House of Commons Early Day Motion - Mark Twain - Tennessee Williams - Abraham Lincoln - Thomas Edison - Horst Wessel - Frederick Engels - Peter Medawar - William Shakespeare - George Foreman - Simon Schama TV - Charles Darwin - Waldemar Januszczak - Giorgio Vasari - The Business 2005 - The Manchurian Candidate 1962 - Star Trek: The Deadly Years TV - Joseph Goebells - Hugh Walters - Plato - Theodore Roosevelt - Bono - Christopher Hitchens - John Dryden - The Guardian - Nelson Mandela - Guy Walters TV - Edwin Stanton - Brian May - Samuel Johnson - Edward George Bulwer-Lytton - James Joyce - Frank Muir - F R Leavis - Adam Smith - Frederick Douglass - Matthew Arnold - Alfred Lord Tennyson - Ludwig van Beethoven - Max Tegmark - Tony Bennett - Michael Drayton - Robert Whittington - Fitz-Greene Halleck - Henry Wadsworth Longfellow - Ben Jonson - Thomas Babington Macauley - James Douglas - Jordan Maxwell - Michael Tsarion - W H Auden - Harold Laski - Jackson Pollock - John Aubrey - Frances Cornford - William Godwin - John Keats - Adlai Stevenson - Robert Schumann - Genesis 49:3 - Henry Fielding - Andre Gide - Michael Parkinson - John le Mesurier - Rumpole of the Bailey TV - Robert Wittington - Adolf Hitler - Utopia TV - Thomas Lamont – Jason McAteer - Sylvia Nasar & Mikhail Gromov - Anne Robinson - The Sun TV - Irene Johnson - Fred Dibnah: A Tribute to Fred TV - Virginia Woolf - Rise of the Footsoldier 2019 - John Muir - Breaking Bad TV -
This House [House of Commons] notes with sadness the 10th anniversary of the death of Bill Hicks on 26th February 1994. Records his assertion that his words would be a bullet in the heart of consumerism, capitalism and the American dream. And mourns the passing of one of the few people who may be worthy of being mentioned as inclusion with Lenny Bruce in any list of unflinchingly and painfully politically honest political philosopher. House of Commons Early Day Motion proposed by MP Stephen Pound
I can live for two months on a good compliment. Mark Twain
Blanch: I was fishing for a compliment.
Stanley: I don’t go in for that stuff. Tennessee Williams, A Streetcar Named Desire
Everybody likes a good compliment. Abraham Lincoln
All the attributes of a perfect man. Thomas Edison, re Robert Ingersoll
This man’s [Hitler] rhetoric and ability to organise are unique. There was no situation he couldn’t deal with. The party members followed him with great love. The Stormtroopers would have let themselves be hewn to pieces for him. Goebbels, that was like Hitler himself. Goebbels, well that was our Goebbels. Horst Wessel, 1920s
Marx discovered the law of development of human history: the simple fact, hitherto concealed by an overgrowth of ideology, that mankind must first of all eat and drink, have shelter and clothing, before it can pursue politics, science, religion and art; and that therefore the production of the immediate material means of life and consequently the degree of economic development ... form the foundation upon which the forms of government, the legal conceptions, the art and even the religious ideas of the people concerned have been evolved ... instead of vice versa as had hitherto been the case. Frederick Engels, graveside tribute to Karl Marx
For Marx was, before all else, a revolutionary. His real mission in life was to contribute in one way or another to the overthrow of capitalist society and of the forms of government which it had brought into being, to contribute to the liberation of the present day proletariat. ibid.
During the 1950s, the first great age of molecular biology, the English Schools of Oxford and particularly of Cambridge produced more than a score of graduates of quite outstanding ability – much more brilliant, inventive, articulate and dialectically skilful than most young scientists; right up in the Watson class. But Watson had one towering advantage over all of them: in addition to being extremely clever he had something important to be clever about. Peter Medawar
When he shall die,
Take him and cut him out in little stars,
And he will make the face of heaven so fine
That all the world will be in love with night
And pay no worship to the garish sun. William Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet III ii @21
Why, man, he doth bestride the narrow world
Like a Colossus. William Shakespeare, Julius Caesar I ii 136-137
He reads much,
He is a great observer, and he looks
Quite through the deeds of men. ibid. I ii 202-204, Caesar to Anthony et al
Yet he’s gentle; never schooled, and yet learned; full of noble device; of all sorts enchantingly beloved; and indeed so much in the heart of the world, and especially of my own people, who best know him, that I am altogether misprized. William Shakespeare, As You Like It I i 156-160, Oliver
O, what a noble mind is here o’erthrown!
The courtier’s, soldier’s, scholar’s eye, tongue, sword,
The expectancy and rose of the fair state.
The glass of fashion and the mould of form,
Th’ observed of all observers – quite, quite down! William Shakespeare, Hamlet III i 149-153
He sits ’mongst men like a descended god. William Shakespeare, Cymbeline I vi 170, Giacomo
Muhammad Ali was the greatest man to ever box. He was the greatest man to do an interview. He was the greatest man to do about anything that’s ever been done. George Foreman
And you’d find women – articulate, intelligent and impassioned. And among those women the most striking of all was Mary Wollstonecraft. She was the Spirit of the Times. Mary Wollstonecraft was a one-woman revolution. Simon Schama, A History of Britain: Forces of Nature
Her joyousness and animal spirits radiated from her whole countenance and rendered every movement elastic and full of life and vigour. It was delightful and cheerful to behold her. Her dear face now rises. Charles Darwin’s notebook, re Annie
Bernini: as architect, as sculpture, as painter, the man could do everything. Waldemar Januszczak, Baroque! – From St Peter’s to St Paul’s I, BBC 2013
Sometimes in a supernatural fashion a single body [da Vinci] is lavishly supplied with such beauty, grace and ability that ... each of his actions is so divine that he leaves behind all other men ... a genius endowed by God. Men saw this in Leonardo da Vinci. Giogio Vasari
It was never about the money for Charlie. It was about the power and what went with it ... His fucking bed made itself in the mornings. That’s how cool he was ... As I said, he walked on fucking water. The Business 2005 starring Danny Dyer & Tamer Hassan & Geoff Bell & Georgina Chapman & Linda Henry & Roland Manookian & Camille Coduri & Andy Parfitt et al, director Nick Love
Raymond Shaw is the kindest, bravest, warmest, most wonderful human being I have ever known in my life. The Manchurian Candidate 1962 starring Frank Sinatra & Angela Lansbury & Janet Leigh & Laurence Harvey & Henry Silva & James Gregory & Leslie Parris & John McGiver et al, director John Frankenheimer, Sinatra
I see Captain James Kirk – a man of morality, decency, handsome and strong. Star Trek s2e12: The Deadly Year, Doctor Janet Wallace
I have listened to the boss. It was a kind of awakening. I listened to this voice and I knew that the messiah was in front of me. Joseph Goebbels, diary entry November 1925
Those big blues eyes like stars ... This man has all the qualities of a king. Joseph Goebbels, diary entry
He was this very intelligent, intense young lawyer, and she was an au pair. But she had a very good brain. Serge opened up Beate’s eyes to what happened during the war. And their life since then has been one long very very hardly fought campaign against injustice. Guy Walters, re Beate and Serge Klarsfeld
This was the end, Echekrates, of our friend; a man of whom we may say that of all whom we met at that time he was the wisest and justest and best. Plato, Phaedo
Ordinarily, the man who loves the woods and mountains, the trees, the flowers, and the wild things, has in him some indefinable quality of charm, which appeals even to those sons of civilization who care for little outside of paved streets and brick walls. John Muir was a fine illustration of this rule. He was by birth a Scotchman – a tall and spare man, with the poise and ease natural to him who has lived much alone under conditions of labor and hazard. He was a dauntless soul, and also one brimming over with friendliness and kindliness.