Leo Mercer

“A case could be made, in fact, that the English were the first victims of the British empire: without their conquest, that empire could not have been built.”
― Paul Kingsnorth

“There is not a single effect in Nature, not even the least that exists, such that the most ingenious theorists can ever arrive at a complete understanding of it. This vain presumption of understanding everything can have no other basis than never understanding anything. For anyone who had experienced just once the perfect understanding of one single thing, and had truly tasted how knowledge is attained, would recognise that of the infinity of other truths he understands nothing.”
― Galileo Galilei, Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems: Ptolemaic and Copernican

“Today, the real England sometimes feels like 50 million people driving around a motorway forever.”
― Paul Kingsnorth

“We had our arms round each other. It was like holding in my hand some rare, exhausted, nearly doomed bird which I had miraculously happened to find.”
― James Baldwin, Giovanni’s Room