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Quotes by British Authors
"In high altitude astronomical facilities we routinely discharged large amounts of nitrogen gas into closed spaces. We were never informed by the astronomy management team about the abnormally low oxygen environments that the use of liquid nitrogen creates, how long term exposure to it manifests itself in human health and the resulting abnormal mental behaviors."
"For my part, while I am as convinced a Socialist as the most ardent Marxian, I do not regard Socialism as a gospel of proletarian revenge, nor even, primarily, as a means of securing economic justice. I regard it primarily as an adjustment to machine production demanded by considerations of common sense, and calculated to increase the happiness, not only of proletarians, but of all except a tiny minority of the human race."
"You can get a large audience together for a strip-tease act-that is, to watch a girl undress on the stage. Now suppose you came to a country where you could fill a theatre by simply bringing a covered plate on to the stage and then slowly lifting the cover so as to let every one see, just before the lights went out, that it contained a mutton chop or a bit of bacon, would you not think that in that country something had gone wrong with the appetite for food?"
"I work with the options I have in front of me and my reasons for choosing a job can vary enormously depending on the circumstances. Sometimes I take a job because it's a group of people I'm dying to work with, and sometimes it can be a desire to shake things up a bit and not to take myself too seriously."
"A mind lively and at ease, can do with seeing nothing, and can see nothing that does not answer."
"A mixture of admiration and pity is one of the surest recipes for affection."
"Many people would sooner die than think; in fact, they do so."
"Now being upon the haunches (as he necessarily must be in this case) is it impossible but he must be light in hand, because no horse can be rightly upon his haunches without being so."
"I have felt that odd whirr of wings in the head."
"I've made an odd discovery. Every time I talk to a savant I feel quite sure that happiness is no longer a possibility. Yet when I talk with my gardener, I'm convinced of the opposite."
"The very idea of true patriotism is lost, and the term has been prostituted to the very worst of purposes. A patriot, sir! Why, patriots spring up like mushrooms!"
"I put a bullet into the back of the crocodile's neck just behind the head, thus killing it. If a crocodile is hit in any other part of its anatomy it disappears into the water and is irrecoverable."
"How does one man assert his power over another, Winston?Winston thought. "By making him suffer, he said."Exactly. By making him suffer. Obedience is not enough. Unless he is suffering, how can you be sure that he is obeying your will and not his own?..."
"Fiction can show you a different world. It can take you somewhere you've never been. Once you've visited other worlds, like those who ate fairy fruit, you can never be entirely content with the world that you grew up in. Discontent is a good thing: discontented people can modify and improve their worlds, leave them better, leave them different."
"It is a fool's prerogative to utter truths that no one else will speak."
"Make the people sovereign and the poor will use the machinery of government to dispossess the rich."
"There can be no rise in the value of labour without a fall of profits."
"In 1947 I married Rowena Palmer, and we have two daughters, Alison and Claire, and a son, John."
"A Conservative Government is an organized hypocrisy."
"It is a curious thing, but I have been right in everything I have done and said in my life."
"Post-modernism is modernism with the optimism taken out."
"Knowledge of mankind is a knowledge of their passions."
"Time is everything; five minutes make the difference between victory and defeat."
"The capacity for delight is the gift of paying attention."
"Friendship is unnecessary, like philosophy, like art... It has no survival value; rather it is one of those things that give value to survival."
"Books make great gifts because they have whole worlds inside of them. And it's much cheaper to buy somebody a book than it is to buy them the whole world!"
"Bader's philosophy was my philosophy. His whole attitude to life was mine."
"Family likeness has often a deep sadness in it. Nature, that great tragic dramatist, knits us together by bone and muscle, and divides us by the subtler web of our brains; blends yearning and repulsion; and ties us by our heart-strings to the beings that jar us at every movement."
"Television? The word is half Greek, half Latin. No good can come of it."
"A Lawyer will do anything to win a case, sometimes he will even tell the truth."
"Marriage is for women the commonest mode of livelihood, and the total amount of undesired sex endured by women is probably greater in marriage than in prostitution."
"In war, whichever side may call itself the victor, there are no winners, but all are losers."
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