No writer or teacher or artist can escape the responsibility of influencing others whether he intends to or not, whether he is conscious of it or not.

Space-ships and time machines are no escape from the human condition. Let Othello subject Desdemona to a lie-detector test; his jealousy will still blind him to the evidence. Let Oedipus triumph over gravity; he won't triumph over his fate.

I am not sure whether ethical absolutes exist. But I am sure that we have to act as if they existed or civilization perishes.

The prerequisite of originality is the art of forgetting, at the proper moment, what we know.

Two half-truths do not make a truth, and two half- cultures do not make a culture

I profoundly admire Aldous Huxley, both for his philosophy and uncompromising sincerity. But I disagree with his advocacy of 'the chemical opening of doors into the Other World', and with his belief that drugs can procure 'what Catholic theologians call a gratuitous grace'. Chemically induced hallucinations, delusions and raptures may be frightening or wonderfully gratifying; in either case they are in the nature of confidence tricks played on one's own nervous system.

A publisher who writes is like a cow in a milk bar.