H.G. Wells

Quotes

• “...I suppose it is a lingering trace of Plutarch and my ineradicable boyish imagination that at bottom our State should ...”
• “I tell you, stupidity, self-protective stupidity, is the fundamental sin. No man alive has a right to contentment. No ma...”
• “The history of mankind," said Dreed, "has been a history of betrayals, the perennial betrayal of the common man by the m...”
• “And in friendship and still more here, in this central business of love, accident rules it seems to me almost altogether...”
• “The thing they wanted they called the Vote, but that demand so hollow, so eyeless, had all the terrifying effect of a ma...”
• “An immense and ever-increasing wealth of knowledge is scattered about the world today; knowledge that would probably suf...”
• “The only path of escape he could conceive as yet for Lady Harman lay through the chivalry of some other man. That a woma...”
• “Already he knew something of the history of the intervening years. He had heard now of the moral decay that had followed...”
• “As night goes round the Earth always there are hundreds of thousands of people who should be sleeping, lying awake, fear...”
• “And there it was, on a shabby bed in a tawdry, ill-lighted bedroom, surrounded by a crowd of ignorant and excited people...”
• “Tewler Americanus in particular was irritated by a harsh logic that overrode his dearest belief in his practical isolati...”
• “Nowhere in the world, Rud reflected, was journalism anything but a malignant and wanton power. Later on, as the Common-s...”
• “But I have believed always and taught always that what God demands from man is his utmost effort to cooperate and unders...”
• “Why are these things permitted? What sins have we done? The morning service was over, I was walking through the roads to...”
• “Perhaps I am a man of exceptional moods. I do not know how far my experience is common. At times I suffer from the stran...”
• “I took my line straight away. I knew I was staking everything, but I jumped there and then. "We're on absolutely the big...”
• “My dear sir, that is just where you are wrong. That is just where the whole world has gone wrong. We are always getting ...”
• “The essential question was always "Who are these fellows who give us orders? By what warrant? And how do we benefit and ...”
• “You have dwelt overmuch upon pain. Pain is a swift distress; it ends and is forgotten. Without memory and fear pain is n...”
• “A federation of all humanity, together with a sufficient measure of social justice, to ensure health, education, and a r...”
• “For it is just this question of pain that partsus. So long as visible or audible pain turns you sick; so long as your ow...”
• “But in truth, a general prohibition in a state may increase the sum of liberty, and a general permission may diminish it...”
• “In another place was a vast array of idols—Polynesian, Mexican, Grecian, Phoenician, every country on earth I should thi...”
• “A time will come when a politician who has wilfully made war and promoted international dissension will be as sure of th...”
• “Why did every human concern clog itself up in a tangle of routines, formalities, disciplines, imperatives? Why couldn’t ...”
• “We should strive to welcome change and challenges, because they are what help us grow. With out them we grow weak like t...”
• “It isn't a natural thing to keep on worrying about the morality of one's material prosperity. These are proclivities sup...”
• “It is possible to believe that all the past is but the beginning of a beginning, and that all that is and has been is bu...”
• “You cannot imagine the craving for rest that I feel—a hunger and thirst. For six long days, since my work was done, my m...”
• “But by that time Lady Harman had acquired the habit of reading and the habit of thinking over what she read, and from th...”
• “It doesn't follow that a nasty habit of mind is any less nasty because it's ancestral. It doesn't follow you can't cure ...”
• “Particularly nauseous were the blank expressionless faces of people in trains and omnibuses; they seemed no more my fell...”
• “There it must be, I think, in the vast and eternal laws of matter, andnot in the daily cares and sins and troubles of me...”
• “By this time I was nolonger very much terrified or very miserable. I had, as it were, passed thelimit of terror and desp...”
• “[A]fter all it was true that a girl does not go alone in the world unchallenged, nor ever has gone freely alone in the w...”
• “Within he felt that faint stirring of derision for the whole business of life which is the salt of the American mentalit...”
• “Modern war, modern international hostility is, I believe, possible only through the stupid illiteracy of the mass of men...”
• “It's just men and ants. There's the ants builds their cities,live their lives, have wars, revolutions, until men want th...”
• “We do our job and go. See? That is what Death is for. We work out all our little brains and all our little emotions, and...”
• “It was a red-flannel chest-protector, one of those large quasi-hygienic objects that with pills and medicines take the p...”
• “It is good to stop by the track for a space, put aside the knapsack, wipe the brows, and talk a little of the upper slop...”
• “All we can do is to prepare for a universal language that will go on changing for ever. We don’t know everything. We are...”
• “This self-reliance, this direct dealing with the world, seemed to him, even in the height of his concern, unwomanly, a d...”
• “Kemp: I demonstrated conclusively this morning that invisibility--I.M: Never mind what YOU'VE DEMONSTRATED!--I'm starvin...”
• “We've got to escape from narrowness. We're a movement, not a conspiracy. We've got to radiate contacts, and have as many...”
• “The peaceful splendour of the night healed again. The moon was now past the meridian and travelling down the west. It wa...”
• “Given as much law as that man will be able to do anything and go anywhere, an the only trace of pessimism left in the hu...”
• “I do not know if hell is hot or cold, or what sort of place hell may be, but this I surely know, that if there is any he...”
• “But I was too restless to watch long; I'm too Occidental for a long vigil. I could work at a problem for years, but to w...”
• “Figures are the most shocking things in the world. The prettiest little squiggles of black looked at in the right light ...”