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"Look at London. Of course it matters to all of us that London's economy flourishes. But the test of the enormous wealth generated in patches of the capital is not that it contributed 20%-30% to Britain's GDP but how it affects the lives of the millions who live and work there. What kind of lives are available to them? Can they afford to live there? If they can't, it is not compensation that London is also a paradise for the ultra-rich. Can they get decently paid jobs or jobs at all? If they can't, don't brag about all those Michelin-starred restaurants and their self-dramatising chefs. Or schooling for children? Inadequate schools are not offset by the fact that London universities could field a football team of Nobel prize winners." The Guardian

 

Eric Hobsbawm

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Finally, I wish to speak, through you, directly to those who came to London today to take life. I know that you personally do not fear to give your own life in exchange for taking others — that is why you are so dangerous. But I know you do fear that you may fail in your long-term objective to destroy our free society, and I can show you why you will fail. In the days that follow look at our airports, look at our sea ports and look at our railway stations, and even after your cowardly attack, you will see that people from the rest of Britain, people from around the world will arrive in London to become Londoners and to fulfil their dreams and achieve their potential.
They choose to come to London, as so many have come before because they come to be free, they come to live the life they choose, they come to be able to be themselves. They flee you because you tell them how they should live. They don't want that and nothing you do, however many of us you kill, will stop that flight to our cities where freedom is strong and where people can live in harmony with one another. Whatever you do, however many you kill, you will fail.

 

Ken Livingstone

 

It's never enough to say you’re from London, people want to know exactly where you’re from. They see it as more of a test of their own geographical knowledge. You say "I’m from London" people go [high pitched excited voice] "Where abouts, where abouts, where abouts, where abouts exactly, where abouts?" "Uh... North London." If they know it they get more excited. [more excited voice] "Where abouts, where abouts, where abouts?" "Muswell Hill" [even more excited voice] "Where abouts? Where abouts?!" "Do you know Sainsbury’s?" "Yeeeeeeessssssssss!"

 

Michael McIntyre

 

An English historian, contrasting the London of his day with the London of the time when its streets, supplied only with oil-lamps, were scenes of nightly robberies, says that "the adventurers in gas-lights did more for the prevention of crime than the government had done since the days of Alfred".

 

John Marshall Harlan

 

There were four years, 1931-1935, when I was myself a member of [Hayek's] seminar in London; it has left a deep mark on my thinking. … At the end of the discussions in that seminar … we were, I believe, on the point of taking what now seems to me to be a decisive step. I was, at least, on the point of taking it myself. There is evidence for that in my "Value and Capital", much of the groundwork for which was done before I left London.

 

Friedrich Hayek

 

London goes beyond any boundary or convention. It contains every wish or word ever spoken, every action or gesture ever made, every harsh or noble statement ever expressed. It is illimitable. It is Infinite London.

 

Peter Ackroyd