People From Oxford

"I've always known I wanted to go into acting, but being a very proud teenager I wasn't ready to admit it until I felt like it was going to be possible. I acted in school and I did some short films in Portugal and some Portuguese theater and things like that, [but] obviously there's only so far you can go, so I moved to London and pursued it here. It all fell into place very quickly. I got an agent and from that point on I got very ballsy and said, "I'll get the work with or without you so you better send me to these auditions." Somehow, I got the first one I went for—I think I was so blinded by adrenaline and excitement. She was an East End showgirl. I just winged it. I remember getting to set and realizing that I was the least experienced one. I remember thinking, "Oh my God, what have I done? What have I gotten myself into?" It worked; I'm still here."

"For malice will with joy the lie receive, Report, and what it wishes true, believe."

"Why like a tender girl dost thou complain! That strives to reach the mother's breast in vain; Mourns by her side, her knees embraces fast, Hangs on her robes, and interrupts her haste; Yet, when with fondness to her arms she's rais'd, Still mourns and weeps, and will not be appeas'd!"

"Rev. Dr. Linzey suggests, like St. Francis, that human beings should act not as the master species, but as the servant species. Christ came as a humble servant and called us to love and serve one another and not to harm anyone. Linzey suggests that the Gospel call to service includes selfless service and justice not only to the poor and oppressed, but to all creation, including animals. In this, we become more Christlike."

"Commentators — even, and especially, Christian ones — frequently lapse into a kind of moral parochialism when it comes to discussions about animals, as if God only cared for one of the millions of species in the created world. This, in turn, has led to a practical form of idolatry. By "idolatry" I mean here the deification of the human species by regarding human beings as the sole, main, or even exclusive concern of God the Creator."

"The groundbreaking work of Andrew Linzey has established animals as beings essential to the theological agenda."

"The power of God is redefined in Jesus as practical costly service extending to those who are beyond the normal boundaries of human concern: the diseased, the poor, the oppressed, the outcast. If humans are to claim a lordship over creation, then it can only be a lordship of service. There can be no lordship without service. According to the theological doctrine of animal rights, then, humans are to be the servant species — the species given power, opportunity, and privilege to give themselves, nay sacrifice themselves, for the weaker, suffering creatures."

"Far too often, Christians have accepted the common secular view that we are the masters of animals, their rulers or owners — utterly forgetting that the dominion promised to humanity is a deputized dominion, in which we are to stand before creation as God's vice-regents, putting into effect not our own egotistical wants but God's own law of love and mercy. And yet, when one begins to challenge our despotic treatment of animals — whether killing for sport, the ruthless export trade, or (to take the latest example) the quite obscene slaughter of thousands of seals for their penises, to be sold as aphrodisiacs in Europe and Asia — again and again, one has to face this humanistic dogma: If it benefits humanity, it must be right."

"After all, animal rightists have not invented the vision of the wolf lying down with the lamb in Isaiah 11:6, or the universal command to be vegetarian in Genesis 1:29, or indeed the vision of the earth in a state of childbirth awaiting its deliverance from suffering in Romans 8: in these, and in other ways, animal rightists can claim to be rediscovering and reactualizing visionary elements already present within the Western religious tradition."

"Creation exists for its Creator. Years of anthropocentrism have almost completely obscured this simple but fundamental point. What follows from this is that animals should not be seen simply as means to human ends. The key to grasping this theology is the abandoning of the common but deeply erroneous view that animals exist in a wholly instrumental relationship to human beings."

"God's nature is love, and since God loves creation, it follows that what is genuinely given and purposed by that love must acquire some right in relation to the Creator."

"The biblical case for vegetarianism does not rest on the view that killing may never be allowable in the eyes of God, rather on the view that killing is always a grave matter. When we have to kill to live we may do so, but when we do not, we should live otherwise. It is vital to appreciate the force of this argument. In past ages many – including undoubtedly the biblical writers themselves – have thought that killing for food was essential in order to live. But … we now know that – at least for those now living in the rich West – it is perfectly possible to sustain a healthy diet without any recourse to flesh products. … Those individuals who opt for vegetarianism can do so in the knowledge that they are living closer to the biblical ideal of peaceableness than their carnivorous contemporaries. The point should not be minimized. In many ways it is difficult to know how we can live more peaceably in a world striven by violence and greed and consumerism. Individuals often feel powerless in the face of great social forces beyond even democratic control. To opt for a vegetarian life-style is to take one practical step towards living in peace with the rest of creation. One step towards reducing the rate of institutionalized killing in the world today."

"What is introductory goes for nothing, but it is in order to explain the evidence."

"You have a right to discourse with your counsel, but you must do it in such a manner as the jury may not hear."

"Consider a little how you treat the Court; the objection hath been solemnly taken in this Court, argued and adjudged by this Court, and now you come to arraign that judgment that was then given."

"I do not see to what purpose we exercise a superintendency over all inferior jurisdictions, unless it be to inspect their proceedings, and see whether they are regular or not. I have often heard it said that nothing shall be presumed one way or the other in an inferior jurisdiction."

"It is dangerous to make a precedent, an innovation."

"Certainly the opinion of all the Judges of later times, must have more weight than the extra-judicial opinion of a single Judge at any former time."

"Is ill-language a justification for blows?"

"It is the glory and happiness of our excellent constitution, that to prevent any injustice no man is to be concluded by the first judgment; but that if he apprehends himself to be aggrieved, he has another Court to which he can resort for relief; for this purpose the law furnishes him with appeals, with writs of error and false judgment."

"What I would like to show is that there is a vital dimension of their writing, which I call performative reflexivity, which if ignored or misunderstood will impede an adequate response to it."

"Dialogue never ends not for lack of time or opportunity but for essential reasons."

"To understand how indirect communication is possible we must grasp what it is about ordinary communication that is being changed."

"Nietzsche would say my friends lacked ears."

"After Hegel, philosophy confronts the possibility of its own death, and in some sense has to do so if it is to remain the most fundamental kind of thinking."

"The point is that philosophy is seen to have come full circle, and to have exhausted itself."

"Philosophy in its very act is a process of translation!"

"Nietzsche's problem is how to be a philosopher once he has grasped the finitude of philosophy."

"We are passengers, comprehended and displaced by metaphor."

"The educated man is the man who does not live in immediate intuition, but in his recollection so that little is new to him any longer."

"To say that all philosophy is writing is, minimally, to say that it is never the transparent expression of thought."

"Philosophy is said to have taken the 'linguistic turn' in this century. One hundred years ago, a philosopher would think in terms of mind, spirit, experience, consciousness; now the by-word is language."

"Like literature, philosophy is not distinguished from other subjects by a specific approach to a subject-matter independent of it. Chemistry deals with chemicals, biology with life and astronomy with very large, very distant objects. Philosophy can boast no such definite subject-matter."

"Philosophy is an everlasting fire, sometimes damped down by setting itself limits, then flaring into new life as it consumes them. Every field of inquiry is limited, but philosophy has an essential relation to the question of limits, to its own limits."

"Language steps in where the angels of experience fear to tread."

"To recognize a difficulty is not to solve it."

"[ John Aubrey, 1667] He was a shiftless person, roving and magotie-headed, and sometimes little better than crased."

"It was a yellow voice, a high, shrill treble in the nursery White always and high, I remember it so, White cupboard, off-white table, mugs, dolls’ faces And I was four or five. The garden could have been Miles away. We were taken down to the green Asparagus beds, the cut lawn, and the smell of it Comes each summer after rain when white returns. Our bird, A canary called Peter, sang behind bars. The black and white cat Curled and snoozed by the fire and danger was far away."

"When I re-read my past work I can see a development to such an effect, indeed, that some of them no longer seem to be any part of me."

"Poets work upon and through each other."

"It was cool and quiet in here because instead of windows there were cosmoramic projections, latest of late devices to prevent the intrusion of untasteful exterior reality. Nearby the chimneys reeked a twenty-four-hour day yet the view was of clean white clouds, blue sky, yellow sun not so bright that it dazzled. Superior to the natural article, yes. Also birds flew or perched between two layers of glass on real branches in air-conditioned environment. It was not ordinary to see birds. Very yes."

"Even this far from shore, the night stank. The sea moved lazily, its embryo waves aborted before cresting by the layer of oily residues surrounding the hull, impermeable as sheet plastic: a mixture of detergents, sewage, industrial chemicals and the microscopic cellulose fibers due to toilet paper and newsprint. There was no sound of fish breaking surface. There were no fish."

"People didn’t fly the Atlantic any more if they could help it, except from bravado. Even if your plane wasn’t sabotaged or hijacked, it was certain to be behind schedule. Not that there was much to be said for ocean travel either, since the sinking of the Paolo Rizzi last summer and the drowning of thirteen hundred passengers in a sea made foul by a hundred and eighty thousand tons of oil from the tanker she’d collided with. Moral, definitely: stay home."

"Behind her chair, from a wall covered in a very expensive velvet-flock paper, a portrait of her grandfather looked down. He had been an Episcopalian bishop, but the picture showed him in the costume of a New England gentleman keeping up the Old English custom of riding to hounds: red coat, brown boots, distinguished with a white dog-collar and black silk front. Hugh referred to him as being dressed to kill. The salad was replaced—though Hugh had sampled only a mouthful of his—by a dish of cold fish with mayonnaise. He didn’t even touch this course. He was suddenly afraid of it because it had come from the sea."

"Special this week at your Puritan Health Supermarket! Okinawa squash, reg. $0.89 $0.75! Penguin eggs (low on DDT, PCB), reg. $6.35 doz. $6.05! Pacific potatoes (unwashed), reg. $0.89 lb. $0.69! Butter from sunny New Zealand, reg. $1.35 qrt. $1.15! YOU TOO CAN AFFORD GOOD HEALTH AT PURITAN!"

"“You and your ancestors treated the world like a fucking great toilet bowl. You shat in it and boasted about the mess you’d made. And now it’s full and overflowing, and you’re fat and happy and black kids are going crazy to keep you rich. Goodbye!”"

"The plane droned on through the black sky, above the clouds masking the Atlantic. It suddenly occurred to Michael that he ought to look at the moon. He hadn’t seen it all the time he was in Paris, nor the stars. He slid up the blind of his window and peered out. There was no moon visible. When he consulted his diary he discovered that it had set, a tiny sliver, at exactly the time the plane had taken off from London."

"Unto the third and fourth generation, General Motors, you have visited your greed on the children. Unto the twentieth, AEC, you have twisted their limbs and closed their eyes. Unto the last dawn of man you have cursed us, O Father. Our Father. Our Father Which art in Washington, give us this day our daily calcium propionate, sodium diacetate monoglyceride, potassium bromate, calcium phosphate, monobasic chloramine T, aluminium potassium sulphate, sodium benzoate, butylated hydroxyanisole, mono-iso-propyl citrate, axerophthol and calciferol. Include with it a little flour and salt. Amen."

". . . and Dr. Isaiah Williams, whose body was recovered from a ravine near San Pablo. Inquiries are being hampered by what an Army spokesman termed the obstinate attitude of the local people. “They won’t admit they know their left hands from their right,” he asserted. Here at home Senator Richard Howell (Rep., Col.) today launched a fierce attack on the quote chlorophyll addicts unquote who, he claims, are hamstringing American business, already staggering under the load of high unemployment and recession, by insisting that our manufacturers comply with regulations ignored by foreign competition. In Southern Italy rioting continues in many small towns formerly dependent on fishing. Meantime, dust storms in the Camargue . . ."

"At night, when he lay down to sleep, he felt that his brain was resonating with the heartbeat of the planet."