Top 450 H. G. Wells Quotes (2025 Update)
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51. “I had rather be called a journalist than an artist.”

— H. G. Wells

52. “Crude classifications and false generalizations are the curse of the organized life.”

— H. G. Wells

53. “While there is a chance of the world getting through its troubles, I hold that a reasonable man has to behave as though he were sure of it. If at the end your cheerfulness in not justified, at any rate you will have been cheerful.”

— H. G. Wells

54. “There is space in its philosophy for everyone which is one reason why India is a home to every single religion in the world.”

— H. G. Wells

55. “In all the round world of Utopia there is no meat. There used to be, but now we cannot stand the thought of slaughterhouses. And it is impossible to find anyone who will hew a dead ox or pig. I can still remember as a boy the rejoicings over the closing of the last slaughterhouse.”

— H. G. Wells

56. “States organized for war will make war as surely as hens will lay eggs...”

— H. G. Wells

57. “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.”

— H. G. Wells

58. “Life, forever dying to be born afresh, forever young and eager, will presently stand upon this Earth as upon a footstool, and stretch out its realm amidst the stars.”

— H. G. Wells

59. “Nature never appeals to intelligence until habit and instinct are useless. There is no intelligence where there is no need of change.”

— H. G. Wells

60. “Nothing leads so straight to futility as literary ambitions without systematic knowledge.”

— H. G. Wells

61. “The only true measure of success is the ratio between what we might have done and what we might have been on the one hand, and the thing we have made and the things we have made of ourselves on the other.”

— H. G. Wells

62. “It is possible to believe that all the past is but the beginning of a beginning, and that all that is and has been is but the twilight of the dawn. It is possible to believe that all the human mind has ever accomplished is but the dream before the awakening.”

— H. G. Wells

63. “Looking at these stars suddenly dwarfed my own troubles and all the gravities of terrestrial life. I thought of their unfathomable distance, and the slow inevitable drift of their movements out of the unknown past into the unknown future.”

— H. G. Wells

64. “The most evil institution in the world is the Roman Catholic Church.”

— H. G. Wells

65. “When a man realizes his littleness, his greatness can appear.”

— H. G. Wells

66. “Mankind which began in a cave and behind a windbreak will end in the disease-soaked ruins of a slum.”

— H. G. Wells

67. “It is highly probable that the bulk of the Jew’s ancestors ‘never’ lived in Palestine ‘at all,’ which witnesses the power of historical assertion over fact.”

— H. G. Wells

68. “A world revolution to a higher social order, a world order, or utter downfall lies before us all.”

— H. G. Wells

69. “The passion for playing Chess is one of the most unaccountable in the world.”

— H. G. Wells

70. “Hunger makes a fool of a man.”

— H. G. Wells

71. “Ignorance is not an extension of time.”

— H. G. Wells

72. “In all the round world there is no meat. There used to be. But now we cannot stand the thought of slaughterhouses.”

— H. G. Wells

73. “The art of ignoring is one of the accomplishments of every well-bred girl, so carefully instilled that at last she can even ignore her own thoughts and her own knowledge.”

— H. G. Wells

74. “Alone – it is wonderful how little a man can do alone! To rob a little, to hurt a little, and there is the end.”

— H. G. Wells

75. “Leaders should lead as far as they can and then vanish. Their ashes should not choke the fire they have lit.”

— H. G. Wells

76. “The world needs something stronger than any possible rebellion against its peace. In other words it needs a federal world government embodying a new conception of human life as one whole.”

— H. G. Wells

77. “For after the Battle comes quiet.”

— H. G. Wells

78. “Non-violence is the policy of the vegetable kingdom.”

— H. G. Wells

79. “Books-bright windows in this life of ours, lit by the shining souls of men.”

— H. G. Wells

80. “After your first day of cycling, one dream is inevitable. A memory of motion lingers in the muscles of your legs, and round and round they seem to go. You ride through Dreamland on wonderful dream bicycles that change and grow.”

— H. G. Wells

81. “It is a law of nature we overlook, that intellectual versatility is the compensation for change, danger, and trouble.”

— H. G. Wells

82. “Christ is the most unique person of history. No man can write a history of the human race without giving first and foremost place to the penniless Teacher of Nazareth.”

— H. G. Wells

83. “Human society is based on want. Life is based on want. Wild-eyed visionaries may dream of a world without need. Cloud-cuckoo-land. It can’t be done.”

— H. G. Wells

84. “I must confess that I lost faith in the sanity of the world.”

— H. G. Wells

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

— H. G. Wells

86. “Are we all bubbles blown by a baby?”

— H. G. Wells

87. “To be honest, one must be inconsistent.”

— H. G. Wells

88. “I do not believe I have any immortality. The greatest evil in the world today is the Christian religion.”

— H. G. Wells

89. “He who does not contemplate the future is destined to be overwhelmed by it.”

— H. G. Wells

90. “The doctrine of the Kingdom of Heaven, which was the main teaching of Jesus, is certainly one of the most revolutionary doctrines that ever stirred and changed human thought.”

— H. G. Wells

91. “The path of social advancement is, and must be, strewn with broken friendships.”

— H. G. Wells

92. “All men, however highly educated, retain some superstitious inklings.”

— H. G. Wells

93. “The forceps of our minds are clumsy forceps, and crush the truth a little in taking hold of it.”

— H. G. Wells

94. “I was never a great amorist, though I have loved several people very deeply.”

— H. G. Wells

95. “One believes in Stephen Dedalus as one believes in few characters in fiction.”

— H. G. Wells

96. “No passion in the world is equal to the passion to alter someone else’s draft.”

— H. G. Wells

97. “In all ages, far back into prehistory, we find human beings have painted and adorned themselves.”

— H. G. Wells

98. “An invisible man is a man with power.”

— H. G. Wells

99. “The past is but the past of a beginning.”

— H. G. Wells

100. “I want to go ahead of Father Time with a scythe of my own.”

— H. G. Wells