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The only books that influence us are those for which we are ready, and which have gone a little farther down our particular path than we have yet got ourselves.

E.M. Forster (Edward Morgan Forster)

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Forster, E.M. "A Book that Influenced Me," Two Cheers for Democracy. Hogarth Press, 1951. Originally published in 1944, publisher unknown.

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The greatest task before civilization at present is to make machines what they ought to be, the slaves, instead of the masters of men.

Havelock Ellis

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Ellis, Havelock. Little Essays of Love and Virtue. George H. Doran Company/A & C Black, 1922, ch. 7.

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It is not true that suffering ennobles the character; happiness does that sometimes, but suffering, for the most part, makes men petty and vindictive.

W. Somerset Maugham

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Maugham, William Somerset. The Moon and Sixpence. William Heinemann, 1919, ch. 17.

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Maugham, William Somerset. The Moon and Sixpence. Vintage Classics, 2009, ch. 17.

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From a very early age, I had imbibed the opinion, that it was every man's duty to do all that lay in his power to leave his country as good as he had found it.

William Cobbett

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Cobbett, William. Political Register. 22 Dec. 1832.

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His Majesty's Government view with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, and will use their best endeavors to facilitate the achievement of this object, it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done whech may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine, or the rights and political status enjoyed by Jews in any other country.

Arthur James Balfour

Balfour Declaration

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Read the Balfour Declaration at the Yale Law School library website

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Balfour, Arthur James. Letter to Lord Rothschild. 2 Nov. 1917.

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My definition of Man is, "a Cooking Animal." The beasts have memory, judgment, and all the faculties and passions of our mind, in a certain degree; but no beast is a cook... Man alone can dress a good dish; and every man whatever is more or less a cook, in seasoning what he himself eats.

James Boswell

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Boswell, James. Journal entry. 15 Aug. 1773.

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Boswell, James. "The Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides." A Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland and The Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides, edited by Jack Lynch and Celia Barnes. Oxford University Press, 2021.

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The nature of the breakdowns of civilizations can be summed up in three points: a failure of creative power in the minority, an answering withdrawal of mimesis on the part of the majority and a consequent loss of social unity in the society as a whole.

Arnold J. Toynbee

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Toynbee, Arnold J. Quoted in A Study of History: Abridgement of Volumes I-VI, written by D.C. Somervell. Oxford University Press, 1948, vol. 4.

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People who are always praising the past
And especially the times of faith as best
Ought to go and live in the Middle Ages
And be burnt at the stake as witches and sages.

Stevie Smith

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Smith, Stevie. "The Past." Not Waving but Drowning. Andre Deutsch, 1957, I. 1.

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Life exists in the universe only because the carbon atom possesses certain exceptional properties.

James Jeans

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Jeans, James. The Mysterious Universe. Cambridge University Press/Macmillan, 1930, ch. 1.

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It has often been said, very truly, that religion is the thing that makes the ordinary man feel extraordinary; it is an equally important truth that religion is the thing that makes the extraordinary man feel ordinary.

G.K. Chesterton

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Chesterton, G.K. Charles Dickens: A Critical Study. Dodd Mead & Company, 1906, ch. 1.

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I must say it's pretty dreary living in the American Age-unless you're an American, of course.

John Osborne

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Osborne, John. Look Back in Anger. 1956, Royal Court Theatre, London, England, UK, act 1.

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Osborne, John. Look Back in Anger. Faber & Faber, 2015, act 1.

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No lesson seems to be so deeply inculcated by the experience of life as that you never should trust experts. If you believe the doctors, nothing is wholesome: if you believe the theologians, nothing is innocent: if you believe the soldiers, nothing is safe. They all require to have their strong wine diluted by a very large admixture of insipid common sense.

Lord Salisbury

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Lord Salisbury. Letter to Lord Lytton. 15 June 1877.

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The only ones who remember when you came in second are your wife and your dog.

Damon Hill

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Hill, Damon. The Sunday Times. 18 Dec. 1994.

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Britain will be honoured by historians more for the way she disposed of an empire than for the way in which she acquired it.

David Ormsby Gore

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Quoted in The New York Times

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Ormsby-Gore, David. Quoted in The New York Times. 28 Oct. 1962.

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Beware the irrational, however seductive. Shun the "transcendent" and all who invite you to subordinate or annihilate yourself. Distrust compassion; prefer dignity for yourself and others. Don't be afraid to be thought arrogant or selfish. Picture all experts as if they were mamals. Never be a spectator of unfairness or stupidity. Seek out argument and disputation for their own sake; the grave will supply plenty of time for silence. Suspect your own motives, and all excuses. Do not live for others any more than you would expect others to live for you.

Christopher Hitchens

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Hitchens, Christopher. Letters to a Young Contrarian. Art of Mentoring. Basic Books, 2001, envoi.

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They have invented a phrase, a phrase that is a black and white contradiction in two words—"free-love"—as if a lover ever had been, or ever could be, free. It is the nature of love to bind itself, and the institution of marriage merely paid the average man the compliment of taking him at his word.

G.K. Chesterton

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Chesterton, G.K. "The Defendant." The Wit, Whimsy and Wisdom of G.K. Chesterton. Vol. 6, Coachwhip Publications, 2009. Originally published by R. Brinley Johnson, 1901, introduction.

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In science the credit goes to the man who convinces the world, not to the man to whom the idea first occurs.

Francis Darwin

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Darwin, Francis. "Francis Galton." Eugenics Review, April 1914.

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"You", your joys and your sorrows, your memories and ambitions, your sense of personal identity and free will, are in fact no more than the behaviour of a vast assembly of nerve cells and their associated molecules.

Francis Crick

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Crick, Frances. The Astonishing Hypothesis: The Scientific Search for the Soul. Charles Scribner's Sons, 1994, ch. 1.

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O, we all acknowledge our faults, now; 'its the mode of the day: but the acknowledgement passes for current payment; and therefore we never amend them.

Frances Burney

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Camilla

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Burney, Frances. Camilla. London: T. Payne and T. Cadell Jun. and W. Davies, 1796.

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Burney, Frances. Camilla. Oxford University Press, 2009.

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Life can be wonderful as well as terrible, and we shall increasingly have the power to make life good. Since human history may be only just beginning, we can expect that future humans, or supra-humans, may achieve some great goods that we cannot now even imagine. In Nietzsche’s words, there has never been such a new dawn and clear horizon, and such an open sea.