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H. G. Wells

H. G. Wells Quotes

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Famous H. G. Wells Quotes

“I doubt if these two fine, active minds [President and Mrs. Roosevelt] have ever inquiried how it is they know what they know and think as they do. Nor have they ever thought of what they might have been if they had grown up in an entirely different culture. They have the disposition of all politicians world over to deal only with made opinion. They have never inquired how it is that opinion is made.”

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Author:H. G. Wells
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“The crisis [the Great Depression] discovered a great man in Franklin Roosevelt...None too soon he has carried America forward to the second stage of democratic realization. His New Deal involves such collective controls of the national business that it would be absurd to call it anything but socialism, were it not for a prejudice lingering on from the old individualist days against that word...Both Roosevelt and Stalin were attempting to produce a huge, modern, scientifically organized, socialist state, the one out of a warning crisis and the other out of a chaos.”

MenStatesWould BeAmericaDealsModernStageProduceHugePrejudiceCrisisDemocraticChaosSocialismAbsurdRealizationOrganizedGreat MenCollectivesWarningSocialistAttemptingFranklinGreat DepressionLingeringNew Deal
Author:H. G. Wells
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“Armament should be an illegality everywhere, and some sort of international force should patrol a treaty-bound world. Partial armament is one of those absurdities dear to moderate-minded 'reasonable' men. Armament itself is making war. Making a gun, pointing a gun, and firing it are all acts of the same order. It should be illegal to construct anywhere upon earth any mechanism for the specific purpose of killing men. When you see a gun it is reasonable to ask: 'Whom is that intended to kill?'”

MenWorldShouldWarEarthPurposeOrderAsksForceGunKillingBoundsInternationalDearReasonableIllegalMechanismAbsurdityConstructsPointingModeratesTreatiesNew World OrderFiringArmamentReasonable ManKilling A Man
Book:The New World Order
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“So it was that the war in the air began. Men rode upon the whirlwind that night and slew and fell like archangels. The sky rained heroes upon the astonished earth. Surely the last fights of mankind were the best. What was the heavy pounding of your Homeric swordsmen, what was the creaking charge of chariots, besides this swift rush, this crash, this giddy triumph, this headlong sweep to death?”

MenWarEarthLastsNightFightingAirSkyMankindHeroHeavyTriumphAviationCombatCrashArchangelChariotsWhirlwindGiddySwordsman
Book:The World Set Free: H. G. Wells Collections
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“Even men who were engaged in organizing debt-serf cultivation and debt-serf industrialism in the American cotton districts, in the old rubber plantations, and in the factories of India, China, and South Italy, appeared as generous supporters of and subscribers to the sacred cause of individual liberty.”

MenPoliticalPoliticsIndividualCausesLibertyIndiaSacredSouthChinaDebtGenerousEngagedFactoriesSupporterCottonCultivationRubberIndividual LibertyPlantationsSerfs
Book:Shape Things Come
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“No place is safe - no place is at peace. There is no place where a women and her daughter can hide and be at peace. The war comes through the air, bombs drop in the night. Quiet people go out in the morning, and see air-fleets passing overhead - dripping death - dripping death!”

PeopleWarNightMorningAirQuietSafeDaughterPassingPassingsBombsAviationPredictionsOverheadDrippingQuiet People
Book:Delphi Complete Works of H. G. Wells
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“In all the round world of Utopia there is no meat. There used to be, but now we cannot stand the thought of slaughterhouses. And it is impossible to find anyone who will hew a dead ox or pig. I can still remember as a boy the rejoicings over the closing of the last slaughterhouse.”

WorldStillsI CanLastsRememberUsedAnimalBoysImpossibleRoundsUsed To BeMeatVegetarianVeganAnimal RightsRejoicePigsClosingUtopiaVegetarianismAnimal LoveVegetarian HealthAnimal WorldAnimal CompassionSlaughterhousesRound World
Book:A Modern Utopia
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“The British Islands are small islands and our people numerically a little people. Their only claim to world importance depends upon their courage and enterprise, and a people who will not stand up to the necessity of air service planned on a world scale, and taking over thousands of aeroplanes and thousands of men from the onset of peace, has no business to pretend anything more than a second rate position in the world. We cannot be both Imperial and mean.”

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Author:H. G. Wells
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“It is only now and then, in a jungle, or amidst the towering white menace of a burnt or burning Australian forest, that Nature strips the moral veils from vegetation and we apprehend its stark ferocity.”

NatureWhiteMoralForestsBurningNow And ThenVeilsJungleAustralianMenaceStarksVegetationFerocity
Book:The Last Books of H.G. Wells: The Happy Turning: A Dream of Life & Mind at the End of its Tether
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“Men fancied there might be other men upon Mars, perhaps inferior to themselves and ready to welcome a missionary enterprise.”

MenMightScienceUniverseMysteryReadyWelcomeWar Of The WorldsEnterpriseMissionaryInferiorsMars
Book:H. G. WELLS Ultimate Collection: 120+ Science Fiction Classics, Novels & Stories; Including Scientific, Political and Historical Works: The Time Machine, The Island of Doctor Moreau, The Invisible Man, The War of the Worlds, Modern Utopia, A Short History of the World, What Is Coming, The Story of the Last Trump…
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“After your first day of cycling, one dream is inevitable. A memory of motion lingers in the muscles of your legs, and round and round they seem to go. You ride through Dreamland on wonderful dream bicycles that change and grow.”

InspirationalFirstsDreamSeemsGrowsMemoriesHealingWonderfulRoundsLegsInevitableMusclesCyclesBikeTouringBicycleCyclingBikingRiding A BicycleCyclistsBike RidingDreamlandMountain BikingRiding Your Bike
Book:The Wheels of Chance: A Bicycling Idyll
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“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.”

WorldNeedsMindIdeasAgeTodayHouseWealthDifficultySolveImmenseWorld TodayClearingWealth Of Knowledge
Author:H. G. Wells
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“I came out for exercise, gentle exercise, and to notice the scenery and to botanise. And no sooner do I get on that accursed machine than off I go hammer and tongs; I never look to right or left, never notice a flower, never see a view - get hot, juicy, red - like a grilled chop. Get me on that machine and I have to go. I go scorching along the road, and cursing aloud at myself for doing it.”

LooksLeftViewsFlowerExerciseRedMachinesHotGentleHammersBicycleCyclingSceneryCursingJuicyScorching
Author:H. G. Wells
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“Indeed Christianity passes. Passes - it has gone! It has littered the beaches of life with churches, cathedrals, shrines and crucifixes, prejudices and intolerances, like the sea urchin and starfish and empty shells and lumps of stinging jelly upon the sands here after a tide. A tidal wave out of Egypt. And it has left a multitude of little wriggling theologians and confessors and apologists hopping and burrowing in the warm nutritious sand. But in the hearts of living men, what remains of it now? Doubtful scraps of Arianism. Phrases. Sentiments. Habits.”

MenHeartLittlesReligionLeftChurchChristianityGoneSeaHabitEmptyPrejudiceRemainsWaveWarmBeachPhrasesSandSentimentsTidesIntoleranceShellsMultitudesEgyptTheologianDoubtfulScrapCathedralsLumpsShrinesJellyHoppingTidal WavesStarfishEmpty ShellBurrowing
Author:H. G. Wells
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“And all over the countryside, he knew, on every crest and hill, where once the hedges had interlaced, and cottages, churches, inns, and farmhouses had nestled among their trees, wind wheels similar to those he saw and bearing like vast advertisements, gaunt and distinctive symbols of the new age, cast their whirling shadows and stored incessantly the energy that flowed away incessantly through all the arteries of the city. ... The great circular shapes of complaining wind-wheels blotted out the heavens.”

AgeEnergyHeavenChurchCitiesSawsTreeWindShapesShadowCastsComplainingSymbolsHillsWheelsNew AgeCountrysideAdvertisementsDistinctiveCottagesIncessantlyInnsArteries
Book:Delphi Complete Works of H. G. Wells
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“You have only to play at Little Wars three or four times to realize just what a blundering thing Great War must be. Great War is at present, I am convinced, not only the most expensive game in the universe, but it is a game out of all proportion. Not only are the masses of men and material and suffering and inconvenience too monstrously big for reason, but-the available heads we have for it, are too small. That, I think, is the most pacific realization conceivable, and Little War brings you to it as nothing else but Great War can do.”

ThinkingMenLittlesWarReasonPlayBigsSufferingUniverseThreeGamesCan DoRealizingFourMaterialsMassAvailableConvincedRealizationProportionExpensivePacificGreat WarInconvenience
Author:H. G. Wells
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“We have learned now that we cannot regard this planet as being fenced in and a secure abiding place for Man we can never anticipate the unseen good or evil that may come upon us suddenly out of space.”

MenMayEvilSpacePlanetsRegardSecureWar Of The WorldsUnseenAnticipateAbiding
Book:Annotated War of the Worlds with English Grammar Exercises: by H.G. Wells (Author), Robert Powell (Editor)
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