The problem is not that we were once in charge, but that we are not in charge any more... Consider Uganda, pearl of Africa, as an example of the British record. ... the British planted coffee and cotton and tobacco, and they were broadly right... If left to their own devices, the natives would rely on nothing but the instant carbohydrate gratification of the plantain. You never saw a place so abounding in bananas: great green barrel-sized bunches, off to be turned into matooke. Though this dish (basically fried banana) was greatly relished by Idi Amin, the colonists correctly saw that the export market was limited... The best fate for Africa would be if the old colonial powers, or their citizens, scrambled once again in her direction; on the understanding that this time they will not be asked to feel guilty.
Boris JohnsonRelated topics
abounding banana best british carbohydrate charge coffee colonial cotton direction dish example export fate fry gratification great green guilty instant left limited market nothing off once pearl place plantain problem record right saw time tobacco understanding africa amin bananas bunches matooke powers devicesRelated quotes
Nothing, I suppose, could better demonstrate than the Suez crisis the extent to which the United Nations had remained a central factor in our foreign policy. Our problem was, and is, one of long standing, how to bring about a creative peace and a security which will have a strong foundation. It remained my conviction that there could never be more than a second-best substitute for the UN in preserving the peace. Organizations such as NATO were necessary and desirable only because the UN was not effective as a security agency. UNEF was a step in the right direction in putting international force behind an international decision. The birth of that force had been sudden and had been surgical. The arrangements for the reception of the infant were rudimentary, and the midwives had no precedents or genuine experience to guide them.
Lester B. Pearson
WHAT HAPPENS AFTER DEATH?
When a human soul goes out of the body, some great mystery happens. For if it is guilty of sins, then there come hordes of demons, evil angels and dark forces, take that soul and drag it to their side.
No one should be surprised at that, because if a man surrendered and fell prey to them while still alive in this world, will not they have even greater control over him and enslave him when he departs from this world?
As for the other, the better part of people, something different happens to them. There are Angels around the holy servants of God in this life; the holy spirits surround them and protect them; and when their souls are separated from the body, the choir of Angels welcomes them into their fellowship, into a bright life, and thus leads them to the Lord.
Macarius of Egypt
We've lost the south, that was one of the biggest fallacies. We went in there and we served the interests of one of our enemies over there, the Iranians. We propped up the Shiites, we overthrew the Sunnis, and the British didn't hold, they left. So there's more peace and less killing in southern Iraq, because all of a sudden we've allowed local control to develop more naturally. Warlords and local people are in charge, and they're more allied with Iran. But this is not a catastrophe, that's why we should deal with the Iranians in a more respectful way: if they had more control of the oil they'd want to sell, what they're gonna do with it, drink it? That's why the balance of power and the idea of self-determination should be worked out by them, not by us. As long as we do it, there'd be resentment and that is the source of the hatred towards us.
Ron Paul
It should be clear by now that there are people who can, in fact, be reasonably considered experts; that it is rational to rely, within limits, on ex pert opinion; and that it is possible, by exercising relatively simple criteria, to gain insight into whether a particular expert is reliable or not. It is also true that experts, of course, do make mistakes, and that even the agreement of a large majority of experts in a field does not guarantee that they got it right. That's the nature of scientific truth, as we have seen throughout this book: it is tentative, because it is the result of a human endeavor that is limited both by the type and amount of available evidence and by humans' finite mental powers and emotional reactions. But the examples above show how you can, with a little bit of practice, tell science from bunk!
Massimo Pigliucci
British Liberalism is not going to repeat the errors of Continental Liberalism. The fate of Continental Liberalism should warn them of that danger. It has been swept on one side before it had well begun its work, because it refused to adapt itself to new conditions. The Liberalism of the Continent concerned itself exclusively with mending and perfecting the machinery which was to grind corn for the people. It forgot that the people had to live whilst the process was going on, and people saw their lives pass away without anything being accomplished. But British Liberalism has been better advised. It has not abandoned the traditional ambition of the Liberal party to establish freedom and equality; but side by side with this effort it promotes measures for ameliorating the conditions of life for the multitude.
David Lloyd George
