Activists From England

"If Islam is this "religion of peace", why is everyone so scared?"

"You knew perfectly well that you were not welcome in the United States. You knew that because you tried before and you had not got in, and you knew the reason for that - because, rightly or wrongly, the US authorities do not welcome people in their country who have convictions of the kind that you have. With that full knowledge, you equipped yourself with a passport. I am told that it was given you by way of a loan from your friend Andrew McMaster, to which you bore, I am told, some resemblance. And by use of that passport you did what you could to get into the United States. [...] What you did went absolutely to the heart of the immigration controls that the United States are entitled to have. Had it been known in this country that you were proposing to leave under a false passport, you would not have been accepted on to the plane and you would not have been permitted to leave this country on a false passport. It's not in any sense trivial."

"Previous prime ministers, be it William Gladstone who said, 'There will never be peace on this earth as long as we have the Koran, it's an accursed and violent book.' Then we have Winston Churchill who said, 'Islam in a man is like rabies in a dog.' And then we have David Cameron, who says Islam is a religion of peace. What's changed? Because the Koran] hasn't changed."

"I apologise for the fact that what I've represented and said has not resonated individually with Muslims. From day one in the English Defence League, we've wanted to embrace everyone: all colours and all creeds."

"I have been considering this move [to leave EDL] for a long time because I recognise that, though street demonstrations have brought us to this point, they are no longer productive. I acknowledge the dangers of far-right extremism and the ongoing need to counter Islamist ideology not with violence but with better, democratic ideas."

"There should be better regulation of mosques in the UK to curb the influence of preachers of hate and an end to Islamic immigration until the problem is solved"

"We need strong leadership, not cowards who are begging petrol dollars and wanting a block Islamic vote. We need a leader not an appeaser. I'd rather die on my feet than live on my knees. Stand up for what u believe. Never be intimidated by anyone #english #nosurrender."

"Nazism and Islamism are on the opposite sides of the same coin – we oppose both. Nazism has been defeated and Islamism is spreading across the country."

"Islam is not a religion of peace; it never has been and never will be."

"I'd stop the building of mosques in this country until Islam reforms in such a way and works in this country with Western democracy and freedom."

"Islam is not a religion of peace. Islam is fascist and it's violent and we've had enough! They're chopping our soldiers' heads off. This is Islam. That's what we've seen today. They've cut off one of our army's heads off on the streets of London. Our next generation are being taught through schools that Islam is a religion of peace. It's not. It never has been. What you saw today is Islam. Everyone's had enough. There has to be a reaction, for the government to listen, for the police to listen, to understand how angry this British public are."

"We stand against extremism and we condemn all acts of violence but at the same time you have to give people in our community that are concerned about the threat of Islam, which is a genuine threat, you have to give them an opportunity to have a voice. I share the same fact that Islam is a threat but we completely condemn any acts of violence against innocent people. What has happened over there (Norway) is horrific and will be remembered for the rest of eternity as a disgusting, deranged attack."

"Since last night I've had countless threats to cut my head off. I have [contacted] police over 200 death threats. No arrests."

"Phil Kemp: Are you non-violent then?"

"Every single Muslim watching this... on 7/7 you got away with killing and maiming British citizens... you had better understand that we have built a network from one end of the country to the other end... and the Islamic community will feel the full force of the English Defence League if we see any of our British citizens killed, maimed, or hurt on British soil ever again."

"Non-Muslim working-class communities do not have a voice. It's not going to end pretty. There is a massive undercurrent of anger across this country."

"Working class communities in this country are rough communities. It was never gonna be doctors and nurses to stand up to militant Islam in the streets of this country. When we first formed, we faced a very violent response by members of the Muslim community who would come out. And images were sent across this country of our supporters on the floor getting their heads kicked in. Now, when we went to our next demonstration, how many 30-year-old school teachers are going to come out and oppose militant Islam?"

"The last thing we want is a war in this country, but it is the inevitable outcome for the way the country is going. Now, the British people are not going to sit back and take much more."

"Goodness gracious I can't seem to stop Calling it off Calling it off just to keep crawling to your arms"

"I had a heart then But the queen has been overthrown"

"We'll be raising our hands Shining up to the sky Cause we've got the fire fire fire And we gonna let it burn"

" But in the eternities, Doubtless we shall compare together, hear A million alien Gospels, in what guise He trod the Pleiades, the Lyre, the Bear."

" The travelling heart went free With endless streams; that strife was stopped; And down a thousand vales I dropped,  I flowed to Italy."

" Thou inmost, ultimate Council of judgment, palace of decrees Where the high senses hold their spiritual state,  Sued by earth's embassies, And sign, approve, accept, conceive, create."

" With this ambiguous earth His dealings have been told us. These abide: The signal to a maid, the human birth, The lesson, and the young Man crucified."

"The smoke of a cigarette, more sensitive in motion than breath or blood, has its waves so multitudinously inflected and reinflected, with such flights and such delays, it flows and bends upon currents of so subtle influence and impulse as to include the most active, impetuous, and lingering curls ever drawn by the finest Oriental hand—and that is not a Hindu hand, nor any hand of Aryan race. The Japanese has captured the curve of the section of a sea-wave—its flow, relaxation, and fall; but this is a single moment, whereas the line of cigarette-smoke in a still room fluctuates in twenty delicate directions."

"A sense of art mixes with our modern piety. We are apt to admire the evangelical reticence for its dignity,[…] we are apt to respect the Scripture narratives with their few intense details, their close events and their great omissions alike, for their simplicity, and—it is to be feared that our literature leads us so far—for their "effect.""

"[T]he sense of humour has other things to do than to make itself conspicuous in the act of laughter."

"It is not extravagance, it is not excitement, it is not excess, or dizziness, or delirium, that chastises habitual pleasure in art, but only dullness.[…] One of the Latin races, having the dullness and keeping wit enough to name it, has the word for it—banalité."

"[A]n English wit has well said that affectation displeases us because it has not too much, but too little, art."

"The mothers of all ages are those who have suffered because others suffered; for each of them, self is less sensitive than the sense of her child. Self is not locked up in the maternal heart, there to be cherished, as it is by the egoist, or to be crushed and silenced, as it is by the Saint. In the mother, self is not lost, but loses all its evil by the passionate personal love that distributes it among sons and daughters. Perfect self-less love would perhaps be distributed through the multitude, but a mother is not perfect: nature has so much use for her—separate, family use—that she cannot let her go free from irrational, indispensable partialities and limitings, even injustices, all serving the turn of the race."

"[I]t would be a pity if laughter should ever become, like rhetoric and the arts, a habit."

"She walks—the lady of my delight—  A shepherdess of sheep. Her flocks are thoughts. She keeps them white;  She guards them from the steep; She feeds them on the fragrant height,  And folds them in for sleep."

"From the shaken tower A flock of bells take flight And go with the hour."

"[W]hat is now and then attempted is perhaps "for art's sake." He that saveth his art shall lose it."

"A wall is the safeguard of simplicity."

"Flocks of the memories of the day draw near The dovecote doors of sleep."

"Surely there is but one assumption […] wherewith nearly all thinkers […] have done their work—that is, the confession of the moral law: that there is a good, and that pure cruelty, mere hatred, and ingratitude, for example, are contrary thereto."

"Children appeal to us by a variant of the quality of pathos."

"[I]t is doubtful whether we may name any weak thing as typically spiritual."

"It is for fear of the grown-up, or at least out of respect towards them, that a chapter must be given to fairies. If the children do not care very much for fairies, they must be made to care. "Who is to care if they do not? Who is to be properly childlike if they are not?""

"In childhood we all have a more exalted sense of dawn and summer sunrise than we ever fully retain or quite recover; and also a far higher sensibility for April and April evenings—a heartache for them, which in riper years is gradually and irretrievably consoled."

"[T]he foot should have more of the acquaintance of earth, and know more of flowers, freshness, cool brooks, wild thyme, and salt sand than does anything else about us.[…] It is only the entirely unshod that have lively feet."

"[F]or man, woman, and child the tender, irregular, sensitive, living foot, which does not even stand with all its little surface on the ground, and which makes no base to satisfy an architectural eye, is, as it were, the unexpected thing.[…] How weak it is may be seen from a footprint: for nothing makes a more helpless and unsymmetrical sign than does a naked foot."

"If there is a look of human eyes that tells of perpetual loneliness, so there is also the familiar look that is the sign of perpetual crowds."

"Spirit of place! It is for this we travel, to surprise its subtlety; and where it is a strong and dominant angel, that place, seen once, abides entire in the memory with all its own accidents, its habits, its breath, its name."

"Solitude is separate experience."

"Tender, too, is the silence of human feet. You have but to pass a season amongst the barefooted to find that man, who, shod, makes so much ado, is naturally as silent as snow. Woman, who not only makes her armed heel heard, but also goes rustling like a shower, is naturally silent as snow."

"There is no innocent sleep so innocent as sleep shared between a woman and a child, the little breath hurrying beside the longer, as a child's foot runs."

"The roads […] fly from the city of confusion.[…] No other road looks so resolute in flight as the rail."