No contact with savage Indian tribes has ever daunted me more than the morning I spent with an old lady swathed in woolies who compared herself to a rotten herring encased in a block of ice.

I have never known so much naive conviction allied to greater intellectual poverty.

Civilization has ceased to be that delicate flower which was preserved and painstakingly cultivated in one or two sheltered areas of a soil rich in wild species ... Mankind has opted for monoculture; it is in the process of creating a mass civilization, as beetroot is grown in the mass. Henceforth, man's daily bill of fare will consist only of this one item.

Scientific knowledge advances haltingly and is stimulated by contention and doubt.

Enthusiastic partisans of the idea of progress are in danger of failing to recognize the immense riches accumulated by the human race. By underrating the achievements of the past, they devalue all those which still remain to be accomplished.

I hate travelling and explorers

No contact with savage Indian tribes has ever daunted me more than the morning I spent with an old lady swathed in woolies who compared herself to a rotten herring encased in a block of ice.