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Herbert George Wells citations
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Herbert George Wells, plus connu sous la signature H. G. Wells, né le 21 septembre 1866 à Bromley dans le Kent et mort le 13 août 1946 à Londres, est un écrivain britannique surtout connu aujourd'hui pour ses romans de science-fiction. Il fut cependant également l'auteur de nombreux romans de satire sociale, d'œuvres de prospective, de réflexions politiques et sociales ainsi que d'ouvrages de vulgarisation touchant aussi bien à la biologie, à l'histoire qu'aux questions sociales. Il est considéré comme le père de la science-fiction contemporaine. Wikipedia  

✵ 21. septembre 1866 – 13. août 1946  •  Autres noms H.G. Wells, Герберт Уэллс
Herbert George Wells photo
Herbert George Wells: 148 citations0 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

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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. »
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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

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

Herbert George Wells: Citations en anglais

“A strange persuasion came upon me that, save for the grossness of the line, the grotesqueness of the forms, I had here before me the whole balance of human life in miniature, the whole interplay of instinct, reason, and fate in its simplest form.”

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H. G. Wells livre The Island of Doctor Moreau

Source: The Island of Doctor Moreau (1896), Ch. 16: How the Beast Folk Tasted Blood

“The Boss: You are not mechanics, you are warriors. You have been trained, not to think, but to do.”

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

Things to Come (1936)

“We were making the future," he said, "and hardly any of us troubled to think what future we were making. And here it is!”

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H. G. Wells

When The Sleeper Wakes (1899)

“How small the vastest of human catastrophes may seem at a distance of a few million miles.”

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H. G. Wells The Star

"The Star", final line, first published in The Graphic, Christmas issue (1897)

“Life begins perpetually. Gathered together at last under the leadership of man, the student-teacher of the universe… unified, disciplined, armed with the secret powers of the atom, and with knowledge as yet beyond dreaming, Life, forever dying to be born afresh, forever young and eager, will presently stand upon this earth as upon a footstool, and stretch out its realm amidst the stars.”

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H. G. Wells livre The Outline of History

Source: The Outline of History (1920), Ch. 41

“Our true nationality is mankind.”

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H. G. Wells livre The Outline of History

Source: The Outline of History (1920), Ch. 41

“For crude classifications and false generalisations are the curse of all organised human life.”

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H. G. Wells livre A Modern Utopia

Source: A Modern Utopia (1905), Ch. 10, sect. 1

“The Boss: The State’s your mother, your father, the totality of your interests. No discipline can be too severe for the man that denies that by word or deed.”

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

Things to Come (1936)

“Whatever America has to show in heroic living to-day, I doubt if she can show any thing finer than the quality of the resolve, the steadfast effort hundreds of black and coloured men are making to-day to live blamelessly, honourably, and patiently, getting for themselves what scraps of refinement, learning, and beauty they may, keeping their hold on a civilization they are grudged and denied.”

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H. G. Wells livre The Future in America: A Search After Realities

The Future in America (1906)

“Practically I thought I had impunity to do whatever I chose, everything—save to give away my secret. So I thought. Whatever I did, whatever the consequences might be, was nothing to me. I had merely to fling aside my garments and vanish. No person could hold me. I could take my money where I found it.”

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H. G. Wells livre The Invisible Man

Source: The Invisible Man (1897), Chapter 23: In Drury Lane

“Oswald Cabal: Little animals. And if we’re no more than animals, we must snatch each little scrap of happiness, and live, and suffer, and pass, mattering no more than all the other animals do or have done. It is this, or that. All the universe or nothing. Which shall it be, Passworthy? Which shall it be?”

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

Things to Come (1936)

“And in the air are no streets, no channels, no point where one can say of an antagonist, "If he wants to reach my capital he must come by here." In the air all directions lead everywhere.”

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H. G. Wells livre The War in the Air

The War in the Air (1908)

“Each time I dip a living creature into the bath of burning pain, I say: 'This time I will burn out all the animal; this time I will make a rational creature of my own!' After all, what is ten years? Men have been a hundred thousand in the making.”

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H. G. Wells livre The Island of Doctor Moreau

Source: The Island of Doctor Moreau (1896), Ch. 14: Doctor Moreau Explains

“The catastrophe of the atomic bombs which shook men out of cities and businesses and economic relations, shook them also out of their old-established habits of thought, and out of the lightly held beliefs and prejudices that came down to them from the past.”

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H. G. Wells livre The World Set Free

The World Set Free

“Rowena: You’ve got the subtlety of a bullfrog.”

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

Things to Come (1936)

“Suppose, now, there is such a thing as an all-round inferior race. Is that any reason why we should propose to preserve it for ever…? Whether there is a race so inferior I do not know, but certainly there is no race so superior as to be trusted with human charges. The true answer to Aristotle’s plea for slavery, that there are “natural slaves,” lies in the fact that there are no “natural” masters… The true objection to slavery is not that it is unjust to the inferior but that it corrupts the superior. There is only one sane and logical thing to be done with a really inferior race, and that is to exterminate it. Now there are various ways of exterminating a race, and most of them are cruel. You may end it with fire and sword after the old Hebrew fashion; you may enslave it and work it to death, as the Spaniards did the Caribs; you may set it boundaries and then poison it slowly with deleterious commodities, as the Americans do with most of their Indians; you may incite it to wear clothing to which it is not accustomed and to live under new and strange conditions that will expose it to infectious diseases to which you yourselves are immune, as the missionaries do the Polynesians; you may resort to honest simple murder, as we English did with the Tasmanians; or you can maintain such conditions as conduce to “race suicide,” as the British administration does in Fiji. Suppose, then, for a moment, that there is an all-round inferior race… If any of the race did, after all, prove to be fit to survive, they would survive—they would be picked out with a sure and automatic justice from the over-ready condemnation of all their kind. Is there, however, an all-round inferior race in the world? Even the Australian black-fellow is, perhaps, not quite so entirely eligible for extinction as a good, wholesome, horse-racing, sheep-farming Australian white may think. These queer little races, the black-fellows, the Pigmies, the Bushmen, may have their little gifts, a greater keenness, a greater fineness of this sense or that, a quaintness of the imagination or what not, that may serve as their little unique addition to the totality of our Utopian civilisation. We are supposing that every individual alive on earth is alive in Utopia, and so all the surviving “black-fellows” are there. Every one of them in Utopia has had what none have had on earth, a fair education and fair treatment, justice, and opportunity…Some may be even prosperous and admired, may have married women of their own or some other race, and so may be transmitting that distinctive thin thread of excellence, to take its due place in the great synthesis of the future.”

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H. G. Wells livre A Modern Utopia

Source: A Modern Utopia (1905), Ch. 10, sect. 3

“I was invisible, and I was only just beginning to realise the extraordinary advantage my invisibility gave me. My head was already teeming with plans of all the wild and wonderful things I had now impunity to do.”

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H. G. Wells livre The Invisible Man

Source: The Invisible Man (1897), Chapter 20: At the House In Great Portland Street

“If I am something of a social leveller, it is not because I want to give silly people a good time, but because I want to make opportunity universal, and not leave out one single being who is worth while.”

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H. G. Wells

"What I Believe", The Listener, 1929. Quoted in Clifton Fadiman, I Believe, London, George Allen and Unwin, 1940.

“And the ethical system of these men of the New Republic, the ethical system which will dominate the world state, will be shaped primarily to favour the procreation of what is fine and efficient and beautiful in humanity—beautiful and strong bodies, clear and powerful minds, and a growing body of knowledge—and to check the procreation of base and servile types, of fear-driven and cowardly souls, of all that is mean and ugly and bestial in the souls, bodies, or habits of men. To do the latter is to do the former; the two things are inseparable. And the method that nature has followed hitherto in the shaping of the world, whereby weakness was prevented from propagating weakness, and cowardice and feebleness were saved from the accomplishment of their desires, the method that has only one alternative, the method that must in some cases still be called in to the help of man, is death. In the new vision death is no inexplicable horror, no pointless terminal terror to the miseries of life, it is the end of all the pain of life, the end of the bitterness of failure, the merciful obliteration of weak and silly and pointless things.”

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H. G. Wells livre Anticipations

Anticipations (1902)

“The New Deal is plainly an attempt to achieve a working socialism and avert a social collapse in America; it is extraordinarily parallel to the successive "policies" and "Plans" of the Russian experiment. Americans shirk the word "socialism", but what else can one call it?”

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H. G. Wells livre The New World Order

The New World Order (1939)

“Every man shall be entitled to a sound and objective education and there shall be genuine equality of opportunity. Education shall be a matter of environment as well as of instruction, and everyone shall be entitled to an education untouched by the interests of any party or religion.”

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H. G. Wells

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

“If you fell down yesterday, stand up today.”

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H. G. Wells

The Anatomy of Frustration (1936)

“The uglier a man's legs are, the better he plays golf. It's almost a law.”

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H. G. Wells livre Bealby

Bealby: A Holiday (1915)

“My mood, I say, was one of exaltation. I felt as a seeing man might do, with padded feet and noiseless clothes, in a city of the blind. I experienced a wild impulse to jest, to startle people, to clap men on the back, fling people's hats astray, and generally revel in my extraordinary advantage.”

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H. G. Wells livre The Invisible Man

Source: The Invisible Man (1897), Chapter 21: In Oxford Street

“The professional military mind is by necessity an inferior and unimaginative mind; no man of high intellectual quality would willingly imprison his gifts in such a calling.”

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H. G. Wells livre The Outline of History

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

“He had developed in the most wonderful way the distinctive silliness of man without losing one jot of the natural folly of a monkey.”

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H. G. Wells livre The Island of Doctor Moreau

Source: The Island of Doctor Moreau (1896), Ch. 21: The Reversion of the Beast Folk

“An artist who theorizes about his work is no longer artist but critic.”

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H. G. Wells

The Temptaion of Harringay (1929)

“At times I suffer from the strangest sense of detachment from myself and the world about me; I seem to watch it all from the outside, from somewhere inconceivably remote, out of time, out of space, out of the stress and tragedy of it all.”

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H. G. Wells livre La Guerre des mondes

Book I, Ch. 7: How I Reached Home
The War of the Worlds (1898)

“Adapt or perish, now as ever, is Nature's inexorable imperative.”

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H. G. Wells

The Mind at the End of its Tether (1945), p. 19

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