Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
There are lots of similarities between being a writer and a lawyer: to tell a story to a jury, hold their attention, make them laugh, make them like you. But what makes being a barrister less satisfying than being a writer is, finally, that it's about what someone else wants you to say.
I would reject wholeheartedly any notion of a Labour Party that is not committed to returning to power at the first opportunity. Of course that needs to be principled power. But standing on the sidelines looking for the purest ideology is a dereliction of the duty for any Labour member.
I found criminal clients easy and matrimonial clients hard. Matrimonial clients hate each other so much and use their children to hurt each other in beastly ways. Murderers have usually killed the one person in the world that was bugging them and they're usually quite peaceful and agreeable.
Strip away the factual misinformation repeatedly peddled about the Human Rights Act and almost everyone acknowledges that it works well in practice. Police up and down the country have found the Human Rights Act a much clearer and firmer basis for practical policing than the common law ever was.
Like childhood, old age is irresponsible, reckless, and foolhardy. Children and old people have everything to gain and nothing much to lose. It's middle-age which is cursed by the desperate need to cling to some finger-hold halfway up the mountain, to conform, not to cause trouble, to behave well.
The Chilcot report is damning. It exposes a litany of failures over a long period, including reliance on flawed intelligence assessments, lack of planning and insufficient foresight of obvious consequences. But the report also exposes a chilling lack of rigour and a political culture of deference.
The main aim of education should be to send children out into the world with a reasonably sized anthology in their heads so that, while seated on the lavatory, waiting in doctors' surgeries, on stationary trains or watching interviews with politicians, they may have something interesting to think about.
The thing I want to see before I die is women achieving full equality in the world. I'm very passionate about injustice against women and there's too much of it in the world. In so many parts of the world, women are not regarded as worthy or equal to men. In parts of the world, women are bought and sold.
I was a human rights lawyer for 20 years, I believed those values of dignity, equality and non-discrimination were a given. believed the only question in my lifetime would be - how much further do we extend those values? I did not think in my lifetime we'd actually be having an argument about those values.
My own foundation concentrates on women's economic empowerment on the basis that if women have their own money and are able to support themselves, they can make choices about what happens to them in their lives, about whether they have education, whether they get married, and what happens to their children.
My advice to organizations I work with is always to be proactive rather than simply reactive when it comes to human rights issues. After all, the important process of improving company policies and practices must be carried out without having to be prompted by a labour strike, factory collapse or other crisis.
When a builder builds he clears the ground for his new foundations. Then he sees that the basic structure will support the whole. Should we not also clear the mind - at least that part of it that we can reach - of the ruins of past thinking, before building our palace of dharma which will one day reach the sky.
Every morning, read seriously and reverently a portion of the Holy Scriptures, and acquaint yourselves with the history and doctrine thereof. It is a book full of light and wisdom, will make you wise to eternal life, and furnish you with directions and principles to guide and order your life safely and prudently.
By god the Buddhist means that from which the universe was born, the unborn of the Buddhist scriptures, and by soul that factor in the thing called man which moves towards enlightenment. Why need more be said of it, at any rate those who are not content with scholarship, but strive to attain that same enlightenment?
For some people, work is the only safe haven from abuse. So all employers in businesses big and small, whether in the public or private sector, should be encouraged to create safe spaces at work where staff suffering domestic abuse can talk to an appropriately qualified person who can provide advice and offer support.
In my youngest days, the nuns at my grammar school drummed into us that we were in this world to make it a better place - not just for ourselves, but for other people, too. So from the very beginning, I've been driven by this idea that we have to make a difference, and it's one of the reasons I went into law in the first place.
I think, when I was a young lawyer starting out, I was so determined to prove that I was as good as the men and that I could be given the same opportunities as the men, and it wouldn't make any difference at all that I was a woman. But actually, looking back on it now, I did do things that I wouldn't recommend to other women at all.
Access to our civil courts has been severely restricted by the combination of: the removal of legal aid from some cases based on their type, not their merit; a high financial threshold for the receipt of legal aid in other cases; and a failure to deliver a safety net for vulnerable individuals by the exceptional funding arrangements.
Do not choose for your friends and familiar acquaintance those that are of an estate or quality too much above yours...You will hereby accustom yourselves to live after their rate in clothes, in habit, and in expenses, whereby you will learn a fashion and rank of life above your degree and estate, which will in the end be your undoing.
Life is one, said the Buddha, and the Middle Way to the end of suffering in all its forms is that which leads to the end of the illusion of separation, which enables man to see, as a fact as clear as sunlight, that all mankind, and all other forms in manifestation, are one unit, the infinitely variable appearance of an indivisible Whole.
On Brexit, the Conservatives are divided, not only about the tactics but also about the end goal. Some of them deeply and profoundly believe ideologically in a deregulated, low-tax, free-market economy. Others still favor the economic and political model that we operated with in Europe over many decades. The Labour party is united in what we are trying to achieve.
Human language has a vocabulary suited to our daily needs and functions: the shape of any human language maps approximately to the needs and activities of our mundane lives. But few would deny that there is another dimension of human existence which transcends the mundane: call it the soul, the spirit: it is that part of the human frame which sees the shimmer of the numinous.
You will be interested to hear, Hilary, that it [the drug] had a most remarkable effect — even on Selena after a very modest quantity. She cast off all conventional restraints and devoted herself without shame to the pleasure of the moment." I asked for particulars of this uncharacteristic conduct. "She took from her handbag a paperback edition of Pride and Prejudice and sat on the sofa reading it, declining all offers of conversation.
Writing about the indignities of old age: the daunting stairway to the restaurant restroom, the benefits of a wheelchair in airports and its disadvantages at cocktail parties, giving the user what he described as a child's-eye view of the party and a crotch-level view of the guests. Dying is a matter of slapstick and pratfalls. The aging process is not gradual or gentle. It rushes up, pushes you over and runs off laughing. No one should grow old who isn't ready to appear ridiculous.
Labor party wants to make the economy fairer for everybody with a new industrial strategy and by investing in different parts of the UK. And we are not following the cynical approach of saying: Young people don't usually vote so we don't have to make any offer to them. But to succeed, we need a progressive future partnership with the EU. It is not easy, but I genuinely think it is possible to do. And I want Labour in power to do it, because the damage that is being done is profound.
I think the first what would happen in the immediate wake of a hard Brexit is a lack of confidence in UK economy. Business is already telling me that they need a year or so to adjust to what is going to change in March 2019. Without a deal, tariffs would immediately kick in and we would need all the physical attributes of a customs border. And that is just the trade aspect. Imagine what would happen if, from one day to the next, we had no aviation agreement or no agreements for dealing with security across Europe.