“A willingness to satisfy contradictory objections to one's manner of writing might turn one's work into the donkey that finally found itself being carried by its masters, since some readers suggest that quotation marks are disruptive of pleasant progress; others, that notes to what should be complete are a pedantry or evidence of an insufficiently realized task. But since in anything I have written, there have been lines in which the chief interest is borrowed, and I have not yet been able to outgrow this hybrid method of composition, acknowledgements seem only honest. Perhaps those who are annoyed by provisos, detainments, and postscripts could be persuaded to take probity on faith and disregard the notes.”

Preface, p. v
The Differential and Integral Calculus (1836)

"Why I Write," Gangrel (Summer 1946)
Context: The Spanish war and other events in 1936-7 turned the scale and thereafter I knew where I stood. Every line of serious work that I have written since 1936 has been written, directly or indirectly, against totalitarianism and for democratic Socialism, as I understand it. It seems to me nonsense, in a period like our own, to think that one can avoid writing of such subjects.

letter to Professor E.S. Morse http://books.google.com/books?id=fYQCAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA41&lpg=PA41&dq=There's+a+singular+and+a+perpetual+charm+in+a+letter+of+yours&source=bl&ots=DDWCA6FHyJ&sig=MyOOelB_Q2Fmd4jNObeyuptofsc&hl=en&ei=CYKiSvfaNof8MbOq3N0P&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1#v=onepage&q=%22There's%20a%20singular%20and%20a%20perpetual%20charm%20in%20a%20letter%20of%20yours%22&f=false, circa 1889.

Source: Lyonesse Trilogy (1983-1989), Madouc (1989), Chapter 11, section 1 (p. 967)

1990s, I Am a Man, a Black Man, an American (1998)

387.
On Certainty (1969)

Original preface to Animal Farm; as published in George Orwell: Some Materials for a Bibliography (1953) by Ian R. Willison
Context: I have never visited Russia and my knowledge of it consists only of what can be learned by reading books and newspapers. Even if I had the power, I would not wish to interfere in Soviet domestic affairs: I would not condemn Stalin and his associates merely for their barbaric and undemocratic methods. It is quite possible that, even with the best intentions, they could not have acted otherwise under the conditions prevailing there.
But on the other hand it was of the utmost importance to me that people in western Europe should see the Soviet regime for what it really was. Since 1930 I had seen little evidence that the USSR was progressing towards anything that one could truly call Socialism. On the contrary, I was struck by clear signs of its transformation into a hierarchical society, in which the rulers have no more reason to give up their power than any other ruling class. Moreover, the workers and intelligentsia in a country like England cannot understand that the USSR of today is altogether different from what it was in 1917. It is partly that they do not want to understand (i. e. they want to believe that, somewhere, a really Socialist country does actually exist), and partly that, being accustomed to comparative freedom and moderation in public life, totalitarianism is completely incomprehensible to them.

Preface of 1950 edition of Sex and Temperament in Three Primitive Societies (1935), p. xxvi <!-- ; 1977 editon, p. ix -->
[Anthropology demands] the open-mindedness with which one must look and listen, record in astonishment and wonder that which one would not have been able to guess.
As quoted in Gaither's Dictionary of Scientific Quotations (2012) by Carl C. Gaither and Alma E. Cavazos-Gaither<!-- cited in Coming of Age in Second Life : An Anthropologist Explores the Virtually Human (2010) by Tom Boellstorff, p. 71 -->
1950s

cue Python sketch: "Upper Class Twit of the Year"
From PBS series Monty Python's Personal Best: John Cleese's Personal Best (2006), playing role of senile old man.