The quotations of

H. G. Wells

English writer

1866–1946

29 quotes, most often on Nature, Government and Science.

Moral indignation is jealousy with a halo.
The Wife of Sir Isaac Harman (1914), p. 299
- Morality
Our true nationality is mankind.
The Outline of History (1920), Ch. 41
- Patriotism
If we don’t end war, war will end us.
Things to Come (1936)
- War & Peace
The Social Contract is nothing more or less than a vast conspiracy of human beings to lie to and humbug themselves and one another for the general good. Lies are the mortar that bind the savage individual man into the social masonry.
Love and Mr Lewisham (1899), Ch. 23
- Government
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.
The Outline of History (1920), Ch. 28
- Christianity
Adapt or perish, now as ever, is Nature’s inexorable imperative.
The Mind at the End of its Tether (1945), p. 19
- Change
- Nature
Crime and bad lives are the measure of a State’s failure, all crime in the end is the crime of the community.
A Modern Utopia (1905), Ch. 5, sect. 2
- Government
The past is but the beginning of a beginning, and all that is or has been is but the twilight of the dawn.
The Discovery of the Future (1901)
- Time
Human history becomes more and more a race between education and catastrophe… Yet, clumsily or smoothly, the world, it seems, progresses and will progress.
The Outline of History (1920), Ch. 41
- Education
- History
There is nothing in machinery, there is nothing in embankments and railways and iron bridges and engineering devices to oblige them to be ugly. Ugliness is the measure of imperfection.
A Modern Utopia (1905), Ch. 3, sect. 8
- Beauty
- Technology
The atomic bomb had dwarfed the international issues to complete insignificance.
The World Set Free (1913)
- War & Peace
Ashoka (264 to 227 B.C.), one of the great monarchs of history, whose dominions extended from Afghanistan to Madras… is the only military monarch on record who abandoned warfare after victory.
The Outline of History (1920), chapter no. 25.4 (Buddhism and Ashoka) page no 365-366
- History
- War & Peace
We do not want dictators, we do not want oligarchic parties or class rule, we want a widespread world intelligence conscious of itself.
World Brain (1938), Preface, p. xvi
- Government
- Knowledge
Money and credit are as much human contrivances as bicycles, and as liable to expansion and modification as any other sort of prevalent but imperfect machine.
Anticipations of the Reaction of Mechanical and Scientific Progress Upon Human Life and Thought (1901), The Faith, Morals, and Public Policy of The New Republic, pp. 340–343
- Economics
- Money
There is no difference between Time and any of the three dimensions of Space except that our consciousness moves along it.
The Time Machine (1895), Chapter IIn context
- Science
- Time

Often credited to H. G. Wells

Quotes often credited to H. G. Wells that were said or written by someone else.

In politics, strangely enough, the best way to play your cards is to lay them face upwards on the table.
?UnattributedOften credited to H. G. Wells
- Politics

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