Quotes from John Wyndham

Why was I condemned to live in a democracy where every fool's vote is equal to a sensible man's? If all the energy that is put into diddling mugs for their votes could be turned on to useful work, what a nation we could be!

What do a few thousands, or a few millions of people matter? Women will just go on making the loss good. But Governments are important–one mustn't risk them.

All the old problems, the stale ones, both personal and general, had been solved by one mighty slash.

You know, one of the most shocking things about it is to realize how easily we have lost a world that seemed so safe and certain.

There are fears that we would strongly assert, and honestly believe, we have outgrown which, nevertheless, still lie dormant in all of us, ready to be aroused by a careless, unexpected word used at a critical moment.

There they sit, with everyone thinking no more of them than they might of a pretty odd lot of cabbages, yet half the time they're pattering and clattering away at one another. Why? What is it they patter about? That's what I want to know.' I

Only so few years ago,' Josella said reflectively, 'people were wailing about the way those bungalows were destroying the countryside. Now look at them.' 'The countryside is having its revenge, all right,' I said.

There's a whole lot of people don't seem to understand that you have to talk to a man in his own language before he'll take you seriously.

Como la mente no tiene masa, no utiliza tiempo en desplazarse.

We don't seem to be good at integrating novelties with our social lives, do we? The world of the etiquette book fell to pieces at the end of the last century, and there has been no code of manners to tell us how to deal with anything invented since. Not even rules for an individualist to break, which is itself another blow at freedom. Rather a pity, don't you think?

The thinking has to be done largely by people who are not directly productive—by people who appear to be living almost entirely on the work of others, but are, in fact, a long-term investment. Learning grew up in the cities, and in great institutions—it was the labor of the countryside that supported them.

Just that mere existence is not enough. One exists by barter. One lives by giving – and taking.

You'd expect her to see reason,' he muttered. 'I don't see why. Most of us don't – we see habit. She'll oppose any modification, reasonable or not, that conflicts with her previously trained feelings of what is right and polite – and be quite honestly convinced that she's showing steadfast strength of character.

Sounds Machiavellian to me. I like to see what I'm aiming at, and go straight for it.' 'Most people don't, even though they'd protest that they do. They prefer to be coaxed or wheedled, or even driven. That way they never make a mistake:

And isn't there something a little sad about youth and beauty in any circumstances?

Anybody who has had a great treasure has always led a precarious existence," she said reflectively.

Will you agree to be superseded, and start on the way to extinction without a struggle? I do not think you are decadent enough for that.

Triffids were at large...I began to loathe them now from more than their carrion-eating habits - they, more than anything else, seemed able to profit and flourish on our disaster...

I told you all this so that you understand that if someone says that something is so, that does not prove that it is so.

You'd think she'd be reasonable," he muttered. "Most people aren't, even though they'd protest that they are. They prefer to be coaxed or wheedled, or even driven. That way they never make a mistake: if there is one, it's always due to something or somebody else. This going headlong for things is a mechanistic view, and people in general aren't machines. They have minds of their own-mostly peasant minds, at their easiest when they are in the familiar furrow.

laws evolved by one particular species, for the convenience of that species, are, by their nature, concerned only with the capacities of that species—against a species with different capacities they simply become inapplicable.

The Upper One sent the Tribulation to destroy them and remind them that existence means constant change.

The way I came to miss the end of the world – well, the end of the world I had known for close on thirty years – was sheer accident: like a lot of survival, when you come to think of it.

I felt a poignant memory of those desolate patches of disillusion which are the shocks of growing up. The discovery that one lived in a world which could pay honour where honour was not due, was just such a one. The values were rocked, the dependable was suddenly flimsy, the solid became hollow, gold turned to brass, there was no integrity anywhere …