“Very few things are as dangerous as a bunch of incentive-driven individuals trying to play it safe.”

Source: Aspects of the Novel (1927), Chapter Nine: Conclusion
Context: If human nature does alter it will be because individuals manage to look at themselves in a new way. Here and there people — a very few people, but a few novelists are among them — are trying to do this. Every institution and vested interest is against such a search: organized religion, the state, the family in its economic aspect, have nothing to gain, and it is only when outward prohibitions weaken that it can proceed: history conditions it to that extent.

Source: What we live by (1932), p. 202

"Friend of My Youth", in Friend of My Youth https://books.google.com/books?id=JHO0R0im-WsC&pg=PT94 (1990)
Context: People are curious. A few people are. They will be driven to find things out, even trivial things. They will put things together, knowing all along that they may be mistaken. You see them going around with notebooks, scraping the dirt off gravestones, reading microfilm, just in the hope of seeing this trickle in time, making a connection, rescuing one thing from the rubbish.
And they may get it wrong, after all. I may have got it wrong.

Prologue.
Invisible Man (1952)

Source: My Heart Belongs (1976), p. 268

Republican Party Reptile (1987)

On November 9, 1989, the Berlin Wall fell. The idea of German reunification, often discussed but considered unrealistic, once again became a subject of heated debate. Reunification now appeared inevitable, but scarcely anyone ventured to prophesy how soon it would come. German chancellor Helmut Kohl remarked those words when was accused of pushing unification plans too fast.
Awake! magazine, 12 - 22 - 1991; in its article The Dream of European Unity.

Fortitude (1913)