Non Fiction Authors From England

"Oxford is, and always has been, full of cliques, full of factions, and full of a particular non-social snobbiness."

"I knew of myself, from the age of about fifteen, that I was a natural Tory. All my instincts and all my loves were Trollopian. I loved the thought of a landed aristocracy, though I would never be a member of one (I did not, even in my fantasies, believe that I should marry a duke). I loved hunting; I loved time-honoured hierarchies; I loved cathedrals. I wanted to become an old-fashioned scholar. Above all, perhaps, I loved the idea of accumulating, inheriting and passing on wealth to my family. Nothing could be further from the politics of the Left. Yet increasingly during the war I felt that to indulge my instincts was wrong. I must pull myself together, recognise the unfairness of my privileged and comfortable way of life, begin properly to aim for a classless society, think about politics, become someone who would go to what I vaguely thought of as Meetings. By 1945, I had talked myself pretty thoroughly round to the Left."

"Governance and leadership are the yin and the yang of successful organisations. If you have leadership without governance you risk tyranny, fraud and personal fiefdoms. If you have governance without leadership you risk atrophy, bureaucracy and indifference."

"The company is a living system. Employees are its lifeblood. Strategy is the brain and measurement and communication the central nervous system. Culture is the DNA. Leadership and continued entrepreneurial energy are its soul and spirit. Governance and accountability are its rhythms and disciplines, like exercise, a means of keeping this living organism fit and lean. Leadership gives a company energy. Governance assures its honesty.**"

"I am obliged to watch as he has no counsel"

"By our rules we cannot receive a letter from a friend."

"Do not open that which is not evidence."

"I think the motives of the legislature in passing an Act of Parliament are to be taken to be proper motives."

"If a man endeavours to obtain a repeal of those laws, which are conceived to be obnoxious, or the introduction of any laws which he believes to be salutary, if he does that legally, there is no objection to it."

"It is of the greatest importance that the administration of justice should not only be free from spot or blame, but that it should be, so far as human infirmity could allow it to become, as free from all suspicion."

"The law of England is anxious for the interests of persons against whom charges may be made. If a man commits a crime, there is a legal and constitutional mode by which that crime may be brought into discussion. He is liable to be tried, but though his crime may be as great and as aggravated as possible, he ought to have a full, fair, dispassionate, and temperate investigation of his conduct at the time of trial."

"You may discuss the question of legality on legal grounds, but not by an argumentum ad hominem."

"Let no cobler go beyond his last."

"No one can doubt that presumptions may be made in criminal as well as in civil cases. It is constantly the practice to act upon them, and I apprehend that more than one half of the persons convicted of crimes are convicted on presumptive evidence."

"So long as Courts of justice remain Courts of justice there must be decency maintained."

"The Court has no fears for the safety of the Christian religion. It does not believe that the rock upon which Christianity stands can ever be shaken."

"The laws of England will protect the rights of British subjects, and give a remedy for a grievance committed by one British subject upon another, in whatever country that may be done."

"Taking out a commission of bankruptcy is a well-known mode of recovering a debt."

"There may be cases in which there is so much of difficulty in knowing where the law stands that we take time to consider, and sometimes doubt much and sometimes differ among ourselves. But I believe every one of the Judges acts upon the principle that he is before man and God in the discharge of his duty, and acts upon his solemn oath, and declares tbe law not according to any political fancy, or for the purposes of serving one party or serving another, but according to the pure conviction of his own mind without looking to any party."

"Where a man speaks upon a subject of his own accord, he naturally tells the whole of what he knows; but where he is examined on interrogatories formally administered to him, his answers are naturally confined to the particulars to which he is so interrogated; and as the examining party generally knows beforehand the scope of the witness's evidence, he has an opportunity of so shaping his questions as that they may elicit everything in his favour with which the witness is acquainted, and keep back everything of a contrary tendency."

"Every object and purpose of justice is effectually answered, and every supposed inconvenience is effectually rebutted by the law as it stands."

"I cannot properly give advice to anybody. It is very often supposed Judges can give advice, and I therefore take this public opportunity of saying that a Judge cannot do it."

"If a man sustains damage by the wrongful act of another, he is entitled to a remedy, but to give that title two things must concur, damage to himself and a wrong committed by the other. That he has sustained damage is not of itself sufficient."

"It is one of the essential qualities of a Court of justice, that its proceedings should be public, and that all parties who may be desirous of hearing what is going on, if there be room in the place for that purpose,—provided they do not interrupt the proceedings, and provided there is no specific reason why they should be removed,—have a right to be present for the purpose of hearing what is going on."

"[T]ake it to be the bounden duty of the Judge to lay down the law as it strikes him, and that of the jury to accede to it, unless they have superior knowledge on the subject."

"I'm always flattered when the Leprechauns are listed in these "Top Tens" of horror characters among Freddy Kruger and Jason, which were the characters I grew up "admiring," if that's the right word."

"Any kind of recognition for the work that you've done is a terrific thing. As a film actor, you don't often get that opportunity to meet with your audience and take your applause on stage. It's quite nice to meet people and hear them say, "I really enjoyed your work in this." I really enjoyed the Leprechaun films, and people who enjoy Leprechaun are quite obsessed."

"I was impressed by the way that Hindus relate to the land of India and the holy places, and was moved by the great variety of pilgrimages and holy animals and plants and festivals. There are so many aspects of Hinduism that link it to the land and to the natural world in India. It is also closely linked to the culture and languages of India."

"It's unnecessary to introduce magic into the explanation of physical and biological phenomena when in fact there is every likelihood that the continuation of research as it is now practiced will indeed fill all the gaps that Sheldrake draws attention to."

"This summer, soon after the TED controversy, a commando squad of skeptics captured the Wikipedia page about me. They have occupied and controlled it ever since, rewriting my biography with as much negative bias as possible, to the point of defamation. At the beginning of the "Talk" page, on which editorial changes are discussed, they have posted a warning to editors who do not share their biases: "A common objection made by new arrivals is that the article presents Sheldrake's work in an unsympathetic light and that criticism of it is too extensive or violates Wikipedia's Neutral Point of View policy." Several new arrivals have indeed attempted to restore a more balanced picture, but have had a bewildering variety of rules thrown at them, and warned that they will be banned if they persist in opposing the skeptics."

"Many dogs, cats and horses are loved and cherished, and are even mourned when they die. But pigs, chickens, calves and other animals grown in factory farms are treated in the most brutal and exploitative way, devoid of all affection. They are units in a production line; their only purpose is to produce the maximum amount of food at the minimum cost. Factory farms epitomize the mechanistic spirit. … To justify this treatment, the less-favoured animals have to be regarded as inferior, unworthy of any sentimental attachment. A terrible conflict arises if the exploited animals are considered to have any value in themselves. One way to avoid this conflict is to keep the privileged and the exploited animals in separate categories in our minds. … But if emotions spill over from pets to other animals, there is trouble. People become vegetarians, or even animal rights activists."

"In his teaching of modern history Seeley adopted, though he did not formulate, the view that "history is past politics, and politics present history." Historical narrative without generalisation had no value for him; he always tried to solve some problem, to trace large principles, to deduce some lesson. If the conclusions which he reached could be made applicable to present difficulties, so much the better. History was to be a school of statesmanship. So eager was he to establish general principles that his conclusions occasionally appear paradoxical, and are sometimes open to dispute. But his method is at once stimulating and productive, and his whole conception of the subject tends to place it on a high level of public utility. Of the duties of the individual towards the state Seeley formed a high ideal, and, though not an active politician, he held strong political views. In later life he was a liberal unionist, and on more than one occasion raised his voice in public against home rule. He was for several years closely connected with the Imperial Federation League, and, though he never traced out any definite scheme of federation, there was nothing that he had more at heart than the maintenance of the union between Great Britain and her colonies."

"In my first year [at Cambridge] Seeley was still alive, as Regius Professor. He was dying, but stuck manfully to his work. In the small history school of the day it was possible for the Professor to see personally the score of history freshmen who came up each year. I was sent to see him in his house, and the old man gave me, in a stern voice, a lecture on the theme that history was a science and had nothing to do with literature; he told me that Carlyle and Macaulay were charlatans. Though I had not much sense in those days, I had just enough not to reply; but I went away boiling with rage. And I still resent his words, because he himself had not won his position in life by writing scientific history, but precisely by writing literary history, on subjects about which he knew far less than Carlyle knew about Cromwell, or Macaulay about the English Revolution. Seeley's Ecce Homo, whatever its merits and its use, was one of the least "scientific" books ever written on an historical subject, and his Expansion of England, however important, was merely a clever and timely essay. It was on those works that his fame rested, not on his Stein, which may have been a "scientific" history for all I know."

"Property can exist only under the guardianship of the State."

"Commerce in itself may favour peace, but when commerce is artificially shut out by a decree of Government from some promising territory, then commerce just as naturally favours war."

"Seeley was witty, charming, sympathetic, entirely void of self importance, never making ignorance an excuse for sarcasm, and under his presidency there was a great deal of serious thought given to politics in the higher sense; though pupils were often too shy to talk in the seminar itself, they did talk afterwards among themselves on the subjects there discussed."

"The chief forces which hold a community together and cause it to constitute one State are three, common nationality, common religion, and common interest."

"No man saw the building of the new Jerusalem, the workmen crowded together, the unfinished walls and unpaved streets; no man heard the clink of trowel and pickaxe; it descended out of heaven from God."

"It is a favourite maxim of mine that history, while it should be scientific in its method, should pursue a practical object. That is, it should not merely gratify the reader's curiosity about the past, but modify his view of the present and his forecast of the future,"

"The chair was in fact precisely 151 years old when at last the academic claims of history found recognition here, by the inappropriate but normal device of turning it into a tripos of its own. The achievement belonged to the first truly notable Regius professor, Sir John Seeley."

"We seem, as it were, to have conquered and peopled half the world in a fit of absence of mind."

"No heart is pure that is not passionate; no virtue is safe that is not enthusiastic. And such an enthusiastic virtue Christ was to introduce."

"The difficulty of determining whether a man is or is not good has now become a commonplace of moralists and satirists. It is almost impossible to discover any test which is satisfactory, and the test which is actually applied by society is known to be unsatisfactory in the extreme."

"Men in general take up scheme after scheme, as circumstances suggest one or another, and therefore most biographies are compelled to pass from one subject to another, and to enter into a multitude of minute questions, to divide the life carefully into periods by chronological landmarks accurately determined, to trace the gradual development of character and ripening or change of opinions."

"In 1869 Seeley became professor of modern history at Cambridge... His lectures at once made a great impression. They were carefully prepared, epigrammatic in style, animated in delivery, attractive and stimulating from the originality, width, and suggestiveness of their views. For many years his classes were large, and were by no means confined to those who were making history a special study."

"John the Baptist was like the Emperor Nerva. In his career it was given him to do two things—to inaugurate a new régime, and also to nominate a successor who was far greater than himself."

"Doubt is the beginning of wisdom. It means caution, independence, honesty and veracity. Faith means negligence, serfdom, insincerity and deception. The man who never doubts never thinks. He is like a straw in the wind or a waif on the sea. He is one of the helpless, docile, unquestioning millions, who keep the world in a state of stagnation, and serve as a fulcrum for the lever of despotism. The stupidity of the people, says Whitman, is always inviting the insolence of power."

"Atheists are often charged with blasphemy, but it is a crime they cannot commit... When the Atheist examines, denounces, or satirises the gods, he is not dealing with persons but with ideas. He is incapable of insulting God, for he does not admit the existence of any such being... We attack not a person but a belief, not a being but an idea, not a fact but a fancy."

"There are two things in the world that can never get on together—religion and common sense. Religion deals with the next life, common sense with this; religion points to the sky, common sense to the earth; religion is all imagination, common sense all reason; religion deals with what nobody can understand, common sense with what everybody can understand; religion gives us no return for our investments but flash notes on the bank of expectation, common sense gives us good interest and full security for our capital. They are as opposite as two things can possibly be, and they are always at strife. Religion is always trying to fill the world with delusions, and common sense is always trying to drive them away. Religion says Live for the next world, and common sense says Live for this."

"It will yet be the proud boast of woman that she never contributed a line to the Bible."