Let's take a cosmic leap back in time to the turn of the 20th century, when the realm of science fiction was just starting to stretch its imaginative limbs. A powerhouse in this burgeoning genre was the British visionary, H.G. Wells, whose boundary-pushing narratives etched themselves into the fabric of literary history. Our mission today? To delve into a curated collection of 50 of the most compelling “Sci-fi H.G. Wells Quotes” that, even over a century later, continue to provoke our thoughts and challenge our perceptions.
Did you know that our protagonist, H.G. Wells, was not just a prolific novelist but also a teacher, historian, and keen futurist? His illustrious career is peppered with wondrous stories, but one of the most fascinating is how his vision of future technology was so precise that he is often hailed as the “man who invented tomorrow”. It's this foresight that shimmers through the many “H.G. Wells Quotes” we will explore, ones that ripple with profound insight, scientific curiosity, and a touch of the otherworldly. So strap in, dear readers. Our interstellar journey through the expansive universe of Wells' sci-fi quotes begins now.
Inventing The Future
1. “No one would have believed in the last years of the nineteenth century that this world was being watched keenly and closely by intelligences greater than man's and yet as mortal as his own.” – The War of the Worlds
2. “Scientific people… know very well that Time is only a kind of Space.” – The Time Machine
3. “Human history becomes more and more a race between education and catastrophe.” – The Outline of History
4. “I write as straight as I can, just as I walk as straight as I can, because that is the best way to get there.” – A Modern Utopia
5. “We all have our time machines, don't we. Those that take us back are memories…And those that carry us forward, are dreams.” – The Time Machine
6. “Go on! Fire that ray into me! Can’t you see all mankind waits upon this little moment here.” – The War of the Worlds
7. “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.” – The Discovery of the Future
8. “Adapt or perish, now as ever, is nature's inexorable imperative.” – A Short History of the World
9. “Things must be done, not dreamt.” – The Sleeper Awakes
10. “There is no intelligence where there is no change and no need of change.” – The Time Machine
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- “The past is but the beginning of a beginning, and all that is and has been is but the twilight of the dawn.” – The Discovery of the Future
- “If we don't end war, war will end us.” – The War in the Air
- “In solitude, where we are least alone.” – The Island of Doctor Moreau
- “Man is the unnatural animal, the rebel child of nature, and more and more does he turn himself against the harsh and fitful hand that reared him.” – A Modern Utopia
- “It is not reasonable that those who gamble with men's lives should not stake their own.” – The War of the Worlds
- “Every time I see an adult on a bicycle, I no longer despair for the future of the human race.” – A Modern Utopia
- “Our true nationality is mankind.” – In the Fourth Year
- “The first men in the moon very nearly lost their lives.” – The First Men in the Moon
- “One may picture, too, the sudden shifting of the attention, the swiftly spreading coils and bellyings of that blackness advancing headlong.” – The War of the Worlds
- “Nature never appeals to intelligence until habit and instinct are useless. There is no intelligence where there is no need of change.” – The Time Machine
Exploring The Unknown
- “It sounds plausible enough tonight, but wait until tomorrow. Wait for the common sense of the morning.” – The Time Machine
- “Our lives, our tears, as water, are poured upon the ground.” – The War of the Worlds
- “For so it had come about, as indeed I and many men might have foreseen had not terror and disaster blinded our minds.” – The War of the Worlds
- “One's own life seemed puny against the background of so much destruction.” – The War of the Worlds
- “Some people bear three kinds of trouble — the ones they've had, the ones they have, and the ones they expect to have.” – The Island of Doctor Moreau
- “The only difference between the saint and the sinner is that every saint has a past, and every sinner has a future.” – The Soul of a Bishop
- “All the universe is full of the lives of perfect creatures.” – The Island of Doctor Moreau
- “Suffering for love's sake is the same as happiness.” – The Wonderful Visit
- “Science is a match that man has just got alight. He thought he was in a room – in moments of devotion, a temple – and that his light would be reflected from and display walls inscribed with wonderful secrets and pillars carved with philosophical systems wrought into harmony.” – The New Machiavelli
- “The forceps of our minds are clumsy forceps, and crush the truth a little in taking hold of it.” – The History of Mr. Polly
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Dystopia and Utopia
- “The wonderful things to be seen below the sea are beyond description.” – The Sea Lady
- “Every dogma, every philosophic or theological creed, was shaken, every art, every science was brought into question; the methods of education were reformed; the very keynote of life was changed.” – When the Sleeper Wakes
- “The story of man is the history, first of the acceptance and imposition of restraints necessary to communal living, and secondly, of the emancipation of the individual within those restraints.” – A Short History of the World
- “Living wild beasts are not a common thing in modern exhibitions. They have ceased to be fashionable some years ago.” – The Island of Doctor Moreau
- “How small the vastest of human catastrophes may seem at a distance of a few million miles.” – The Star
- “I have seen a little sunshine—I have had happy moments.” – The Island of Doctor Moreau
- “It is a law of nature we overlook, that intellectual versatility is the compensation for change, danger, and trouble.” – The Time Machine
- “Science is very largely a set of stories, a set of directions, saying to human beings, ‘This way ahead.'” – The Outline of History
- “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.” – The Outline of History
- “Here was neither peace, nor rest, nor a moment's safety. All was confusion and action, and every moment life and limb were in peril.” – The War of the Worlds
Pondering on Morality and Ethics
- “Moral indignation is jealousy with a halo.” – The Wife of Sir Isaac Harman
- “In all the round world there is no meat. There used to be. But now we cannot stand the thought of slaughterhouses.” – A Modern Utopia
- “The crisis of today is the joke of tomorrow.” – The Sleeper Awakes
- “But who shall dwell in these worlds if they be inhabited?… Are we or they Lords of the World? And how are all things made for man?” – The War of the Worlds
- “The path of least resistance is the path of the loser.” – The War in the Air
- “To attempt to pay for indulgence in the past by suffering in the present is not sanity. It is not even justice. It is a neurasthenic folly.” – The New Machiavelli
- “Beauty is in the heartof the beholder.” – The Beauty of the Commonplace
- “There is, though I do not know how there is or why there is, a sense of infinite peace and protection in the glittering hosts of heaven.” – The War of the Worlds
- “The human being is a very poorly designed machine tool. The human figure is a very inefficient design for a machine.” – The War in the Air
- “I had not thought before of the pain and trouble that came to these poor victims after they had passed from Moreau's hands. I had shivered only at the days of actual torment in the enclosure.” – The Island of Doctor Moreau
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