News From Nowhere: Citations

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Chapter	Page	Context	Who	Quote
I		Hope		"If I could but see it!"
II	50	England	Dick	« I can tell that you are a stranger, and must come from aplace very unlike England. »
III	53		Clara	« they say that southern England is a good place for keeping good looks. »
IV	62	Architecture bears		« the expression of such generosity and abundance of life. »
V		New vocab	Guest	« the boy-farms which I had been used to call schools.»
V		Houses of Parliament		« a storage place for manure »
VI		Pipe		« better than the best »
VI		Idée farfelue!		« Fancy people not liking to work! »
VII		1952, Trafalgar square	Dick	« That was important, if the historians don't lie. »
VII		Prisons		« How could they (Nowherians) if they knew that their neighbours were shut up in prison while they bore things quietly? »
VIII	84	19th c.	Guest	« I smiled faintly to think how the nineteenth century, of which such big words have been said, counted for nothing in the memory of these men who read Shakespeare and had not forgotten the Middle Ages. »
VIII	85	British Museum	Dick	« It is rather an ugly old building. » (...) « It is not a bad thing to have some record of what our forefathers thought a handsome building. »
IX		Morris speaking?	Guest	« Love is far more self-conscious than wrath. »
		History in Nowhere	Old Hammond	« I don't think my tales of the past interest them much. The last harvest, the last baby, the last knot of carving in the market place, is history enough for them. It was different, I think, when I was a lad, when we were not so assured of peace and continuous plenty as we are now. »
		Marriage – cf Engels, L'origine de la Famille?		« a matter of property quarrels. » « the sacred rightsof property (...) [are] no more. »
	93	Social norms		« There is no unvarying conventional set of rules by which people are judged. »
	94	Women		« It is a great pleasure to a clever woman to manage a house skilfully, and to do it so that all the house-mates about her look pleased and are grateful to her. »
	95	Women		« All the artificial burdens of motherhood are now done away with.»
X	97	education		« In the nineteenth century, society was so miserably poor, owing to the systematized robbery on which it was founded, that real education was impossible for anybody. »
	98	Quiet and peaceful		« we are no longer hurried (...) we can afford to give ourselves time to grow. »
		Freedom		« we live as we like »
				« poverty is extinct »
	99	Towns	Guest	« London (...) seems to have disappeared. »
		Slums =		« places of torture for innocent men and women »
		Working class history in Nowhere	Old Hammond	« Some memory of it abides with us (...) Once a year, on May Day, we hold a solemn feast in those easterly communes of London to commemorate the Clearing of Misery, as it is called. »
	103	Education		« Art of knowledge » vs. « Commercial learning of the past. » « [Oxford and Cambridge] were the breeding places of a peculiar class of parasites, who called themselves cultivated people. »
	104	Town and country		« difference between town and country grew less and less. »
	106	England as a garden		« Like the mediaevals, we like everything trim and clean, and orderly and bright. »
	107	19th c.industry	Old Hammond	« making things that nobody wants (...) was the chief business of the nineteenth century. »
XI		Government		« the whole people is our parliament. »
XII	112	Law		« civil law abolished itself. »
XII	113	Family		« families are held together by no bond of creation, legal or social, but by mutual liking and affection, and everybody is free to come or go as he or she pleases. »
XIII	116	Politics		« We are very well off as to politics, because we have none. »
XIV		Patriotism =		« foolish and envious prejudices. »
	118	Freedom		« everybody does as he pleases. »
	121	Ref to te dictatorship of the proletariat =	Old Hammond	« The tyranny of the majority » « we are not going to seej for troubles by calling our peace and plenty and happiness by ill names whose very meaning we have forgotten. »
XV	122	Work	Old Hammond	« The reward of labour is life. » « It is this change that make all the others possible. »
		Revolution		« What is the object of Revolution? Surely to make people happy. (...) How can you prevent the counter-revolution from setting in except by making people happy? (...) And happiness without happy daily work is impossible. »
	123	On happiness	Old Hammond	« Contrast is necassary for this explanation. »
	124	Production		« this horrible burden of unnecessary production. » the « cheapening of production. »
		Civilization (in the 19th c.) =		« organized misery. »
	125		OH's gd father = Morris?	« he was (...) a genuine artist, a man of genius and a revolutionist. »
	127	Production		« The wares which me make are made because they are needed. »
		Work		« all the work that we do is an exercise of the mind and body more or less pleasant to be done : so that instead of avoiding work everybody seeks it. »
XVI	131	Happiness	Old Hammond	« let us rejoice that we have got back our childhood again.» « we are too happy, both individually and collectively, to trouble ourselves about what is to come hereafter. »
XVI		Art	Clara	« I wish we were interested enough to be written or painted about. »
XVII	133	Revolution (« as it sed to be called »)		« this terrible period of transition from commercial slavery to freedom. »
	134	Middle classes = Socialists =		« the then tyrants of society. » « those more enlightened men. » « the only reasonable condition of society is that of pure communism. »
		Language		« phrases (...) which have lost their meaning to us of the present day. »
	135	Conscientisation des masses		« they grew to understand (...) that they were oppressed by their masters, and they assumed (...) that they could do without them. »
		Power of strike and of organized workforce		« they had got to be so strong that most commonly the mere threat of a « strike » was enough to gain a minor point. »
	140	Police (19th c.) =		« the civic bourgeois guard. »
		During the change		« Committee of Public Safety »
	147- 148	Members of the CSP in prison	OH	« but they had left their soul and their organization behind them. For they depended (...) on a huge mass of people in thorough sympathy with the movement, bound together by a great number of links of small centres with very simple instructions. »
	149	The Daily Telegraph		« one very violent reactionary paper. » vs. the « socialist papers » that flourished during the civil war.
	150	« boycotting » =		« the slang word then correct for such acts as abstention »
	153	New vocab.		« working men (as they were called in scorn these days.) »
	154	The army Generals =		« the very stupidest men in the country » vs. « the rank-and-file (...) not to be trusted by reactionists. »
	155	Milices bourgeoises Contre-révoultionnaires		« Friends of the order »
				« All the ideas of peace on the basis of compromise had disappeared on either side. The end, it was seen clearly, must be either absolute slavery for all but the privileged, or a system of life founded on equality and communism. »
	156	Revolutionaries		« they soon got leaders far more equal to the best men amongst the reactionaries. »
				« The main element of their success was this, that whereever the working people were not coerced, they worked, not for the reactionists, but for 'the rebels'. »
				« It at last beacme clear to all men that the cause which was once hopeless, was now triumphant, and that the hopeless cause was that of slavery and privilege. »
XVII	157	To 19th c. Guest	Old Hammond	« In the times which you are thinking of (...) there was no hope (...)but in that-fighting time that followed, all was hope. »
	158	Achievement	Guest	« they destroyed commercialism. »
		Socialism or barbarism, cf Rosa Luxembourg	Old Hammond	« Yes (...) Nor could it have been destroyed otherwise; except, perhaps, by the whole society gradually falling into lower depths, till it should at last reach a condition as rude as barbarism, but lacking both the hope and the pleasures of barbarism. Surely the sharper, shorter remedy was the happiest. »
				« the spirit of the new days, of our days, was to be delight in the life of the the world. »
		Science		« the so-called science of the 19th c., which was in the main an appendage to the commercial system. »
	159	Humanity		« But now where is the difficulty in accepting the religion of humanity, when the men and women who go to make up humanity are free, happy and energetic at least, and most commonly beautiful of body also, and surrounded by beautiful things of their own fashioning, and a nature bettered and not worsened by contact with mankind. »
	160	Remedy to the economical disaster of the civil war		« The remedy was, in short, the production of what used to be called art, but which has no name amongst us now, because it has become a necessary part of the labour of everyman who produces. »
	Art			« The art or work-pleasure as one ought to call it. »
XIX				« a craving for beauty seemed to awaken in men's minds. »
XX	166	Annie	Guest	« was as Frank as can be »
		Books		« Though (...) my friends had mostly something to say about books, yet they were not great readers, considering the refinement of their manners and the great amount of leisure which they obviously had. »
		Happiness	Guest	« Here I could enjoy everything without an after-thought of the injustice and miserable toil which made my leisure; the ignorance and dulness of life which went to make my keen appreciation of history; the tyrrany and struggle full of fear and mishap which went to make my romance. »
XXI	167	Characters, especially women, often redden		« not from shyness, but from (friendly) pleasure. »
XXI	169			« Now, the world had grown old and wiser, and I was to see my hopes realized at last. »
XXII	171			« beautiful as architecture had now become and although the whole face of the country had quite recovered its beauty »
		Camping outdoors		« As it seemed, this pleasure-loving people were fond of tent-life, with all its inconveniences, which, indeed, they turned into pleasure also. »
	173	Dick		"A grumbler: there are a few of them still. Once upon a time, I am told, they were quite a nuisance."
	174	Food		« better than good »
		a nostalgic of Capitalism - Books	Old man	« You see, I have read not a few books of the past days, and certainly they are much more alive than those which are written now; and good sound unlimited competition was the condition under which they were written, - if we didn't know that from the record book of history, we should know it from the books themselves. There is a spirit of adventure in them and signs of a capacity to extract good out of evil which our literature quite lacks now; and I cannot help thinking that our moralists and historians exaggerate hugely the unhappiness of the past days, in which such splendid works of imagination and intellect were produced. »
	175	Books and the world	Ellen	« Books, books! always books, grandfather! When will you understand that after all it is the world we live in which interests us; the world of which we are a part and which we can never love too much? »
	176	Unsatisfactory happy ends		« But I say flatly that in spite of all their cleverness and vigour, and capacity for story-telling, there is something loathsome about them. (...) and towards the end of the story we must be contented to see the hero and heroine living happily in an island of bliss on other people's troubles »
		Nowhere vs. home	Guest	« To me you seem here as if you were living in heaven compared with us of the country from which I came. »
	177			« the pleasure of the evening quite extinguished my fear of the last night, that I should wake up in the old miserable world of worn-out pleasures, and hopes that were half fears. »
XXIII	178	Ancient techniques	Guest	« they were making hay busily by now, in the simple fashion of the days when I was a boy. »
	180	England	Old Man	« Ah! England was an important place in those days! »
	181	Housing + choice	Ellen	« We live in a little house now, not because we have nothing grander to do than working in the fields, but because we please; for if we liked, we could go and live in a big house amongst pleasant companions. »
XXIV	183	Eton and bourgeois education	Dick	« instead of teaching poor men's sons to know something, they taught rich men's sons to know nothing. It seems from what he says that it was a place for the `aristocracy '(if you know what that means; I have been told its meaning. »
	184	Architecture – beauty, history		« the buildings were a good deal spoilt by the last few generations of aristocrats, who seem to have had a great hatred against beautiful old buildings, and indeed all records of past history. »
		Education		« Of course we cannot use it quite as the founder intended, since our ideas about teaching young people are so changed from the ideas of his time; so it is used now as a dwelling for people engaged in learning; and folk from round about come and get taught things that they want to learn; and there is a great library there of the best books. »
		Critical of monarchy	Dick	Windsor = « the parliamentary commercial sham-kings. »
	185	bodies	Guest	« the people in the fields looked strong and handsome. »
	186	Mechanical devices		« force vehicles (...) had taken the place of our old steam-power carrying. »
	188 189	Crime and its perception		« And now the slayer in his turn is so upset that he is like to kill himself. »
	190		Guest	« it was quite clear that the slayer took the whole consequences of the act upon himself, and did not expect society to white-wash him by punishing him. »
XXV	193	Women		« I found that the women knew as much about all these things as the men: could name a flower, and knew its qualities; could tell you the habitat of such and such birds and fish, and the like. »
XXVI	195	Haymaking		« such easy-hard work » i.e. « I mean work that tries the muscles and hardens them and sends you pleasantly weary to bed, but which isn't trying in other ways: doesn't harass you in short. »
XXVII	199			« the gradual recovery by the town-bred people on one side, and the country-bred people on the other, of those arts of life which they had each lost »
				« because at that time almost everything was done by elaborate machines used quite unintelligently by the labourers »
			Morson	« the transition from the make-shift work of the machines (which was at about its worst a little after the Civil War before told of) into the first years of the new handicraft period »
	200			« This opinion, which from all I can learn seemed as natural then, as it seems absurd now, was, that while the ordinary daily work of the world would be done entirely by automatic machinery, the energies of the more intelligent part of mankind would be set free to follow the higher forms of the arts, as well as science and the study of history. »
		Nature vs. mankind	Clara	« It was natural to people thinking in this way, that they should try to make 'nature' their slave, since they thought 'nature' was something outside them. »
	201		Morson	« machine after machine was quietly dropped under the excuse that machines could not produce works of art, and that works of art were more and more called for »
	205	The Thames	Guest	« What may be called our only English river »
	206	Commercial buildings		« The railway having disappeared, and therewith the various level bridges over the streams of Thames »
		Port Meadow	Guest	« I thought with interest how its name and use had survived from the older imperfect communal period, through the time of the confused struggle and tyranny of the rights of property, into the present rest and happiness of complete Communism. »
XiX	212	Bourgeois tastes	Guest	« the ugliness and vulgarity of the rich men's dwellings was a necessary reflection from the sordidness and bareness of life which they forced upon the poor people »
XiX	214	History	Guest	« I think sometimes people are too careless of the history of the past - too apt to leave it in the hands of old learned men like Hammond. »
XXX			Guest	« this happy and lovely folk, who had cast away riches and attained to wealth. »
XXXI	222	Past/present/future	Guest	« I was saying to myself, The past, the present? Should she not have said the contrast of the present with the future: of blind despair with hope? »
XXXI		Life / work in Nowhere	Ellen	« our life of repose amidst of energy; of work which is pleasure and pleasure which is work »
XXXII	225	Environment	Guest	« that passionate love of the earth which was common to but few people at least, in the days I knew »
XXXII	228	Hope		« I found that I was not despairing. »

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