Quotes from H. G. Wells

There is nothing in machinery, there is nothing in embankments and railways and iron bridges and engineering devices to oblige them to be ugly. Ugliness is the measure of imperfection.

The professional military mind is by necessity an inferior and unimaginative mind; no man of high intellectual quality would willingly imprison his gifts in such a calling.

We want to get rid of the militarist not simply because he hurts and kills, but because he is an intolerable thick-voiced blockhead who stands hectoring and blustering in our way of achievement.

Let your love be stronger than your hate or anger. Learn the wisdom of compromise, for it is better to bend a little than to break.

I often think we do not take this business of photography in a sufficiently serious spirit. Issuing a photograph is like marriage: you can only undo the mischief with infinite woe.

The man who raises a fist has run out of ideas.

What on earth would a man do with himself, if something did not stand in his way?

Marriage isn't what it was. It's become a different thing because women have become human beings.

Success is to be measured not by wealth, power, or fame, but by the ratio between what a man is and what he might be.

Lies are the mortar that binds the savage individual man into the social masonry.

Fools make researches and wise men exploit them.

So utterly at variance is Destiny with all the little plans of men.

All men, however highly educated, retain some superstitious inklings.

There is no remorse like a remorse of chess. It is a curse upon man. There is no happiness in chess.

Hunger makes a fool of a man.

Men who think in lifetimes are of little use to statesmanship.

Chess is a curse upon a man.

I went over the heads of the things a man reckons desirable. No doubt invisibility made it possible to get them, but it made it impossible to enjoy them when they are got.

The past is the beginning of the beginning and all that is and has been is but the twilight of the dawn.

Every time I see an adult on a bicycle, I no longer despair for the future of the human race.

The past is but the beginning of a beginning.

Our true nationality is mankind.

Some people bear three kinds of trouble - the ones they've had, the ones they have, and the ones they expect to have.

In England we have come to rely upon a comfortable time-lag of fifty years or a century intervening between the perception that something ought to be done and a serious attempt to do it.