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“Progress towards sanity is achieved by abandoning first the desire for omnipotence and then that for exceptional achievement.”

Celia Green

Advice to Clever Children (1981)

“Now if you do have a perception that any conceivable consideration may be utterly invalidated by some other consideration which you do not know, and if you are reminded of this perception constantly by the fact that things exist, certain modifications take place in the way you feel about things. These modifications have not taken place in the psychology of most people.”

Celia Green

Advice to Clever Children (1981)

“On the face of it there is something rather strange about human psychology. Human beings live in a state of mind called sanity, on a small planet in space. They are not quite sure whether the space around them is infinite or not, either way it is unthinkable. If they think about time, they find that it is inconceivable that it had a beginning. It is also inconceivable that it did not have a beginning. Thoughts of this kind are not disturbing to sanity, which is obviously a remarkable phenomenon that deserves more recognition.”

Celia Green

The Human Evasion (1969)

“The way to do research is to attack the facts at the point of greatest astonishment.”

Celia Green

The Decline and Fall of Science (1976)

“The psychology of committees is a special case of the psychology of mobs.”

Celia Green

The Decline and Fall of Science (1976)

“People have been marrying and bringing up children for centuries now. Nothing has ever come of it.”

Celia Green

The Decline and Fall of Science (1976)

“The human race believes in not taking its problems seriously enough to solve them.”

Celia Green

The Decline and Fall of Science (1976)

“The remarkable thing about the human mind is its range of limitations.”

Celia Green

The Decline and Fall of Science (1976)

“Now if you see that it is inconceivable that anything should exist, it is evident that at least one inconceivable fact is there. That is to say, that which exists is not limited to the conceivable. Since the inconceivable is there, it is impossible to set any limit to the quantity of inconceivableness which may be present in the situation. Now were the existence of anything consistently to remind you of the fact of inconceivability, since it is impossible to live without interacting with a large number of existing things, it would be impossible for you to feel in the same way about the conceivable.”

Celia Green

Advice to Clever Children (1981)

“Human nature: vindictiveness lightly coated with dishonesty.”

Celia Green

The Decline and Fall of Science (1976)

“The most exciting thing possible is actually true.”

Celia Green

Advice to Clever Children (1981)

“Society is everybody's way of punishing one another because they daren't take it out on the universe.”

Celia Green

The Decline and Fall of Science (1976)

“It is inconceivable that anything should be existing. It is not inconceivable that a lot of people should also be existing who are not interested in the fact that they exist. But it is certainly very odd.”

Celia Green

The Decline and Fall of Science (1976)

“I have long had a theory that the popularity of Christianity has always depended on its appeal to the sadism of its adherents. The exceptional should be crucified, saith Society; and somehow everyone suspects (in spite of all arguments to the contrary) that if there is a God, he may be exceptional in some way. So the figure of Christ crucified becomes the figure of the dangerous exceptional alien—suitably defeated. 'Only a suffering God can help', said Bonhoeffer, licking his lips.”

Celia Green

Advice to Clever Children (1981)

“The starting point is that one is interested in the universe, one observes that one is finite and that this is intolerable. One has a limited time and apparently limited capacity with which to find anything out. Therefore it is possible to despair. There are many orders of despair, and none of them are known to normal psychology. This is demonstrated by the fact that it has not become existential. Normal psychology will never devalue anything. Existential psychology, at least to a certain point, consists of exploiting the recoil from the despair of finiteness. The recoil is a drive with at least the instinctive immediacy of the survival instinct. There is no point in saying, 'What is there to do? What could such a drive possibly tend towards?”

Celia Green

The survival instinct tends to prolong life. The fundamental drive tends to inform itself about the universe.
Advice to Clever Children (1981)

“Lack of clarity is always a sign of dishonesty.”

Celia Green

The Decline and Fall of Science (1976)

“It is easier to make people appear equally stupid than to make them equally clever, so teaching methods are adopted which make it practically impossible for anyone to learn anything.”

Celia Green

Letters from Exile (2004)

“The fact that something is far-fetched is no reason why it should not be true; it cannot be as far-fetched as the fact that something exists.”

Celia Green

The Decline and Fall of Science (1976)

“When people talk about 'the sanctity of the individual' they mean 'the sanctity of the statistical norm.”

Celia Green

The Decline and Fall of Science (1976)

“One of the greatest superstitions of our time is the belief that it has none.”

Celia Green

The Decline and Fall of Science (1976)