"Empirical evidence tends to show that trade liberalisation may entail non-trivial adjustment costs for certain groups." – page 47, [WTO Annual Report 1998], also quoted in '[Taking liberties: poor people, free trade and trade justice]', Christian Aid, 23 September 2004.
"Gradually, they will come to accept these abstractions as descriptive of a concrete truth because of the repressive and conspiratorial way that these ideas have been communicated (each senses that all the others 'believe in' the words and therefore they must be true), and once this acceptance occurs, any access to the ... forgotten memory that these are mere abstractions will be sealed off. And once these abstractions are reified, they can no longer be criticised because they signify a false concrete. ... The terrible truth of reification is that it is alive within each of us ... . ...everyone ... knows this, and can do nothing, or almost nothing, about it." -- Peter Gabel (1982) "Reification and Legal Reasoning", in P. Beirne, R. Quinney (editors) Marxism and the Law. New York: John Wiley and Sons. As quoted in page 262, JG Riddall (1999) Jurisprudence. London: Butterworths. ISBN 0-406-90010-8.
'About the time Fielding [then Canadian finance minister] was finally converted, however reluctantly, to the point of view that Canada should have a mint, he also determined that she should also have her own gold coinage. As early as February 1901, he sounded out the U.S. Treasury Secretary, Lyman Gage, on the possibility of having Canadian and U.S. gold coins made legal tender in both countries for mutual convenience. Gage was barely lukewarm to the proposal. He doubted whether Congress would pass the necessary legislation for "sentimental" reasons, and added that he felt a Canadian gold coinage was not really required since U.S. coins ought to serve quite as well.' -- page 85, Dr James A. Haxby (circa 1983) Striking impressions: the Royal Canadian Mint and Canadian coinage. Ottawa: Canadian Mint. ISBN 0-660-11563-8.
'... the inhabitants of a given country do not forfeit their basic economic, social and cultural rights by virtue of any determination that their leaders have violated norms relating to international peace and security.' -- General Comment Number 8 (E/C.12/1997/8) of [UN Committee on Economic Social and Cultural Rights (CESCR)] (1997-12-08) [1] [2]
'But perhaps we should for once put the magical formulas of identity aside, and risk a less distorted look at everything that wears a human face. We might then discern -- this side of all bestiaries -- the possible forms of our sociability.' -- Lutz Niethammer (2003-01/02) '[The Infancy of Tarzan]', New Left Review (Series II) 19.
'To unmask the hegemony [of imperialism] is an intellectual task. It does not harm to know English as one sets out for the task.' -- Jale Parla, '[The object of comparison]', to appear in a special issue (2004-01) of Comparative Literature Studies edited by Djelal Kadir; as quoted in Franco Moretti (2003-03/04) '[More Conjectures]', New Left Review (Series II) 20
'International law, as well as domestic law, may not contain, and generally does not contain, express rules decisive of particular cases; but the function of jurisprudence is to resolve the conflict of opposing rights and interests by applying, in default of any specific provision of law, the corollaries of general principles, and so to find -- exactly as in the mathematical sciences -- the solution to the problem.' -- a US-British Claims Tribunal (1923) Eastern Extension, Australasia and China Telegraph Co.; as quoted in 101 VI Reports of International Arbitral Awards 112, at 114; cited in Chapter 7, note 8 (page 430) of Antonio Cassese (2001) International Law. Oxford. ISBN 0198299982.
'Treaties are like roses and young girls; they last while they last.' -- attributed to President Charles de Gaulle, from On Franco-German treaty talks, Time 1963-07-12, quoted in Simpson’s Contemporary Quotations, compiled by James B. Simpson (1988) [3]; also The Economist (London) 1972-03-18, at 6, as cited in Chapter 6, note 47 (page 427) of Antonio Cassese (2001) International Law. Oxford. ISBN 0198299982.
I'm convinced that nature never intended our species to settle on the West Coast. It just isn't constructed ecologically for us. No matter how much desert you cover with sod or how much water you pump from the Colorado River, you can't fool Mother Nature -- and when you try, Mother Nature gets really shit-faced. -- Michael Moore, Stupid White Man
We need racist stereotypes right now of our enemy in order to encourage our warriors to kill the enemy. -- Michael Savage, on MSNBC
It is the army that finally makes a citizen of you; without it you still have a chance, however slim, to remain a human being. -- Joseph Brodsky, Less Than One
The formula for prison is a lack of space counterbalanced by a surplus of time. -- Joseph Brodsky, Less Than One
So the choice which Lomborg presents us with, of whether to save a drowning Tuvaluan (climate change) or a dying Somalian (water and sanitation) is not a choice at all -- in fact we need to do both, and not least because one is unlikely to be successful without the other. Mark Lynas (from [http://www.anti-lomborg.com/])
If you are religious, then remember that this bomb is Man's challenge to God. It's worded quite simply: We have the power to destroy everything that You have created. If you're not religious, then look at it this way. This world of ours is 4 600 000 000 years old. It could end in an afternoon. -- Arundhati Roy