H.G. Wells Quotes

1866-1946, British-born American Author
quotes
28
topics
12
Origin
What do these mean?
Topic
“Go away, I'm all right!”
Solitude
“Advertising is legalized lying.”
Advertising
“Cynicism is humour in ill health.”
VerifiedBoon, The Mind of the Race, The Wild Asses of the Devil, and The Last Trump (1915) · evidenceCynics and Cynicism
“Moral indignation is jealousy with a halo.”
VerifiedThe Wife of Sir Isaac Harman (1914), p. 299 · evidenceMorality
“The crisis of yesterday is the joke of tomorrow.”
VerifiedYou Can't be Too Careful (1941) · evidenceTomorrow
“Fools make researches and wise men exploit them.”
VerifiedA Modern Utopia (1905) · evidenceResearch
“Adapt or perish, now as ever, is Nature's inexorable imperative.”
VerifiedThe Mind at the End of its Tether (1945), p. 19 · evidenceChange
“Humanity either makes, or breeds, or tolerates all its afflictions.”
VerifiedJoan and Peter: The Story of an Education (1918) · evidenceAdversity
“He was inordinately proud of England and he abused her incessantly.”
VerifiedMr. Britling Sees It Through, Bk. 1, ch. 2, sect. 2 (1916) · evidencePatriotism
“The path of social advancement is, and must be, strewn with broken friendships.”
VerifiedKipps the Story of a Simple Soul (1905) Bk. 2, ch. 5 · evidenceGetting Ahead
“One of the darkest evils of our world is surely the unteachable wildness of the Good.”
VerifiedA Modern Utopia (1905) · evidenceGoodness
“Crime and bad lives are the measure of a State's failure, all crime in the end is the crime of the community.”
VerifiedA Modern Utopia (1905) · evidenceCrime and Criminals
“Biologically the species is the accumulation of the experiments of all its successful individuals since the beginning.”
VerifiedA Modern Utopia (1905) · evidenceEvolution
“Man is the unnatural animal, the rebel child of nature, and more and more does he turn himself against the harsh and fitful hand that reared him.”
VerifiedA Modern Utopia (1905) · evidenceHumankind
“The science hangs like a gathering fog in a valley, a fog which begins nowhere and goes nowhere, an incidental, unmeaning inconvenience to passers-by.”
VerifiedA Modern Utopia (1905) · evidenceEconomy and Economics
“The doctrine of the Kingdom of Heaven, which was the main teaching of Jesus, is certainly one of the most revolutionary doctrines that ever stirred and changed human thought.”
VerifiedThe Outline of History (1920) · evidenceHeaven
“There is nothing in machinery, there is nothing in embankments and railways and iron bridges and engineering devices to oblige them to be ugly. Ugliness is the measure of imperfection.”
VerifiedA Modern Utopia (1905) · evidenceUgliness
“In England we have come to rely upon a comfortable time-lag of fifty years or a century intervening between the perception that something ought to be done and a serious attempt to do it.”
VerifiedThe Work, Wealth and Happiness of Mankind, Ch. 11 (1931) · evidenceReform
“The only true measure of success is the ratio between what we might have done and what we might have been on the one hand, and the thing we have made and the things we have made of ourselves on the other.”
Success
“There comes a moment in the day when you have written your pages in the morning, attended to your correspondence in the afternoon, and have nothing further to do. Then comes that hour when you are bored; that's the time for sex.”
Sex
“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 but the twilight of the dawn. It is possible to believe that all the human mind has ever accomplished is but the dream before the awakening.”
Future