John Wyndham Quotes

What is the use of life?

Other things than to fight, there is, even for dragons.

You know perfectly well that women can and do - or rather did - handle the most complicated and delicate machines when they took the trouble to understand them. What generally happens is that they're too lazy to take the trouble unless they have to.

'Somehow running away seldom seems to work out well unless you have a pretty good idea what you're running to."

It's all pretty simple if you don't give a damn who gets hurt in the rush.

The wise lamb does not enrage the lion," he said. "It placates him, plays for time, and hopes for the best.

There is a degree of odds against which a gambler becomes just another mug.

Intelligent life is the only thing that gives meaning to the universe. It is a holy thing, to be fostered and treasured. Without it nothing begins, nothing ends, there can be nothing through all eternity but the mindless babblings of chaos . . . Therefore, the nurture of all intelligent forms is a sacred duty. Even the merest spark of reason must be fanned in the hope of a flame. Frustrated intelligence must have its bonds broken. Narrow-channelled intelligence must be given the power to widen out. High intelligence must be learned from.

Do you never work? Does nobody work?' I asked Clytassamine. 'Oh yes - if he wants to,' she said. 'But what about the unpleasant things - the things that must be done?' 'What things?' she asked, puzzled. 'Well, growing food, providing power, disposing of waste, all that kind of thing.' She looked surprised. 'Why, naturally, the machines do all that. You wouldn't expect men to do those things. Good heavens, what have we got brains for?" 'But who looks after the machines - keeps them in order?' 'Themselves, of course.

It was so absurd to die at sixty, anyway, and, as he saw it, it would be even more wasteful to die at eighty. A scheme of things in which the wisdom acquired in living was simply scrapped in this way was, to say the least, grossly inefficient. What did it mean? That somebody else would have to go through the process of learning all that life had already taken sixty years to teach him; and then be similarly scrapped in the end. No wonder the race was slow in getting anywhere—if, indeed, it were getting anywhere—with this cat-and-mouse, ten-forward-and-nine-back system.

WATCH THOU FOR THE MUTANT !

Pretty girls are lovely as the flowers in May, but there are so many flowers in May.

Those are the methods of Earth; that is the honour of great companies, as you will know to your cost should you have dealings with them. They'll use you, and then break you. . . .

It takes civilised people quite a while to appreciate 'the big lie' technique.

I suppose we all have a number of carefully furnished, non-communicating rooms in our minds.