University Of Cambridge Alumni

"It seems, moreover, that my argument has some relevance to choices we must make even now. There are some species of large predatory animals, such as the Siberian tiger, that are currently on the verge of extinction. If we do nothing to preserve it, the Siberian tiger as a species may soon become extinct. The number of extant Siberian tigers has been low for a considerable period. Any ecological disruption occasioned by their dwindling numbers has largely already occurred or is already occurring. If their number in the wild declines from several hundred to zero, the impact of their disappearance on the ecology of the region will be almost negligible. Suppose, however, that we could repopulate their former wide-ranging habitat with as many Siberian tigers as there were during the period in which they flourished in their greatest numbers, and that that population could be sustained indefinitely. That would mean that herbivorous animals in the extensive repopulated area would again, and for the indefinite future, live in fear and that an incalculable number would die in terror and agony while being devoured by a tiger. In a case such as this, we may actually face the kind of dilemma I called attention to in my article, in which there is a conflict between the value of preserving existing species and the value of preventing suffering and early death for an enormously large number of animals."

"Suppose that we could arrange the gradual extinction of carnivorous species, replacing them with new herbivorous ones. Or suppose that we could intervene genetically, so that currently carnivorous species would gradually evolve into herbivorous ones, thereby fulfilling Isaiah's prophecy. If we could bring about the end of predation by one or the other of these means at little cost to ourselves, ought we to do it?"

"The suffering that animals undergo while being caught and eaten may be intense and the process by which they are killed may last for a quarter of an hour or more. Because the number of predators worldwide is enormous, and because, like us, many of them must eat with considerable frequency, the aggregate amount of suffering in the world at any time that is caused by predation is unimaginably vast."

"Viewed from a distance, the natural world often presents a vista of sublime, majestic placidity. Yet beneath the foliage and hidden from the distant eye, a vast, unceasing slaughter rages. Wherever there is animal life, predators are stalking, chasing, capturing, killing, and devouring their prey. Agonized suffering and violent death are ubiquitous and continuous."

"(- Any tips or words of wisdom for our current and potential new students?) - Take advantage of the city! Moving from the West Coast, I found it hard to adjust to New York. And I won’t defend the weather, the subway, or the smell, but there are so many interesting people here. Go to parties, go see a friend-of-a-friend’s terrible show, say yes to weird things. You never know where life will take you here."

"I just asked a lot of really stupid questions to a lot of really patient people, and they were amazing. They were so generous with their time and so patient with my dumb questions. That’s how I learned, and I’m totally grateful for them."

"I refuse to give in to despair. I just don’t have time for that. I’m too busy doing science."

"I started my career as an astrophysicist, and then I realized that nowhere else in the universe is as good as here, right? This is the best planet."

"I love this planet, and I’m curious about how it works."

"The Other Club – Pichon-Lalande 1970 excellent. Sat next to Peter Shore. He is a nice man. He says it's the first time in twenty-five years that he has been out of touch with the top leaders of the Labour Party. He said he had a lot of Bengalis in his constituency. Hugh Gaitskell had been blind to the perils of unlimited immigration."

"I'll tell you who I think has developed remarkably: Peter Shore. He's really become very impressive."

"Courteous, courageous, perceptive and far-seeing, Peter Shore has served the Labour Party as an official and in Parliament, and the British public, for more than 40 years. Who can deny that his cool, logical conclusion that the UK's accession to the European Union has destroyed the basis of the British constitution and thereby our freedoms and contribution to representative democracy worldwide?"

"Within the party he is seen as a man with solid left-wing beliefs but for whom the successful application of policies is an essential part of their formulation. He is a principled and practical man, an unexcitable, almost ponderous person whose political impetus depends upon finding the most direct way of achieving socialist aims... It is just such rhetoric, delivered in sub-Churchillian tones, his hair flopping over his still youthful face, that his supporters consider to be an asset. For Mr Shore is a socialist who is not afraid to boast that he is British... His strengths are his youth—he is 56—his intelligence, his grasp of economics and his practical idealism which can appear inspirational when in full flight."

"Shore remained, to the end of his life, the most ferocious of patriots, thus testifying to an underlying nationalism in Labour politics. The Conservative Party likes to lay claim to the title of the patriotic party. When my wife first met Shore, and found him an embedded nationalist, she asked me: "Why isn't he one of us?" I explained – I hope successfully – how deeply ran the nationalist belief in the old Labour Party. From 1966 Shore came to exemplify it so effectively that he was the only possible Labour leader whom I, as a Tory, feared."

"I talked to Peter Shore. He was stressing the need to help the unemployed in the constructions industry. When I mentioned the Channel Tunnel as a way of doing this with private finance and with European money, Shore went slightly mad. He rose to his feet, waving his arms, saying this would be the worst thing that could ever happen to Britain. How old was I? Did I not remember 1940? We would be invaded by Germans coming through the tunnel. We must not give up our island status, etc., etc. It was very worrying. He is quite mad on this European issue – in fact more unbalanced and dogmatic than Tony Benn is on any issue. He must be kept away from top power."

"Between Harold Wilson and Tony Blair, Peter Shore was the only possible Labour Party leader of whom a Conservative leader had cause to walk in fear. His party, alas for them and for him, never appreciated that fact."

"Peter Shore to dinner... I found him very anti-Benn, whom he thinks rather mad, skirting round the mountain of Healey, very pro-Foot. His views on world politics is that of an old-fashioned Atlanticist of the 1950s, very pro the Americans, on nearly all their attitudes, wise and unwise, which they have taken up over both Iran and Afghanistan. He is bitterly anti-Europe, particularly the French, where one has a bit of sympathy with him, but he goes much too far and regards them as not so much a nation as a conspiracy against the public weal. But the whole impression was one of somebody who is agreeable, intelligent, but miles off being a great man, and not very inspiriting either."

"He made a huge contribution towards modernising the economy of the country and tackling urban deprivation. Peter was a man of immense integrity with strong convictions and latterly played an important role in raising standards in public life. He was a great parliamentarian, a great patriot and a true servant of his constituents."

"He was a very loyal cabinet colleague with strong principles and convictions. I deeply regret his passing."

"At the [1983] election, Labour got stuck, thanks to P. Shore, as the party which favoured borrowing – another thing the British don't like."

"Scots are not so worried about sovereignty, having lived under Westminster bossism for so long. Shore once chided Cook and Smith as "Nordics", and therefore unable to understand the English."

"Nowhere had the decay of cities in Britain paralleled what had happened to some cities in North America, but the experience of New York should provide us with a salutary reminder of just how rapidly a city could slide into decline if powerful action is not taken."

"The opportunity to attract industry back to the inner areas now exists in a new way in which it did not a decade or so ago. In all the major urban areas there are large tracts of derelict land and buildings lying idle and often demoralizing those who live near by."

"What is more worrying is the unbalanced nature of the migration, with a disproportionately high number of skilled workers and young people moving out, leaving the inner areas with a disproportionate share of unskilled and semi-skilled workers, of unemployment, of one-parent families, of concentration of immigrant communities and overcrowded and inadequate housing."

"Of course, to those avowed Trotskyists and infiltrators, the turning over of stones, the exposure to the light of day, will be as unwelcome as sunlight to Dracula—and predictably, we shall hear plaintive cries of witchhunts and McCarthyism."

"Peter was one of my very oldest political friends and a man of outstanding commitment and ability. He was someone who enriched public life."

"Silkin thinks Shore owes him a favour – for he stood down for Shore after they tied in the Shadow Cabinet elections in 1971 or 1972. They are, in a way, friends those two. Shore the more intelligent politician – but a man who always comes late into an issue. Very important political trait. In fact a real nationalist, with attitudes very similar to Enoch Powell, including on race (says very little about South Africa, you will notice). On foreign affairs, only interested in Europe, it seems."

"Once the mass of the people had the vote, Socialists were convinced that Conservatism and all that it stood for would be swept away. Their victory seemed certain, for Conservatism which was based on privilege and wealth was inevitably a minority creed, whereas Socialism, with its appeal to social justice and economic self-interest, should recruit the big battalions of the poor and underprivileged, whom the vote would make the masters of political democracy. ... Yet it is clear that events have falsified these predictions. ... The question which must now be asked is why the fruits of universal suffrage have taken so long to ripen. How is it that so large a proportion of the electorate, many of whom are neither wealthy or privileged, have been recruited for a cause which is not their own?"

"Britain's relationship with the English-speaking Commonwealth was closer than that with the Continent. That is how the British people feel."

"What the advocates of membership are saying, insistently and insidiously, is that we are finished as a country; that the long and famous story of the British nation and people has ended; that we are now so weak and powerless that we must accept terms and conditions, penalties and limitations, almost as though we had suffered defeat in war; that though we have the right on June 5, we have no option but to remain in the Common Market age."

"We don't have to have these passports, do we? Surely we can keep our British ones if we want. ... My children and grandchildren forced to abandon the old British passport!"

"Cities serve and sustain the whole region around them in cultural, social and economic terms. If cities fail, so to a large extent does our society. That is the urgency of tackling the problem, and why it has to be of concern to everyone in this land."

"Most ambitions are either achieved or abandoned; either way, they belong to the past. The future, instead of the ladder toward the goals of life, flattens out into a perpetual present. Money, status, all the vanities the preacher of Ecclesiastes described, hold so little interest: a chasing after wind, indeed."

"I sat down by the computer to enter orders as the nurses cleaned and the s began to wake the patient. I had always jokingly threatened that when I was in charge, instead of the high-energy everyone liked to play in the , we’d listen exclusively to . I put “” on the radio, and the soft, sonorous sounds of a saxophone filled the room. I left the O.R. shortly after, then gathered my things, which had accumulated over seven years of work—extra sets of clothes for the nights you don’t leave, toothbrushes, bars of soap, phone chargers, snacks, my skull model and collection of neurosurgery books, and so on. On second thought, I left my books behind. They’d be of more use here."

"What patients seek is not scientific knowledge doctors hide, but existential authenticity each must find on her own. Getting too deep into statistics is like trying to quench a thirst with salty water. The angst of facing mortality has no remedy in probability. I remember the moment when my overwhelming uneasiness yielded. Seven words from Samuel Beckett, a writer I’ve not even read that well, learned long ago as an undergraduate, began to repeat in my head, and the seemingly impassable sea of uncertainty parted: “I can’t go on. I’ll go on.” I took a step forward, repeating the phrase over and over: “I can’t go on. I’ll go on.” And then, at some point, I was through. I am now almost exactly eight months from my . My strength has recovered substantially. In treatment, the cancer is retreating. I have gradually returned to work. I’m knocking the dust off scientific manuscripts. I’m writing more, seeing more, feeling more. Every morning at 5:30, as the alarm clock goes off, and my dead body awakes, my wife asleep next to me, I think again to myself: “I can’t go on.” And a minute later, I am in my , heading to the operating room, alive: “I’ll go on.”"

"The chief processes for the improvement of soils which may be discussed here are: liming, claying and marling, warping, paring and burning, and green manuring. Most of these more or less directly improve the land by adding to it certain plant food constituents which are lacking, but the effect of each process is in reality very complex. In the majority of cases the good results obtained are more particularly due to the setting free of " dormant " or " latent " food constituents and to the amelioration of the texture of the soil, so that its aeration, drainage, temperature and water-holding capacity are altered for the better."

"Among the world's crops wheat is pre-eminent both in regard to its antiquity and its importance as a food of mankind. In prehistoric times it was cultivated throughout Europe, and was one of the most valuable cereals of ancient Persia, Greece, and Egypt."

"The wheat taxonomist has a difficult job. The variation in Triticum/Aegilops is extraordinary and one has only to look through the enormous herbarium collection of wheat that John Percival amassed to see the diversity. Hybridization and polyploidy have occurred frequently and been assisted by man over a long period, complicating the systematics enormously."

"In making the present attempt to improve on the performance of predecessors, and to produce something which might be accepted as echoing however faintly the sublime rhetoric of the Arabic Koran, I have been at pain to study the intricate and richly varied rhythms which—apart from the message itself—constitutes the Koran’s undeniable claim to rank amongst the greatest literary masterpieces of mankind."

"In fact the sea wasn't open."

"is absolutely wrong whether it's a man against a woman or a woman against a man."

"I've got say, on this take the knee thing – which, I don't know, maybe it's got a broader history but it seems to be taken from the Game of Thrones – feels to me like a symbol of subjugation and subordination, rather than one of liberation and emancipation."

"The police don't normally look back and investigate things that have taken place a year ago."

"We are – and I hadn't quite understood the full extent of this, but if you look at the UK and if you look at how we trade in goods – we are particularly reliant on the Dover-Calais crossing."

"The NHS is not for sale to any country and never would be."

"The British are among the worst idlers in the world."

"The typical user of a food bank is not someone that's languishing in poverty, it's someone who has a cash flow problem."

"I think it's understandable there are jitters on all sides of this debate and we need to hold our nerve. The end is in sight in terms of a good deal - the prize we want - a good deal with the EU and I think colleagues should wait and see what that looks like."

"... the dialogue between mathematical physics, geometry, and algebraic topology. The interaction between these subjects has been such a dominant feature of research developments in the past few years that it seems scarcely necessary to recite a list of examples: in fact, on the mathematical side it is quite hard to think of active areas in geometry and topology which have not been noticeably influenced by insights from physics—where by "physics" we mean particularly quantum field theory—and on the other hand the geometrisation of fundamental physical concepts is a profound and pervasive development."

"Geometers have studied the topology of closed surfaces and their higher- dimensional analogues (manifolds) for a long time. But a remarkable breakthrough came in the early 1980s when Simon Donaldson found some totally new and unexpected invariants of four-dimensional manifolds. These were based on the Yang–Mills equations of physics but it was not until later that Edward Witten again showed how to interpret Donaldson's invariants in terms of quantum field theory. Later still, using duality ideas from string theory, Witten and Seiberg made a significant improvement of Donaldson theory which led to solutions of old problems."