I was in the enormous and almost deserted square in front of the Great People's Study House-all open spaces in Pyongyang remain deserted unless filled with parades of hundreds of thousands of human automata-when a young Korean slid surreptitiously up to me and asked, "Do you speak English?" An electric moment: for in North Korea, unsupervised contact between a Korean and a foreigner is utterly unthinkable, as unthinkable as shouting, "Down with Big Brother!" "Yes," I replied. "I am a student at the Foreign Languages Institute. Reading Dickens and Shakespeare is the greatest, the only pleasure of my life." It was the most searing communication I have ever received in my life. We parted immediately afterward and of course will never meet again. For him, Dickens and Shakespeare (which the regime permitted him to read with quite other ends in view) guaranteed the possibility not just of freedom but of truly human life itself.
Anthony Daniels (psychiatrist)Related topics
almost big brother communication contact course dickens electric english foreign foreigner freedom front great human institute life meet moment north open permit pleasure possibility quite read reading regime remain reply searing shouting slide speak square student study view yes young korean shakespeare korea pyongyang endsRelated quotes
It is scarcely possible to calculate the benefits which we might derive from the diffusion of European civilisation among the vast population of the East. It would be, on the most selfish view of the case, far better for us that the people of India were well governed and independent of us, than ill governed and subject to us; that they were ruled by their own kings, but wearing our broadcloth, and working with our cutlery, than that they were performing their salams to English collectors and English magistrates, but were too ignorant to value, or too poor to buy, English manufactures. To trade with civilised men is infinitely more profitable than to govern savages. That would, indeed, be a doting wisdom, which, in order that India might remain a dependency, would make it an useless and costly dependency, which would keep a hundred millions of men from being our customers in order that they might continue to be our slaves.
Thomas Babington Macaulay
When I look at this as a proposal [i. e. British entry into the Common Market], it is really an extraordinary change. We used to put the Commonwealth first. It is quite obvious now that the Commonwealth comes second. We are going to be closer friends with the Germans, the Italians and the French than we are with the Australians or the Canadians. People are talking about what will happen thirty years hence: but, you know, twenty years ago I should never have imagined that we would be putting, as close friends, the Germans in front of the Canadians, the Australians, the New Zealanders, the Indians or anyone else. That does make for an entire revolution. It is also an entire revolution in the historic position of this country. I am not putting it forward that necessarily old things are right: I should be showing my age too clearly if I did that. It may be they are right; but make no mistake: this is an enormous change.
Clement Attlee
There was a time not too long ago in this country that we used to walk through walls of fire to make sure we weren't funding Hamas or Hezbollah. I have news for ya: there are a lot of universities that are just as dangerous with indoctrination of our children as these terror groups are in Iran or North Korea. With the poll numbers continuing to slide for the new health care bill, our Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius just said, and I quote, "We need a [video: RE-EDUCATION in fullscreen boldface] re-education process [video of Beck resumes] on healthcare." Oh. Well, how very Kim Jong-Il of you. Or dare I say it? Mao is the "in" one now, isn't he? Re-education. - America, while you have been working hard, while you have been busting your butt, while you have thought we all generally agree on things, we have been setting up re-education camps. We call them 'universities'.
Glenn Beck
And this in turn makes it plain that the Right Man problem is a problem of highly dominant people. Dominance is a subject of enormous importance to biologists and zoologists because the percentage of dominant animals - or human beings - seems to be amazingly constant. Bernard Shaw once asked the explorer H. M. Stanley how many other men could take over leadership of the expedition if Stanley himself fell ill; Stanley replied promptly: "One in twenty." "Is that exact or approximate?" asked Shaw. "Exact." And biological studies have confirmed this as a fact. For some odd reason, precisely five per cent - one in twenty - of any animal group are dominant - have leadership qualities. During the Korean War, the Chinese made the interesting discovery that if they separated out the dominant five per cent of American prisoners of war, and kept them in separate compound, the remaining ninety-five per cent made no attempt to escape.
Colin Wilson
And this in turn makes it plain that the Right Man problem is a problem of highly dominant people. Dominance is a subject of enormous importance to biologists and zoologists because the percentage of dominant animals - or human beings - seems to be amazingly constant. Bernard Shaw once asked the explorer H. M. Stanley how many other men could take over leadership of the expedition if Stanley himself fell ill; Stanley replied promptly: "One in twenty." "Is that exact or approximate?" asked Shaw. "Exact." And biological studies have confirmed this as a fact. For some odd reason, precisely five per cent - one in twenty - of any animal group are dominant - have leadership qualities. During the Korean War, the Chinese made the interesting discovery that if they separated out the dominant five per cent of American prisoners of war, and kept them in separate compound, the remaining ninety-five per cent made no attempt to escape.
Henry Morton Stanley
