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" When I arrived to study at Oxford in October 1963, the bohemian style was black plastic or leather jackets for women and black leather or navy donkey jackets for men. I stuck to cavalry twills and a duffle coat, at least for a few months. "

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" Scotland's political identity was destroyed, and a huge Scottish emigration to North America followed the brutal Highland clearances. These included every layer of Scottish society, not just the remnants of the defeated clans. "

Tariq Ali

Society

Political

Identity

" Poland, after the First World War, was beset by chaos, disorder, and a foolish incursion by the Red Army, which helped to produce the ultra-nationalist military dictatorship of General Pilsudski. "

" Power can shape 'truth,' but not forever. "

" I was in my mid-teens when someone gave me a copy of 'Pears Encyclopaedia of Myth and Legends' as a birthday present. It sat on my shelves for many months before I looked at it. When I did, I couldn't stop reading it. "

" We were constantly appealing for funds from readers when I edited 'The Black Dwarf' in 1968-69. "

" As long as the Pentagon bankrolls the Pakistan army to fight its wars, and NATO troops remain in Afghanistan, there will be quarrels, charges of infidelity, a reduction in the household allowance, perhaps a separation - but a divorce? Never. "

" I am an atheist and do not know the meaning of the 'religious pain' that is felt by believers of every cast when what they believe in is insulted. "

" I didn't know a thing about Oxford and had never been to Britain. My father suggested it because in 1939 he had been about to take up a place at Wadham College, but the war broke out, and he joined the Army instead. "

" In times of crisis, the incumbent suffers. And the bigger the crisis, the greater the punishment inflicted on those in power unless they do something that makes a change. "

" In the calculus of western interests, there is no suffering, whatever its scale, which cannot be justified. Chechens, Palestinians, Iraqis, Afghans, Pakistanis are of little importance. "

" An act of unilateral nuclear disarmament by a European power would have a much more lasting impact than all the sanctions under consideration. Sanctions, as we know from the example of Iraq, always affect the least powerful citizens the most. "

" I was never totally what we would now call 'politically correct,' even in my most militant phase. I always liked good food, good wines. I suppose it was because I had total confidence in myself. "

" I am, in general, favourable to activism and social movements and hostile to graft and corruption. "

Tariq Ali

Activism

Social

" Those who really value Ukrainian sovereignty should opt for real independence and a positive neutrality: neither a plaything of the West nor Moscow. "

" The only decent daily paper of record in France is the online 'Mediapart,' which exposes graft and corruption in high places and is feared by the establishment. "

" I am not insulted by billions of Christians, Muslims and Jews believing there is a God and praying to this nonexistent deity on a regular basis. "

" The human voice deployed to recite the Vedas and later aid the temple dancers was paramount before any instruments emerged. "

" Anthony Powell was the most European of 20th-century British novelists. "

" The Enlightenment attacked religion - Christianity, mainly - for two reasons: that it was a set of ideological delusions, and that it was a system of institutional oppression, with immense powers of persecution and intolerance. "

" The Lumiere brothers first exhibited moving pictures in Paris in 1896. A year later, there was a private showing at the Yildiz palace in Istanbul. "

" A storm swept the world in 1968. It started in Vietnam, then blew across Asia, crossing the sea and the mountains to Europe and beyond. A brutal war waged by the U.S. against a poor southeast Asian country was seen every night on television. "

" Revolutionaries are not infallible. "

Tariq Ali

Infallible

Revolutionaries

" When Pakistan was carved out of India's rib in 1947, it was assumed by some that Bollywood's Muslim stars would defect to the new state and thus boost the Lahore film industry. But Lollywood did not happen. "

" Young women and men who joined the far-left groups did so for the best of reasons. They wanted to change the world. Many fought against the stifling atmosphere in many groups. "

" In 1962, President Kennedy expanded an earlier trade embargo put in place by a predecessor, President Eisenhower, to a total economic blockade, which pushed the Cubans further in Moscow's direction. "

" In some ways, the '60s were a reaction to the '50s and the intensity of the Cold War. "

" Exploiters and manipulators have always used religion self-righteously to further their own selfish ends. "

" Socially, the Cuban revolution created an education system and health service that remain the envy of much of the neo-liberal world. "

" Western enthusiasm for democracy stops when those opposed to its policies are elected to office. "

" An independent Scotland could be far more internationalist and would benefit a great deal from links to both Scandinavia and states in other continents. "

Tariq Ali

Great

Far