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H.G. Wells QUOTES

1 " The forceps of our minds are clumsy forceps, and crush the truth a little in taking hold of it. "

― H.G. Wells

2 " Be a man!... What good is religion if it collapses under calamity? Think of what earthquakes and floods, wars and volcanoes, have done before to men! Did you think that God had exempted [us]? He is not an insurance agent. "

― H.G. Wells , The War of the Worlds

3 " But I have believed always and taught always that what God demands from man is his utmost effort to cooperate and understand. I have taught the imagination, first and most; I have made knowledge, knowledge of what man is and what man's world is and what man may be, which is the adventure of mankind, the substance of all my teaching. "

― H.G. Wells , The Undying Fire

4 " My days I devote to reading and experiments in chemistry, and I spend many of the clear nights in the study of astronomy. There is, though I do not know how there is or why there is, a sense of infinite peace and protection in the glittering hosts of heaven. There it must be, I think, in the vast and eternal laws of matter, and not in the daily cares and sins and troubles of men, that whatever is more than animal within us must find its solace and its hope. "

― H.G. Wells , The Island of Dr. Moreau

5 " There it must be, I think, in the vast and eternal laws of matter, and
not in the daily cares and sins and troubles of men, that whatever is
more than animal within us must find its solace and its hope. I hope, or I
could not live. "

― H.G. Wells , The Island of Dr. Moreau

6 " I must confess that I lost faith in the sanity of the world "

― H.G. Wells , The Island of Dr. Moreau

7 " If you are in difficulties with a book, try the element of surprise: attack it at an hour when it isn't expecting it. "

― H.G. Wells

8 " No passion in the world is equal to the passion to alter someone else's draft. "

― H.G. Wells

9 " Figures are the most shocking things in the world. The prettiest little squiggles of black looked at in the right light and yet consider the blow they can give you upon the heart. "

― H.G. Wells , The History of Mr. Polly

10 " All we can do is to prepare for a universal language that will go on changing for ever. We don’t know everything. We aren’t final. I wish we could make that statement a part of the Fundamental Law. "

― H.G. Wells , The Holy Terror

H.G. Wells QUOTES

11 " An immense and ever-increasing wealth of knowledge is scattered about the world today; knowledge that would probably suffice to solve all the mighty difficulties of our age, but it is dispersed and unorganized. We need a sort of mental clearing house for the mind: a depot where knowledge and ideas are received, sorted, summarized, digested, clarified and compared "

― H.G. Wells

12 " Human history becomes more and more a race between education and catastrophe. "

― H.G. Wells

13 " Mr. Polly went into the National School at six and he left the private school at fourteen, and by that time his mind was in much the same state that you would be in, dear reader, if you were operated upon for appendicitis by a well-meaning, boldly enterprising, but rather over-worked and under-paid butcher boy, who was superseded towards the climax of the operation by a left-handed clerk of high principles but intemperate habits,—that is to say, it was in a thorough mess. "

― H.G. Wells , The History of Mr. Polly

14 " I tell you, stupidity, self-protective stupidity, is the fundamental sin. No man alive has a right to contentment. No man alive has a right to mental rest. No man has any right to be as stupid as educated, Liberal men have been about that foolish affair at Geneva. Men who have any leisure, any gifts, any resources, have no right to stifle their consciences with that degree of imposture. "

― H.G. Wells , The Holy Terror

15 " In all the round world of Utopia there is no meat. There used to be. But now we cannot stand the thought of slaughter-houses. And, in a population that is all educated, and at about the same level of physical refinement, it is practically impossible to find anyone who will hew a dead ox or pig. We never settled the hygienic question of meat-eating at all. This other aspect decided us. I can still remember, as a boy, the rejoicings over the closing of the last slaughter-house. "

― H.G. Wells

16 " ...and spend my days surrounded by wise books, - bright windows in this life of ours, lit by the shining souls of men. "

― H.G. Wells , The Island of Dr. Moreau

17 " For after the Battle comes quiet. "

― H.G. Wells , The Time Machine

18 " Nature never appeals to intelligence until habit and instinct are useless. There is no intelligence where there is no need of change. "

― H.G. Wells , The Time Machine

19 " In relation to law I am doubtful whether, even at the present time, science has fairly begun. "

― H.G. Wells ,

20 " After all, the sanitation and the agriculture of today are still in the rudimentary stage. The science of our time has attacked but a little department of the field of human disease, but even so, it spreads its operations very steadily and persistently. Our agriculture and horticulture destroy a weed just here and there and cultivate perhaps a score or so of wholesome plants, leaving the greater number to fight out a balance as they can. We improve our favourite plants and animals--and how few they are--gradually by selective breeding; now a new and better peach, now a seedless grape, now a sweeter and larger flower, now a more convenient breed of cattle. We improve them gradually, because our ideals are vague and tentative, and our knowledge is very limited; because Nature, too, is shy and slow in our clumsy hands. Some day all this will be better organized, and still better. That is the drift of the current in spite of the eddies. "

― H.G. Wells , The Time Machine