There is no conception more fallacious than the sense of cosiness implied by “Mother Nature”. Each species must strive to survive, and that it will do, by every means in its power, however foul – unless the instinct to survive is weakened by conflict with another instinct.

When people live their lives by their beliefs objective reality is almost irrelevant. ‘That’s.

I’m not romancing. I’m talking about the inevitable time when, unless we do something to stop it, men will be hunting men through the ruins, for food. We’re letting it drift towards that, with an evil irresponsibility, because with our ordinary short lives we shan’t be here to see it. Does our generation care about the misery it is bequeathing? Not it. “That’s their worry,” we say. “Damn our children’s children; we’re all right.

Babies, in a world that already has far too many, remain desirable.

Half the political intelligentsia who talk to a working audience don’t get the value of their stuff across – not so much because they’re over their audience’s heads, as because half the chaps are listening to the voice and not to the words, so they knock a big discount off what they do hear because it’s all a bit fancy, and not like ordinary, normal talk.

Reality is relative. Devils, evil spirits, witches and so on became real enough to the people who believed in them. Just as God is to people who believe in Him. When people live their lives by their beliefs objective reality is almost irrelevant.

I’m quite sure there is a simple way. The trouble is that simple ways so often come out of such complicated research.

In Oppley they’re smart, and in Stouch they’re smarmy, but Midwich folk are just plain barmy.

We are not shut away into individual cages from which we can reach out only with inadequate words.

They persisted in the face of discouragement until they gained the kind of acceptance accorded to the inevitable.