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“The three great essentials to achieve anything worthwhile are, first, hard work; second, stick-to-itiveness; third, common sense.”
Thomas Edison
"We only love what hates us, anything that destroys us is seen as great. There is a desire to destroy truth, history... We no longer teach the history of France and we no longer say what our civilization has accomplished. We only talk about our civilisation to disparage it."
Michel Onfray, Le Salon Beige, July 30, 2020
“Though Communism is at present little talked about, vegetating in forgotten attics on miserable straw pallets, it is nevertheless the dismal hero destined to play a great, if transitory role in the modern tragedy… There will then be only one shepherd with an iron crook and one identically shorn, identically bleating human herd.”
Heinrich Heine in 1842. He and Karl Marx were third cousins and became fairly friendly.
“The characteristic intolerance and fanaticism of the prophets and missionaries of the three monotheist religions have their model and justification in the example set by Yahweh.”
Speed, I bid you, speed the earth
Onward with a shout of mirth,
Fill your eager eyes with light,
Put my face and memory
Out of mind and out of sight.
Nothing I have caused or done,
But this gravestone, meets the sun:
Friends, a great simplicity
Comes at last to you and me.
Don Marquis, "Lines for a Gravestone", 1927
“The characteristic intolerance and fanaticism of the prophets and missionaries of the three monotheist religions have their model and justification in the example set by Yahweh.”
Mircea Eliade
“Neither Jewish ethics nor Jewish tradition can disqualify terrorism as a means of combat. We are very far from having any moral qualms as far as our national war goes. We have before us the command of the Torah, whose morality surpasses that of any other body of laws in the world: ‘Ye shall blot them out to the last man.’
“Neither Jewish ethics nor Jewish tradition can disqualify terrorism as a means of combat. We are very far from having any moral qualms as far as our national war goes. We have before us the command of the Torah, whose morality surpasses that of any other body of laws in the world: ‘Ye shall blot them out to the last man.’
"But first and foremost, terrorism is for us a part of the political battle being conducted under the present circumstances, and it has a great part to play: speaking in a clear voice to the whole world, as well as to our wretched brethren outside this land, it proclaims our war against the occupier."
Future Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir in 1943, when he was one of the leaders of the Stern Gang. 'The occupier' means the British.
“Let us not ignore the truth among ourselves … politically we are the aggressors and they defend themselves… The country is theirs, because they inhabit it, whereas we want to come here and settle down, and in their view we want to take away from them their country. … Behind the terrorism [by the Arabs] is a movement, which though primitive is not devoid of idealism and self sacrifice.”
David Ben Gurion (the future first Israeli Prime Minister) in 1938
Speed, I bid you, speed the earth
Onward with a shout of mirth,
Fill your eager eyes with light,
Put my face and memory
Out of mind and out of sight.
Nothing I have caused or done,
But this gravestone, meets the sun:
Friends, a great simplicity
Comes at last to you and me.
Don Marquis, "Lines for a Gravestone", 1927
On the net:
ReplyDeleteMost popular content languages
(percentages of sites)
1. English 59.8%
2. Russian 8.7%
3. Spanish 4.0%
4. Turkish 3.2%
5. Persian 2.8%
Fastest growing content languages since 1 July 2020
1. English
2. Turkish
3. Vietnamese
https://w3techs.com/technologies/overview/content_language
Top 1000 list
ReplyDeleteThe Academic Ranking of World Universities (ARWU), released August 15, widely regarded as the premier university ranking system:
University of Cambridge 3rd
University of Oxford 9th
http://www.shanghairanking.com/Academic-Ranking-of-World-Universities-2020-Press-Release.html
In the Domesday book of 1086, the only Jew living in England is recorded as living in Oxfordshire.
ReplyDeleteOxford Jewish Personalities
https://www.oxfordchabad.org/templates/articlecco_cdo/aid/457389/jewish/Oxford-Jewish-Personalities.htm
A 1924 entry in Evelyn Waugh's diary states that an English High Court judge, presiding in a sodomy case, sought advice on sentencing from Lord Birkenhead. "Could you tell me," he asked, "what do you think one ought to give a man who allows himself to be buggered?" Birkenhead replied without hesitation, "Oh, thirty shillings or two pounds; whatever you happen to have on you."
ReplyDeletehttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/F._E._Smith,_1st_Earl_of_Birkenhead
A very good (old, but fresh in 1924) joke. I am sure Lord Birkenhead did not like boys and sure Evelyn Waugh would not have known if he had. Evelyn Waugh did like them while an undergraduate.
DeleteWords in the papers:
ReplyDeleteWokesheviks
webshite
spit hood
Oikophobia
Oikophobia I know of course - the late Sir Roger Scruton used it. Did he coin it?
DeleteYes.
ReplyDeleteThe simplest way of defining oikophobia is as the opposite extreme of xenophobia. As xenophobia means the fear or hatred of strangers or foreigners, so oikophobia means the fear or hatred of home or one’s own society or civilization, oikos being the ancient Greek word for home, house, household. The term was coined in this sense by British philosopher Roger Scruton in 2004, in his book 'England and the Need for Nations'.
‘Oikophobia’: Our Western Self-Hatred
written by Benedict Beckeld
https://quillette.com/2019/10/07/oikophobia-our-western-self-hatred/
In 1808, poet and essayist Robert Southey used the word to describe a desire (particularly by the English) to leave home and travel. Southey's usage as a synonym for wanderlust was picked up by other 19th-century writers.
ReplyDeleteIn his 2004 book 'England and the Need for Nations', British conservative philosopher Roger Scruton adapted the word to mean "the repudiation of inheritance and home."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oikophobia
I remember my surprise at about 16 to learn that Southey rhymed with mouthy. His Ode to Gooseberry Pie led me to buy 6 lb. of gooseberries, which she had told me were only in season for a very short time, and give them to my mother to make pies with. She did so but with understandable grumbling. The world in 1977 seemed tawdry and ugly and barren of interest, and so it was, but now it does seem slightly to resemble Enid Blyton, whose very cosy 1930s and 1940s children stories seemed in the 1970s to belong to an utterly alien world.
ReplyDelete