel one learns more from one's failures than from one's successes,"

"[A] cigar-smoking Barbara Cartland,"

"The Vicomtesse alias Moira Lister - even though she is on the wrong side of 60, is looking like an exquisite, flawless Gainsborough cameo."

"Without my work I would be a neurotic mess."

"Words are such thin shavings of the fractal fruit, tiny scraping of the skin that holds these joyously determined swirls of history inside their juicy turbulence. Talking itself westward after the day's feast, each little word with its meaning strapped to its back falls down the swell of tomorrow like a hiker with hopeful new shoes."

"I think that this is the first war in history that on the morrow the victors sued for peace and the vanquished called for unconditional surrender."

"If Algeria introduced a resolution declaring that the earth was flat and that Israel had flattened it, it would pass by a vote of 164 to 13 with 26 abstentions."

"The Arabs never miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity."

"History teaches us that men and nations behave wisely once they have exhausted all other alternatives."