William Ralph Inge Quotes

Our real self is not the captive of Space and Time

It takes in reality only one to make a quarrel. It is useless for the sheep to pass resolutions in favour of vegetarianism while the wolf remains of a different opinion

The effect of boredom on a large scale in history is underestimated. It is a main cause of revolutions, and would soon bring to an end all the static Utopias and the farmyard civilization of the Fabians.

The enemies of Freedom do not argue; they shout and they shoot.

Racialism is a superstitious variety of nationalism. A nation is a society united by a delusion about its ancestry and by a common hatred of its neighbours.

Events in the past may be roughly divided into those which probably never happened and those which do not matter. This is what makes the trade of historian so attractive.

When our first parents were driven out of Paradise, Adam is believed to have remarked to Eve: "My dear, we live in an age of transition."

On the whole, the happiest people seem to be those who have no particular cause for being happy except the fact that they are so.

Looking back, I think I can separate the years when I was happy and those when I was unhappy. But perhaps at the time I should have judged differently.

There are of course no beginnings or ends in history. We may walk for a few miles by the side of a river, noting its shadows and its rapids, the gorges which confine it and the plains through which it meanders; but we know that we have seen neither the beginning nor the end of its course, that the whole river has an unbroken continuity, and that sections, whether of space or time, are purely arbitrary. We are always sowing our future; we are always reaping our past.

So the pendulum swings, now violently, now slowly; and every institution not only carries within it the seeds of its own dissolution, but prepares the way for its most hated rival.

I have never understood why it should be considered derogatory to the Creator to suppose that he has a sense of humour.

I believe that the accumulated experience of mankind, and his wonderful discoveries, are of great value. I only point out that they do not constitute real-progress in human nature itself,...

Civilization is a disease which is almost invariably fatal.

The fruit of the tree of knowledge, always drives man from some paradise or other.