The resemblance between the two movements covers far more than the speed and extent of their conquests. It can be argued that in s...ome measure both are great Christian heresies. And like Communism, the Moslem faith in its relations with Europe has tended to follow the pattern of relentless pressure on all weak points and undefended frontiers and to advance its banners wherever there were found to be no defenders at the gate.... Islam derived its power to attract educated and intellectual groups from the use it made of ideas deeply congenial to the Oriental mind. Its rejection of the Greek and Christian heritage of humanism and incarnation in favor of a purely transcendent deity accorded well with the other-worldly tradition of Oriental religious thought. At the same time, the Moslem appeal to the people at large lay in the social evils which it promised to redress. Mohammedanism was in part a harking back to traditional intellectual and religious ideas, in part an outburst of social protest against an unjust and unstable social order. Modern Communism has something of the same character.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
If we ever feel discouraged by the apparent constraints on humanity, about its lack of elbowroom and freedom of action, we should ...think of the Jews and the Greeks, insignificant, powerless, and tiny in the age of the dinosaur empires, yet providing the growing points for the next stage in human destiny.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
We cannot cheat on DNA. We cannot get round photosynthesis. We cannot say I am not going to give a damn about phytoplankton. All t...hese tiny mechanisms provide the preconditions of our planetary life. To say we do not care is to say in the most literal sense that "we choose death."LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
There is no human failure greater than to launch a profoundly important endeavour and then leave it half done. This is what the We...st has done with its colonial system. It shook all the societies in the world loose from their old moorings. But it seems indifferent whether or not they reach safe harbour in the end.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Undershaft: Alcohol is a very necessary article. It heals the sick--Barbara: It does nothing of the sort. Undershaft: Well, it ass...ists the doctor: that is perhaps a less questionable way of putting it. It makes life bearable to millions of people who could not endure their existence if they were quite sober. It enables Parliament to do things at eleven at night that no sane person would do at eleven in the morning.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
It was in and about the Martinmas time, When the green leaves were afalling,... That Sir John Graeme, in the West Country, Fell in love with Barbara Allan.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Mister Ward, don't yur blud bile at the thawt that three million and a half of your culled brethren air a clanking their chains in... the South?--Sez I, not a bile! Let 'em clank!LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »