People From London

"I never thought I had a right to sacrifice another being to my own good or pleasure; but whatever else ensued you would be placed in circumstances infinitely more favourable to happiness than before."

"Choudary took pains to presnt the laws of war under which the Islamic State operates as policies of mercy rather than of brutality. He told me the state has an obligation to terrorize its enemies—a holy order to scare the shit out of them with beheadings and crucifixions and enslavement of women and children, because doing so hastens victory and avoids prolonged conflict."

"[After the 7 July 2005 London bombings] Al-Qaida are not targeting people arbitrarily. There are specific targets [...] The time for talking is over. You can't sit down and negotiate while you are murdering Muslims in Iraq."

"For people who have had adultery committed against them, people who have had their wives taken, a lot will say "I think stoning to death is appropriate". I was like you, I was completely oblivious to Islam and the Islamic civilisation because I was educated in this system. But when you look at the rationale and benefits of it, you realise that it is, in fact, superior."

"There should be the removal of all borders and an invitation to all Muslims to become citizens of the new Islamic State with the aim to unite the Muslim land of the Indian sub-continent to begin with, to be the precursor of greater unity under the Khilafah [caliphate]."

"In London, Choudary and his students provided detailed descriptions of how the Islamic State must conduct its foreign policy, now that it is a caliphate. It has already taken up what Islamic law refers to as "offensive jihad," the forcible expansion into countries that are ruled by non-Muslims. "Hitherto, we were just defending ourselves," Choudary said; without a caliphate, offensive jihad is an inapplicable concept. But the waging of war to expand the caliphate is an essential duty of the caliph."

"Our sensationalist and irresponsible media has, in fact, been deeply complicit in the rise and rise of this fanatic, devoting quite disproportionate and counter-productive coverage to his various rantings. Is Choudary an Islamic scholar whose views merit attention or consideration? No. Has he studied under leading Islamic scholars? Nope. Does he have any Islamic qualifications or credentials? None whatsoever. So what gives him the right to pontificate on Islam, British Muslims or "the hellfire"? Or proclaim himself a "sharia judge"? Will he even manage to round up enough misfits to carry the 500 coffins with him? I doubt it – Choudary and co couldn't even persuade enough people to join a "march for sharia" that they had proudly planned to hold in central London in late October, and, at the very last minute, had to humiliatingly withdraw from their own rally. Pathetic, eh? The fact is that Choudary is as unrepresentative of British Muslim opinion, as he is of British anti-war opinion."

"[On Choudary's membership of the internationally proscribed Islamist group Al Muhajiroun (The Emigrants)] Choudary ... is the group's former leader. He frequently appears on cable news, as one of the few people producers can book who will defend the Islamic State vociferously, until his mike is cut. He has a reputation in the United Kingdom as a loathsome blowhard, but he and his disciples sincerely believe in the Islamic State and, on matters of doctrine, speak in its voice. Choudary and the others feature prominently in the Twitter feeds of Islamic State residents..."

"[On the men responsible for the September 11 attacks] Those individuals are Muslims, they were carrying out their Islamic responsibility and duty, so in that respect they were magnificent, and the Muslims worldwide hope that they are accepted as martyrs in the eyes of God."

"we find Dr. de Grey purposefully and knowingly disregarded multiple directives (from the acting Executive Director, this investigator, and his own counsel) to retain the confidentiality of the investigation. In his interview, Dr. de Grey not only admitted to this conduct, he made unreasonable efforts to justify it ..Dr. de Grey’s unapologetic interference with the investigation by reaching out to a witness through a third party and repeatedly posting about the investigation has generated angry attacks on the accusers and perpetuated misinformation (i.e., that he has been exonerated)"

"Scientist Aubrey de Grey made inappropriate sexual comments to two female entrepreneurs, independent investigation finds"

"Aubrey is one of the kindest and most generous people I have ever known. He only ever treated me with respect and kindness. I never saw him intentionally disrespect anyone."

"If we are to bring about real regenerative therapies that will benefit not just future generations, but those of us who are alive today, we must encourage scientists to work on the problem of aging"

"I define aging as the set of accumulated side effects from metabolism that eventually kills us."

"When I was much younger I had a couple of relationships with women who were very smart but, being teenaged, had not had time to demonstrate it. It was important to them that I not compliment them too much on their (very considerable) physical attributes, and I respected that at the time and still do. But for those of us who have already achieved plenty in life, and who thus have nothing to prove, the same does not apply. I have a mission in life, and I have no compunction whatsoever in furthering it by means that have nothing to do with my intellect, whether that be my ability to feign a reasonably aristocratic accent or my own physical attributes. Similarly, I view it as not only acceptable but positively recommended that those of my colleagues who are similarly committed to this same mission should take whatever advantage may be available, of whatever attributes they may possess, to influence those who have major potential to further that mission - and, to the extent that they do so without even thinking about it, that they not be all coy and in denial they they do so. There’s a war on, my friend; there's no time to be all pompous about some hypothetical greater value of those enviable features that one has earned through hard work over those that one was born with. We need to work with what we have, however we obtained it."

"It is at the same level of women in World War II sleeping with Nazis to get information. It is a war against aging here. You have to persuade people to give money. That is honestly who I am. I am the general. .. It is just not possible I could have said anything like this to [Complainant #2] in 2018. […] I would not dream of saying anything remotely along those lines. I have not used any of my staff in terms of womanhood in that way. I put my scientists next to donors to talk science."

"I am at last in a position to apologise - which I gladly do publicly - to Laura Deming for my email to her in 2012, about which I had forgotten until the investigator reminded me of it. As STAT reported three weeks ago, I consider that that email would have been a mistake even if she had been five years older, because we were in a mentor-mentee relationship. I catgorically deny Laura's current (though, as she made clear on August 10th, not contemporaneous) view, shared by the investigator, that I sent that email with improper intent - but my email does not become OK just because improper intent is now being misread into it."

"I don't feel the need to subtweet that one - Aubrey is an absolutely terrible human being"

"I had one bad experience with him when I was 17 - he told me in writing that he had an ‘adventurous love life’ and that it had ‘always felt quite jarring’ not to let conversations with me stray in that direction given that ‘[he] could treat [me] as an equal on every other level’. He sent this from his work email, and I’d known him since I was 14."

"Aubrey de Grey is a sexual predator. For years he has used his position of power in the aging field to attract his victims. These victims include me, Laura Deming, and multiple other anonymous women. Laura was a minor when Aubrey came on to her; I was a SENS-funded student. Aubrey’s proclivities are a long held open secret in the aging field."

"The crucial notion that the world has not always been the way it is now."

"In practice, the attempt to relate the evidence on the ground directly to the Noachian Flood was more or less abandoned after the 1820s."

"This intricate picture has not been easy to put together. It has required a succession of insights over three centuries, each one demanding a huge leap of imagination, and the Earth scientists, though little recognized, have been among the most imaginative of all. But because the insights did require such imagination, each has met with incredulity. No scientists have been more comprehensively scorned than those who have sought to explain how the world behaves. Time after time, however, the most extraordinary ideas have turned out to be right, and the conservative notions have proved inadequate."

"The party really is over....The attitude that has been so appropriate this past 10,000 years, and has allowed the most exploitative-experimental people to rise inexorably if fitfully to the top, has simply ceased to be appropriate. Yet our economies are geared to the exploitative-experimental approach, and so are our political systems. So all of a sudden, or so it seems, our political and economic institutions and philosophies are out of synch with the biological and physical realities of the planet. It might be unrealistic to devise new systems that are radically different, with a radically different motivation; but if we do not do this, then we cannot seriously contemplate long-term survival. Surely it cannot be the case that the only “realistic” course is to head pell-mell for disaster? Is that what the level-headed, sober-suited people are arguing? Our position seems not merely precarious, but ludicrous."

"It was very difficult not to want to go into acting because it is in my blood and I still feel to this day that a dressing room is like another home."

"I find that as my knowledge grows, so my appreciation deepens."

"A knowledge of our own history is a significant part of culture and, at present, that knowledge is absurdly curtailed."

"Every society has cause to know that the beneficence of the Earth cannot be taken for granted."

"The point is simply to realize that the Earth does indeed behave in extraordinary ways—and incredulity is no defense."

"We cannot claim to take the environment seriously until we acknowledge that a million years is a proper unit of political time. That is the general lesson of history."

"The agricultural systems of the world are not actually designed to feed people....If the prime concern of the human species was to feed people, then we would do things very differently."

"The effect of natural selection over time is to change the composition of the gene pool."

"Nature’s rules are universal, and nature has no taste."

"Nature is endlessly inventive, yet endlessly reinvents."

"Natural selection is not concerned with dignity—only with reproductive success."

"In short, we are innately bad at introspection."

"In particular, to suggest that the creature which is measurably superior in any particular respect is ipso facto morally superior is bad science (since it is not in the brief of science to make such judgments) and also bad moral philosophy (since this is merely a variation on the deeply suspect theme of “might makes right”)."

"While expressing my milk realised that the equivalent for cows is my milk going to the mouths of people who murder and eat my family #VEGAN"

"There's a very strong connection between a lot of the evils of the modern world—factory farming, abuse against women—and the environment. We're destroying the female. If you think about the earth as a female organism which it is, in its totality, you know how we're disrespecting and abusing it. … [I have] very strong feelings about factory farming … I’m a vegetarian myself … I don’t want any kind of suffering of any living form but it’s more to do with the awareness that so much of the meat on the planet is being produced by factory farms. Animals are being pumped full of growth hormones which are then getting fed to our kids. And it’s affecting the water, environment. … We are being duped and controlled by huge multinationals that are concerned about the short term, not the long term and don’t care about the individual."

"Every genre has its challenges. Sometimes it's harder to play a supportive role than to take center stage."

"I’ve had some extraordinary, revelatory moments in the opera house over the years, but I’ve had an awful lot more disinterested moments, I’m not like one of those people who always goes and absolutely loves everything I see. More often than not I’m left a bit cold by it, but obviously, it’s the ultimate musical genre because of everything it brings to the table and the scope and the scale of the whole thing. I can hardly imagine that you can really be a composer and at least not harbor some sort of secret desire to write an opera one day."

"From wildfires in Alberta to hurricanes in Puerto Rico, climate change is one of the reasons many of us are forced to leave our homes in search of a safer place to live," Newton says in the video. "We keep hearing that migration is a crisis, and it is, for the people affected. But did you ever notice that the same leaders denying climate change are the ones drumming up fear and hatred against migrants?" "To win climate justice, we need to oppose racism," Newton says. "We know the world's wealthiest countries have burned most of the carbon that is driving climate change today. Asserting the rights of migrants affected by these storms, floods, and fires is a way of paying back our climate debts."

"It may not have had the glamor of being a film composer or being a pop star or whatever, but that’s not what I wanted. I just wanted the opportunity to be all the kinds of people I could be as a composer. I could be serious, I could be humorous, I could be evil, I could be nice and innocent, I could do angry music, I could do all sorts of things. So that was very fulfilling as a composer. And it kept me interested for my whole musical lifetime."

"I would say ... that for most of those coming into the Catholic Church that [i.e. not knowing what is going to develop in the Church of England] isn't the single-issue reason for their journey. The clergy and the people coming have long hoped for corporate reunion between the Catholic and the Anglican Church; that has been their genuine desire and hope."

"When I start coming to Horror conventions, I notice that the monster films and the films about people who are different are attended by a population of people who are different in some way, who may have felt excluded, and people will not accept them. They feel at home at these conventions, and I find that quite touching actually. I find this interesting, and I am glad that it is a place of joy, comfort, solace, and friendship, bringing people together in that way. I have now learned about the world of Horror in a way that I never would have sought out."

"Both my parents are immigrants. They came from nothing, had to work so hard, and so the idea for them, I suppose, of taking a risk, that wasn’t a luxury they had. I always knew that was the luxury and privilege that I had, that they had given me."

"My idea of beauty is as much about the inside as the outside. I think it’s about self-care, it’s about creativity. If we feel good, we look good. Being allowed to take time to nurture yourself in whatever way you need is what beauty is about. So that could be putting on a nourishing face mask, or reading a book, or experimenting, or being creative with your makeup."

"To be honest, when I was growing up, the beauty industry did feel very monocultural. It wasn’t that easy to find people that looked like me or my family - whether you’re talking about advertisements or magazines, or general representation in the media."

"I think the fantasy and sci-fi genre is really interesting. It’s super fun and it’s escapism, but it’s also a very creative way to examine the human psyche. Sitting in the cinema and feeling fear is a safe way to feel things and go about your day. That’s why I became an actress. I enjoy telling stories and taking people on a journey, emotional and mental."

"At the end of the day, I know what my priorities are and my family, my close friends, my loved ones, know me well. I feel like I know myself a bit better and ‘fame’ is really nothing. I’m not going to be swept away in this whirlwind as ultimately quite a lot of it is nonsense. The things I care about now and that are important to me are exactly the same as a year ago, five years ago. They say you’ve got to work for a decade to become an overnight success and I have been acting now for ten years. I feel pretty comfortable with where I am!"