Herbert George Wells citations (148 citations, Page 3)

Herbert George Wells: 148 citations 0 J'aime

Herbert George Wells citations célèbres

“Notre véritable État […] doit être dès maintenant ce nouvel État fédéral mondial […]. Notre vraie nationalité est le genre humain.”

Herbert George Wells livre The Outline of History

Our true State [...] must be now this nascent Federal World State [...]. Our true nationality is mankind.
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The Outline of History, 1919

“Toute la vie est changement.”

Herbert George Wells livre Enfants des étoiles

Enfants des étoiles, 1939

“Beaucoup de vérités ont été dites en plaisantant, et nous possédons indiscutablement dans les Martiens l'accomplissement réel de cette suppression du côté animal de l'organisme par l'intelligence. Il est, à mon avis, absolument admissible que les Martiens puissent descendre d'êtres assez semblables à nous, par suite d'un développement graduel du cerveau et des mains - ces dernières se transformant en deux faisceaux de tentacules - aux dépens du reste du corps. Sans le corps, du cerveau naîtrait naturellement une intelligence plus égoîste, ne possédant plus rien du substratum émotionnel de l'être humain.”

Herbert George Wells livre La Guerre des mondes

fr
La Guerre des mondes (The War of Worlds), 1898

“Or, chaque fois que les choses sont telles qu’un tas de gens éprouvent le besoin de s’en mêler, les faibles, et ceux qui le deviennent à force de trop réfléchir, aboutissent toujours à une religion de Rien-Faire, très pieuse et très élevée, et finissent par se soumettre à la persécution et à la volonté du Seigneur. Vous avez déjà dû remarquer cela aussi. C’est de l’énergie à l’envers dans une rafale de terreur. Les cages de ceux-là seront pleines de psaumes, de cantiques et de piété, et ceux qui sont d’une espèce moins simple se tourneront sans doute vers – comment appelez-vous cela?”

Herbert George Wells livre La Guerre des mondes

l’érotisme. »
fr
La Guerre des mondes (The War of Worlds), 1898

“Cependant, par-delà le gouffre de l’espace, des esprits qui sont à nos esprits ce que les nôtres sont à ceux des bêtes qui périssent, des intellects vastes, calmes et impitoyables, considéraient cette terre avec des yeux envieux, dressaient lentement et sûrement leurs plans pour la conquête de notre monde.”

Herbert George Wells livre La Guerre des mondes

fr
La Guerre des mondes (The War of Worlds), 1898

“Avant que nous les jugions trop sévèrement, nous devons nous souvenir à quelle destruction totale et impitoyable notre propre espèce s'est livrée, non seulement sur les animaux, comme le bison ou le dodo, mais aussi sur ses propres races inférieures. Les Tasmaniens, malgré leur apparence humaine, furent entièrement éliminés en cinquante ans dans une guerre d'extermination menée par des immigrants européens. Sommes nous de tels apôtres de miséricorde que nous puissions nous plaindre si les Martiens ont mené contre nous une guerre semblable?”

Herbert George Wells livre La Guerre des mondes

And before we judge of them too harshly we must remember what ruthless and utter destruction our own species has wrought, not only upon animals, such as the vanished bison and the dodo, but upon its inferior races. The Tasmanians, in spite of their human likeness, were entirely swept out of existence in a war of extermination waged by European immigrants, in the space of fifty years. Are we such apostles of mercy as to complain if the Martians warred in the same spirit?
en
La Guerre des mondes (The War of Worlds), 1898

Herbert George Wells: Citations en anglais

“Over me, around me, closing in on me, embracing me ever nearer, was the Eternal; that which was before the beginning, and that which triumphs over the end; that enormous void in which all light and life and being is but the thin and vanishing splendour of a falling star, the cold, the stillness, the silence—the infinite and final Night of space.”

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H. G. Wells livre The First Men in the Moon

Source: The First Men in the Moon (1901), Ch. 19: Mr. Bedford Alone

“Mr. Duff Cooper, landing at New York, cools his mind by blowing off about a forthcoming revolt of the German Army and a return to monarchy in Germany, a Holy Roman Empire, I suppose, leading that new Crusade of which the Pope has been talking about recent against anti-God Russia. But quite a lot of radical people in the world, in spite of the folly, stupidity and brutality of the Stalin–Molotov attack on Finland, are averse from this idea of a religious war against Socialism and Atheism.”

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H. G. Wells

The Rights of Man, or what are we fighting for? (1940)

“The Anglo-Saxon genius for parliamentary government asserted itself; there was a great deal of talk and no decisive action.”

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H. G. Wells livre The Invisible Man

Source: The Invisible Man (1897), Chapter 6: The Furniture that Went Mad

“Marguerite, joyfully: “We are ourselves, my dear, we are ourselves. Well never be anyone else.””

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H. G. Wells

The New Faust https://www.google.com/search?client=ubuntu&channel=fs&q=%22We+are+ourselves%2C+we+are+ourselves%2C+and+we%27ll+never+be+anyone+else.%22&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8#channel=fs&q=Marguerite%2C+joyfully:+%E2%80%9CWe+are+ourselves%2C+my+dear%2C+we+are+ourselves.+We%27 (in Nash's Pall Magazine, December 1936 – adaptation of "The Story of the Late Mr. Elvesham")

“Cynicism is humour in ill health.”

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H. G. Wells livre Boon

Boon, The Mind of the Race, The Wild Asses of the Devil, and The Last Trump (1915)

“Pippa' Passworthy: This little upset across the water doesn’t mean anything. Threatened men live long and threatened wars never occur.”

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H. G. Wells livre The Shape of Things to Come

Things to Come (1936)

“If his thinking has been sound, then this world is at the end of its tether. The end of everything we call life is close at hand and cannot be evaded.”

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H. G. Wells

The Mind at the End of its Tether (1945), p. 1

“In another moment I had scrambled up the earthen rampart and stood upon its crest, and the interior of the redoubt was below me. A mighty space it was, with gigantic machines here and there within it, huge mounds of material and strange shelter places. And scattered about it, some in their overturned war-machines, some in the now rigid handling-machines, and a dozen of them stark and silent and laid in a row, were the Martians—dead!—slain by the putrefactive and disease bacteria against which their systems were unprepared; slain as the red weed was being slain; slain, after all man's devices had failed, by the humblest things that God, in his wisdom, has put upon this earth.”

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H. G. Wells livre La Guerre des mondes

Book II, Ch. 8 (Ch. 25 in editions without Book divisions): Dead London
The War of the Worlds (1898)

“The past is but the beginning of a beginning, and all that is or has been is but the twilight of the dawn.”

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H. G. Wells livre The Discovery of the Future

The Discovery of the Future (1901)

“These are the rights of all human beings. They are yours wherever you are. Demand that your rulers and politicians sign and observe this declaration. If they refuse, if they quibble, they can have no place in the new free world that dawns upon mankind.”

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H. G. Wells

The Rights of the World Citizen (1942); a revised edition of The Rights of Man

“One of the darkest evils of our world is surely the unteachable wildness of the Good.”

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H. G. Wells livre A Modern Utopia

Source: A Modern Utopia (1905), Ch. 2, sect. 6

“Most striking, perhaps, in their general appearance was the disproportion between the legs of these creatures and the length of their bodies; and yet — so relative is our idea of grace — my eye became habituated to their forms, and at last I even fell in with their persuasion that my own long thighs were ungainly.”

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H. G. Wells livre The Island of Doctor Moreau

Source: The Island of Doctor Moreau (1896), Ch. 15: Concerning the Beast Folk

“…there has accumulated a vast tangle of emergency legislation, regulations, barriers and restraints, out of all proportion to and often missing and distorting the needs of the situation. For the restoration and modernisation of human civilization, this exaggerated outlawing of the fellow citizen whom we see fit to suspect as a traitor or revolutionary and also of the stranger within our gates, has to be restrained and brought back within the scheme of human rights.”

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H. G. Wells

The Rights of Man, or what are we fighting for? (1940)

“I hate and despise a shrewish suspicion of foreigners and foreign ways; a man who can look me in the face, laugh with me, speak truth and deal fairly, is my brother, though his skin is as black as ink or as yellow as an evening primrose.”

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H. G. Wells

What is Coming? (1916)

“You have been amazingly energetic and clever," this letter ran, "though what you stand to gain by it I cannot imagine. You are against me. For a whole day you have chased me; you have tried to rob me of a night's rest. But I have had food in spite of you, I have slept in spite of you, and the game is only beginning. The game is only beginning. There is nothing for it, but to start the Terror. This announces the first day of the Terror. Port Burdock is no longer under the Queen, tell your Colonel of Police, and the rest of them; it is under me—the Terror! This is day one of year one of the new epoch—the Epoch of the Invisible Man. I am Invisible Man the First. To begin with the rule will be easy. The first day there will be one execution for the sake of example—a man named Kemp. Death starts for him to-day. He may lock himself away, hide himself away, get guards about him, put on armour if he likes—Death, the unseen Death, is coming. Let him take precautions; it will impress my people. Death starts from the pillar box by midday. The letter will fall in as the postman comes along, then off! The game begins. Death starts. Help him not, my people, lest Death fall upon you also. Today Kemp is to die.”

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H. G. Wells livre The Invisible Man

Source: The Invisible Man (1897), Chapter 27: The Seige of Kemp's House

“Every one of these hundreds of millions of human beings is in some form seeking happiness…Not one is altogether noble nor altogether trustworthy nor altogether consistent; and not one is altogether vile…Not a single one but has at some time wept.”

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H. G. Wells livre The Outline of History

Source: The Outline of History (1920), Ch. 40

“Oswald Cabal: Dragging out life to the last possible second is not living to the best effect. The nearer the bone, the sweeter the meat. The best of life, Passworthy, lies nearest to the edge of death.”

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H. G. Wells livre The Shape of Things to Come

Things to Come (1936)

“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.”

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H. G. Wells livre A Modern Utopia

Source: A Modern Utopia (1905), Ch. 3, sect. 8

“The weaving of mankind into one community does not imply the creation of a homogeneous community, but rather the reverse; the welcome and adequate utilization of distinctive quality in an atmosphere of understanding… Communities all to one pattern, like boxes of toy soldiers, are things of the past, rather than of the future.”

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H. G. Wells livre The Outline of History

The Outline of History (1920)

“In politics, strangely enough, the best way to play your cards is to lay them face upwards on the table.”

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H. G. Wells

Attributed to Wells's book New Worlds for Old (1908) by Ferdinand Lundberg in Scoundrels All (1968), p. 126. The quote is widely repeated on the internet, but does not appear in the cited work.
Misattributed

“Our minds fall very readily under the spell of such unmitigated words as Purity and Chastity. Only death beyond decay, absolute non-existence, can be Pure and Chaste. Life is impurity, fact is impure. Everything has traces of alien matter; our very health is dependent on parasitic bacteria; the purest blood in the world has a tainted ancestor, and not a saint but has evil thoughts…. This stupidity, this unreasonable idealism of the common mind, fills life to-day with cruelties and exclusions, with partial suicides and secret shames. But we are born impure, we die impure; it is a fable that spotless white lilies sprang from any saint's decay, and the chastity of a monk or nun is but introverted impurity. We have to take life valiantly on these conditions and make such honour and beauty and sympathy out of our confusions, gather such constructive experience, as we may…. Life is that, and abstinence is for the most part a mere evasion of life.”

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H. G. Wells

Source: First and Last Things: A Confession of Faith and Rule of Life http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/4225 (1908), Ch.3, section 20, Of Abstinences and Disciplines

“When the history of our civilization is written, it will be a biological history and Margaret Sanger will be its heroine.”

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H. G. Wells

1935 speech at Barber's Hall, London, included in Round the World for Birth Control (1937) edited by the Birth Control International Information Centre