Quotes by British Authors - Page 9

Domestic terrorism is alive and well in the USA and it is masquerading as “Progress”.
Steven Magee
Civilization on Earth planet was equated with selfishness and greed; those people who lived in a civilized state exploited those who did not. There were shortages of vital commodities on Earth planet, and the people in the civilized nations were able to monopolize those commodities by reason of their greater economic strength. This imbalance appeared to be at the root of thedisputes.
Cristopher Priest
Rosamond, accustomed from her childhood to an extravagant household, thought that good housekeeping consisted simply in ordering the best of everything––nothing else 'answered;' and Lydgate supposed that 'if things were done at all, they must be done properly'–he did not see how they were to live otherwise. If each head of household expenditure had been mentioned to him beforehand, he would have probably observed that 'it could hardly come to much,' and if any one had suggested a saving on a particular article–for example, the substitution of cheap fish for dear–it would have appeared to him simply a penny-wise, mean notion.
George Eliot
The test of a progressive policy is not private but public, not just rising income and consumption for individuals, but widening the opportunities and what Amartya Sen calls the 'capabilities' of all through collective action. But that means, it must mean, public non-profit initiative, even if only in redistributing private accumulation. Public decisions aimed at collective social improvement from which all human lives should gain. That is the basis of progressive policy—not maximising economic growth and personal incomes. Nowhere will this be more important than in tackling the greatest problem facing us this century, the environmental crisis. Whatever ideological logo we choose for it, it will mean a major shift away from the free market and towards public action, a bigger shift than the British government has yet envisaged. And, given the acuteness of the economic crisis, probably a fairly rapid shift. Time is not on our side.
Eric Hobsbawm
Equally serious is the complaint that psychoanalysis as a medical practice is a form of oppressive social control, labelling individuals and forcing them to conform to arbitrary definitions of ‘normality’. This charge is in fact more usually aimed against psychiatric medicine as a whole: as far as Freud’s own views on ‘normality’ are concerned, the accusation is largely misdirected. Freud’s work showed, scandalously, just how ‘plastic’ and variable in its choice of objects libido really is, how so-called sexual perversions form part of what passes as normal sexuality, and how heterosexuality is by no means a natural or self-evident fact. It is true that Freudian psychoanalysis does usually work with some concept of a sexual ‘norm’; but this is in no sense given by Nature.
Terry Eagleton
...The fact that it's black transforms it. Has the same effect on women that black stockings have on men.
Daphne du Maurier
No mathematician should ever allow him to forget that mathematics, more than any other art or science, is a young man's game. … Galois died at twenty-one, Abel at twenty-seven, Ramanujan at thirty-three, Riemann at forty. There have been men who have done great work later; … [but] I do not know of a single instance of a major mathematical advance initiated by a man past fifty. … A mathematician may still be competent enough at sixty, but it is useless to expect him to have original ideas.
G H Hardy
It's not catastrophes, murders, deaths, diseases, that age and kill us; it's the way people look and laugh, and run up the steps of omnibuses.
Virginia Woolf
As someone who has spent the last decade training young men and women for Christian service, I have been keen to help them see that the best kinds of ministry are, more often than not, long term and low key. I have tried to prepare them for a marathon, not a short, energetic sprint. In other words, to help them have a lifetime of sustainable sacrifice, rather than an energetic but brief ministry that quickly fades in exhaustion.
Christopher Ash
An unhappy woman with access to weed killer had to be watched carefully.
James Ruddick
I remember having an argument with Alan, I said the Queen's not just going to call the guy up and send him out to do it. And Alan says, well, how would a monarch give orders to her assassin.
Eddie Campbell
Police intentionally murdering a mentally unstable person will always be unacceptable when there are numerous other non-lethal options available to them.
Steven Magee
While police internal affairs is allowed to protect corrupt police officers that engage in unethical behaviors, illegal activities or murder, there will always be a genuine mistrust by the common people.
Steven Magee
The house-cat is a four-legged quadruped, the legs as usual being at the corners. It is what is sometimes called a tame animal, though it feeds on mice and birds of prey. Its colours are striped, it does not bark, but breathes through its nose instead of its mouth. Cats also mow, which you all have heard. Cats have nine liveses, but which is seldom wanted in this country, coz' of Christianity. Cats eat meat and most anythink speshuelly where you can't afford. That is all about
Helen Exley
There is no equality while privileges enjoyed by the many are denied to the few.
Robert Cubitt
I had a very clear vision, of Selina with her hair about her shoulders, a crimson hat upon her head, a velvet coat, ice-skates - I must have been remembering some picture. I imagined myself beside her, the air coming sharply into our mouths. I imagined how it would be if I took her, not to Italy, but only to Marishes, to my sister's house; if I sat with her at supper, and shared her room, and kissed her -
Sarah Waters
Besides, immense power is acquired by assuring yourself in your secret reveries that you were born to control things.
E.L. James
And then there was
Dianna Hardy
People with Electromagnetic Hypersensitivity (EHS) are known to put their computer equipment several feet away from them with a large monitor on a big font and they use a wired USB keyboard and mouse to control it.
Steven Magee
Avoid letting circumstances control your decisions and dictate your actions, thereby controlling your life.
Steven Redhead
The urge to shout filthy words at the top of his voice was as strong as ever.
George Orwell
In daylight and up close, he was merciless, all smiles and freckles, the brightest, boldest flame a moth could wish for.
Alexis Hall
When people who remember her better than me talk of her, she is always described as headstrong and irresponsible, which, if you think about it, are just different words for untameable. The wind is untameable, and so are rivers, and there is something poetic in that.
Claire Wong
Inspector Milne's suspicious prying appeared to have awakened her inner Bolshevik, and so I discovered my own lady mother is not above quietly circumventing the law.
Elizabeth Wein
Said by Colin the dragon:"It's somewhat bizarre to learn that many of you (humans)think that other humans are somehow different enough to be hated and killed, when in reality you're all all tiresomely similiar in outlook, needs and motivation, and differ only by peculiar habits, generally shaped by geographical circumstance.
Jasper Fforde
Western governments use thermal heating standards for public protection from the damaging effects of wireless radio frequency (RF) radiation. Eastern governments use biological standards that are much lower due to the extensive long term radiation damage that has been seen to occur in humans at the western thermal heating standard.
Steven Magee
Humans would become very sick without natural radio frequency (RF) exposures.
Steven Magee
There's a bit of kitten in all of us.
Anthony T.Hincks
Knowledge comes by revelation through the study of the Scriptures
Pedro Okoro
From the point of view of the Low, no historic change has ever meant much more than a change in the name of their masters.
George Orwell
The Industrial Revolution appears to be in its final stages and it will be remembered as a time where industrial stock markets were at historic highs at the same time that many natural processes were shutting down, including the next generation of humans.
Steven Magee
Some think that they are incredible but are actually un-credible. Do you work, master your craft...
Rasheed Ogunlaru
What am I doing? Tearing myself. My usual occupation at most times.
Charles Dickens
A question is far more subversive, biblically, than a statement.
Os Guinness
The Church, like her head, has a glory, but it is concealed from carnal eyes, for the time of her breaking forth in all her splendour is not yet come.
Charles Haddon Spurgeon
Adams dealt him so sound a Compliment over his Face with his Fist, that the Blood immediately gushed out of his Nose in a Stream. The Host being unwilling to be outdone in Courtesy, especially by a Person of Adams's Figure, returned the Favour with so much Gratitude, that the Parson's Nostrils likewise began to look a little redder than usual.
Henry Fielding
Comedy was one of those genres that while appearing quite jolly was actually highly dangerous.
Jasper Fforde
Sometimes all we need to soothe our soul and ease our burdens is the loving hand of a friend gently touching our heart and lifting us towards love
Mimi Novic
Overall, becoming a carbon-neutral country would involve changes in our behaviour, but these are modest compared with the changes that will be forced upon us if we do nothing.
Caroline Lucas
If a curiously selective plague came along and killed all people of intermediate height, 'tall' and 'short' would come to have just as precise a meaning as 'bird' or 'mammal'. The same is true of human ethics and law. Our legal and moral systems are deeply species-bound. The director of a zoo is legally entitled to 'put down' a chimpanzee that is surplus to requirements, while any suggestion that he might 'put down' a redundant keeper or ticket-seller would be greeted with howls of incredulous outrage. The chimpanzee is the property of the zoo. Humans are nowadays not supposed to be anybody's property, yet the rationale for discriminating against chimpanzees in this way is seldom spelled out, and I doubt if there is a defensible rationale at all. Such is the breathtaking speciesism of our attitudes, the abortion of a single human zygote can arouse more moral solicitude and righteous indignation than the vivisection of any number of intelligent adult chimpanzees! [T]he only reason we can be comfortable with such a double standard is that the intermediates between humans and chimps are all dead.
Richard Dawkins
Perhaps it is weariness that causes seers not to act on what they see; for whereas the wisdom of the world can be vast, it includes the many futilities. Ideas do not have legs with which to run and hands with which to craft. They are wisps of smoke floating into a universe of pain and ignorance that overwhelm the capacity of one small human body and the mind trapped inside it.
Kate Horsley
Empowerment is the intentional absence of negativity.
Stephanie Lennox
I think records were just a little bubble through time and those who made a living from them for a while were lucky. There is no reason why anyone should have made so much money from selling records except that everything was right for this period of time. I always knew it would run out sooner or later. It couldn't last, and now it's running out. I don't particularly care that it is and like the way things are going. The record age was just a blip. It was a bit like if you had a source of whale blubber in the 1840s and it could be used as fuel. Before gas came along, if you traded in whale blubber, you were the richest man on Earth. Then gas came along and you'd be stuck with your whale blubber. Sorry mate – history's moving along. Recorded music equals whale blubber. Eventually, something else will replace it.
Brian Eno
In neo-classical economic theory, it is claimed without evidence that people are basically self-seeking, that they want above all the satisfaction of their material desires: what economists call "maximising utility". The ultimate objective of mankind is economic growth, and that is maximized only through raw, and lightly regulated, competition. If the rewards of this system are spread unevenly, that is a necessary price. Others on the planet are to be regarded as either customers, competitors or factors of production. Effects upon the planet itself are mere "externalities" to the model, with no reckoning of the cost - at least for now. Nowhere in this analysis appears factors such as human cooperation, love, trust, compassion or hatred, curiosity or beauty. Nowhere appears the concept of meaning. What cannot be measured is ignored. But the trouble is that once our basic needs for shelter and food have been met, these factors may be the most important of all.
Carne Ross
Beyond the speculative and often fraudulent froth that characterizes much of neoliberal financial manipulation, there lies a deeper process that entails the springing of ‘the debt trap’ as a primary means of accumulation by dispossession. Crisis creation, management, and manipulation on the world stage has evolved into the fine art of deliberative redistribution of wealth from poor countries to the rich. I documented the impact of Volcker’s interest rate increase on Mexico earlier. While proclaiming its role as a noble leader organizing ‘bail-outs’ to keep global capital accumulation on track, the US paved the way to pillage the Mexican economy. This was what the US Treasury–Wall Street–IMF complex became expert at doing everywhere. Greenspan at the Federal Reserve deployed the same Volcker tactic several times in the 1990s. Debt crises in individual countries, uncommon during the 1960s, became very frequent during the 1980s and 1990s. Hardly any developing country remained untouched, and in some cases, as in Latin America, such crises became endemic. These debt crises were orchestrated, managed, and controlled both to rationalize the system and to redistribute assets. Since 1980, it has been calculated, ‘over fifty Marshall Plans (over $4.6 trillion) have been sent by the peoples at the Periphery to their creditors in the Center’. ‘What a peculiar world’, sighs Stiglitz, ‘in which the poor countries are in effect subsidizing the richest.
David Harvey
The main substantive achievement of neoliberalization, however, has been to redistribute, rather than to generate, wealth and income. …[T]his was achieved under the rubric of ‘accumulation by dispossession’. By this I mean the continuation and proliferation of accumulation practices which Marx had treated of as ‘primitive’ or ‘original’ during the rise of capitalism. These include the commodification and privatization of land and the forceful expulsion of peasant populations (compare the cases, described above, of Mexico and of China, where 70 million peasants are thought to have been displaced in recent times); conversion of various forms of property rights (common, collective, state, etc.) into exclusive private property rights (most spectacularly represented by China); suppression of rights to the commons; commodification of labour power and the suppression of alternative (indigenous) forms of production and consumption; colonial, neocolonial, and imperial processes of appropriation of assets (including natural resources); monetization of exchange and taxation, particularly of land; the slave trade (which continues particularly in the sex industry); and usury, the national debt and, most devastating of all, the use of the credit system as a radical means of accumulation by dispossession.
David Harvey
For capitalism to develop, customary ties between people and the land must be severed, and communal obligations among people disrupted.
David McNally
The principle locations of exploitation have moved, through the mechanism of 'globalisation', to where most of us can't see them and don't really care about them if we do.
David Smail
In a capitalist society there are always inequalities of class and wealth. People who inherit money and property will always see themselves as being superior to those who have to work for it.
Sally Wentworth
[I]f you think that American imperialism and its globalised, capitalist form is the most dangerous thing in the world, that means you don't think the Islamic Republic of Iran or North Korea or the Taliban is as bad.
Christopher Hitchens
Deregulation is a transfer of power from the trodden to the treading. It is unsurprising that all conservative parties claim to hate big government.
George Monbiot
I will forever walk alone in a world overflowing with those that will never understand my meaning of “Learning to See” I’m always teaching myself to see beauty in all aspects of reality, yearning to learn the beauty in others, from their vision of everyday life to their deepest secrets of their dreams. As the sun rises I must smile, smile for those with the beautiful mind and soul. I’m so passionate for the visions I see, and the dreams I wish the world could be.
Michael Jones
Said the Sun to the Moon-'When you are but a lonely white crone,And I, a dead King in my golden armour somewhere in a dark wood,Remember only this of our hopeless loveThat never till Time is doneWill the fire of the heart and the fire of the mind be one
Edith Sitwell
Safe sex? Does such a thing exist?
Garry Crystal
If you are not appetisers, main course and dessert, you are dating the wrong diner...
Virginia Alison
Hard it is to suffer through stupid people. They make you feel sorry for them, and if your sorrow is as great as your hurt, you will allow them to go free of punishment, for their eyes are the eyes of dogs that have done wrong and know it, and are afraid.
Richard Llewellyn
The Apparent is the Bridge to the Real
Idries Shah
Saying of the Prophet.Ink and Blood:The ink of the learned is holier than the blood of the martyr.
Idries Shah
Surrender is no guarantee that an armed police officer will not shoot you.
Steven Magee
In choosing a hypothesis there is no virtue in being timid. I clearly would have been burned at the stake in another age.
Thomas Gold