94 Quotes by John Wyndham

He’s a civilized, liberal-minded man - with the usual trouble of liberal-minded men; that they think others are, too. He has an interested,inquiring mind. He has never grasped that the average mind when it encounterssomething new is scared, and says: “Better smash it, or suppress it, quick.” Well, he’sjust had another demonstration of the average mind at work.

What we do with the product of genius is first of all ram it down to the lowest common denominator and then multiply it by the vulgarest possible fraction. -from "Pawley's Peepholes

I'm a reliable witness, you're a reliable witness, practically all God's children are reliable witnesses in their own estimation--which makes it funny how such different ideas of the same affair get about.

The living form defies evolution at its peril; if it does not adapt, it will be broken. The idea of completed man is the supreme vanity: the finished image is a sacrilegious myth.

The idea of completed man is the supreme vanity

It was all conveyed by the nicest, almost indetectably refined blend of sympathy and bitchiness...

I don't think it had ever occurred to me that man's supremacy is not primarily due to his brain, as most of the books would have one think. It is due to the brain's capacity to make use of the information conveyed to it by a narrow band of visible light rays. His civilization, all that he had achieved or might achieve, hung upon his ability to perceive that range of vibrations from red to violet. Without that, he was lost.

…after all, what is a planet but an island in space?

My great-aunt, and other people's great-aunts, won all the rights that women need ages ago. All that's been lacking since then is the social courage to use them. My great-aunt and the rest thought that by technically defeating male privilege they'd scored a great victory. What they didn't realize is that the greatest enemies of women aren't men at all, they are women: silly women, lazy women, and smug women.