Man's destiny was no longer determined from 'above' by a super-human wisdom and will, but from 'below' by the sub-human agencies of glands, genes, atoms, or waves of probability. ...they could determine his fate, but could provide him with no moral guidance, no values and meaning. A puppet of the Gods is a tragic figure, a puppet suspended on his chromosomes is merely grotesque.

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

You can't help people being right for the wrong reasons...This fear of finding oneself in bad company is not an expression of political purity; it is an expression of a lack of self-confidence.

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

The life we led was a proof of man's capacity for adaptation.I think that even the condemned souls in purgatory after time develop a sort of homely routine.That is ,by the way, why most prison memoirs are unreadable.The difficulty of conveying to the reader an idea of a nightmare world from which he has emerged makes the author depict the prisoner's state of mind as an uninterruped continuity of despair.He fears to appear frivolous or to spoil his effect by admitting that even in the depths of misery cheerfulness keeps breaking in.

Wars are not fought for territory, but for words. Man's deadliest weapon is language. He is as susceptible to being hypnotized by slogans as he is to infectious diseases. And where there is an epidemic, the group-mind takes over.

When all is said, its atmosphere [England's] still contains fewer germs of aggression and brutality per cubic foot in a crowded bus, pub or queue than in any other country in which I have lived