“Nowadays, it is true, we have mass media and expert propaganda to spread suspicion and fear. But the people I mean—and they form the great majority—are not suspicious and fearful, as many educated and more influential persons are. Propaganda has not made them accept the Bomb. We protesters, though we may have won over some of their sons and daughters, brothers and sisters, have not made them reject it. They remain profoundly, astonishingly, shockingly indifferent.” MediaPropagandaIndifference Book:Man and Time Source: Man and Time
“They forget, these protesters, that both cities and the Sabbath were made for man. If the social arrangements do not fit in with the time-old desires of ordinary decent human nature, it is the social arrangements that should be changed.” Human NatureHuman RightsPersonal Freedom Book:English Journey Source: English Journey
“Well, it’s something I never felt before I joined up,” he said, returning to his slow careful manner. “But coming back this time, I’ve felt it all right. [Farming] seems to cut you off too much. After a time, if you don’t look out, you don’t seem to care what’s happening to other people. You aren’t part of anything. You’re out for yourself – and just your family. Mind you, it’s easy to feel like that – because you have to work hard and it takes nearly all your time—and you don’t meet many people who are doing different jobs, the way you do in towns. But it’s not right somehow. It shouldn’t be like that. We’ve had enough of that.” SocietyIsolationFarmingInsularity Book:Three Men in New Suits Source: Three Men in New Suits
“People wonder what's the matter with the world these days. They forget that all the best fellows, the men who'd have been in their prime now, who'd have been giving us a lead in everything, are dead [in the Great War]. If you could bring 'em all back... hundreds and hundreds of thousands of 'em, you'd soon see the difference they'd make in the place. But they're dead, and a lot of people, very different sort of people, are alive and kicking.” SacrificeSocial ChangeFirst World WarWwiSocial Decay Book:Benighted Source: Benighted
“What appears to be definite and precise does not belong to any acceptable reality. It is only the experiences, the queer previsions, the fleeting premonitions, that are real. Vague and insubstantial though they may appear to be, compared with anything else in the mists and shifting lights of Time theory, they loom up like mountains of iron ore.” RealityTimeDreamsMountainsPremonitionPrevision Book:Man and Time Source: Man and Time
“He talked in a quick staccato manner, so eager to have his say that he often interrupted himself.” HumorTalkSayMannerStaccato Book:The Thirty-first of June Source: The Thirty-first of June
“—all that damned stupid greedy selfishness that’s starting all over again. I tell you, the minute the real danger passed, and people felt safe again, out it came. Nothing’s happened to them inside. They haven’t changed. They haven’t learnt anything—except how to make bigger and better bombs and hate like hell.” HateDangerGreedSelfishness Book:Three Men in New Suits Source: Three Men in New Suits