Western man is schizophrenic.

On the 1st of August, 1774, I endeavoured to extract air from mercurius calcinates per se [mercury oxide]; and I presently found that, by means of this lens, air was expelled from it very readily. … I admitted water to it [the extracted air], and found that it was not imbibed by it. But what surprized me more than I can well express, was, that a candle burned in this air with a remarkably vigorous flame… I was utterly at a loss how to account for it.

We should like to have some towering geniuses, to reveal us to ourselves in colour and fire, but of course they would have to fit into the pattern of our society and be able to take orders from sound administrative types.

Childhood, catching our imagination when it is fresh and tender, never lets go of us.

Britain, which in the years immediately before this war was rapidly losing such democratic virtues as it possessed, is now being bombed and burned into democracy.

It is good fiction, so largely ignored now, that brings us so much closer to the real facts.

Our trouble is that we drink too much tea. I see in this the slow revenge of the Orient, which has diverted the Yellow River down our throats.