Quotes from William Inge

Public opinion, a vulgar, impertinent, anonymous tyrant who deliberately makes life unpleasant for anyone who is not content to be the average person.

It was said that Mr. Gladstone could persuade most people of most things, and himself of anything.

The happiest people seem to be those who have no particular reason for being happy except that they are so.

Originality is undetected plagiarism.

Every institution not only carries within it the seeds of its own dissolution, but prepares the way for its most hated rival.

There are no rewards or punishments - only consequences.

Whoever marries the spirit of this age will find himself a widower in the next.

No Christian can be a pessimist, for Christianity is a system of radical optimism.

Gambling is a disease of barbarians superficially civilized.

It is astonishing with how little wisdom mankind can be governed, when that little wisdom is its own.

The wisdom of the wise is an uncommon degree of common sense.

It is useless for the sheep to pass resolutions in favor of vegetarianism, while the wolf remains of a different opinion.

It takes in reality only one to make a quarrel. It is useless for the sheep to pass resolutions in favor of vegetarianism, while the wolf remains of a different opinion.

The soul is dyed with the color of its leisure thoughts.

Faith is an act of rational choice, which determines us to act as if certain things were true, and in the confident expectation that they will prove to be true.

A man may build himself a throne of bayonets, but he can't sit on it.

We tolerate shapes in human beings that would horrify us if we saw them in a horse.

Events in the past may be roughly divided into those which probably never happened and those which do not matter.

We have enslaved the rest of the animal creation, and have treated our distant cousins in fur and feathers so badly that beyond doubt, if they were able to formulate a religion, they would depict the Devil in human form.

If the universe is running down like a clock, the clock must have been wound up at a date which we could name if we knew it. The world, if it is to have an end in time, must have had a beginning in time.

In dealing with Englishmen you can be sure of one thing only, that the logical solution will not be adopted.

From beasts we scorn as soulless, In forest, field and den, The cry goes up to witness The soulessness of men

It takes strong men and women to love ... people strong enough inside themselves to love ... without humiliation.

Nobody is bored when he is trying to make something that is beautiful, or to discover something that is true.