Quotations

The first man who having enclosed a piece of ground, bethought himself of saying ‘This is mine’, and found people simple enough to believe him, was the real founder of civil society.

The point is that we’re all sleepwalkers, says Charles T. Tart, one of the world’s leading researchers into human consciousness.

Disproportionate and unaccountable power, then, is not healthy. It merely bolsters an artificial sense of being somebody. It carries its price to pay.

It is said that the close study of stone will reveal traces of fires suffered thousands of years ago… I am beginning to believe that we know everything, that all history, including the history of each family, is part of us, such that, when we hear

I sit and feel lonely. Sitting and feeling lonely is something I am a spectacular success at. I can do it for hours. Everyone is good at something.

Like thunder, the stable clock struck four. Never did any earthquake so demolish a whole town. The gallery and all its occupants fell to powder. Her own face, that had been dark and sombre as she gazed, was lit as by an explosion of gunpowder.

Actual happiness always looks pretty squalid in comparison with the over-compensations for misery. And, of course, stability isn’t nearly so spectacular as instability.

Whenever I came home with a good catch, I’d share it out as I cycled home the 5 miles through Ranish, Crossbost and Leurbost villages. This was the late 1960s and even then few people had fridges; still fewer freezers.

For the power of enclosing land and owning property was brought into the creation by your ancestors by the sword; which first did murder their fellow creatures, men, and after plunder or steal away their land, and left this land successively to yo

In the beginning of time the great creator, Reason, made the earth to be a common treasury, to preserve beasts, birds, fishes and man, the lord that was to govern this creation … Not one word was spoken in the beginning that one branch of mankind