William Golding Quotes

Quotes about:

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  I think women are foolish to pretend they are equal to men, they are far superior and always have been.

  William Golding

  Strong Women, Thinking, Novelists

  YouTube Chanel "AbecedariusRex"/ "Golding's Introduction to Lord of the Flies", www.youtube.com. May 22, 2010.

  1615 Copy quote

• Before the Second World War I believed in the perfectibility of social man; that a correct structure of society would produce goodwill; and that therefore you could remove all social ills by a reorganisation of society. .... but after the war I did not because I was unable to. I had discovered what one man could do to another... I must say that anyone who moved through those years without understanding that man produces evil as a bee produces honey, must have been blind or wrong in the head...

  William Golding

  War, Men, Years

  "The Hot Gates". Book by William Golding, 1965.

  437 Copy quote

• We have a disharmony in our natures. We cannot live together without injuring each other.

  William Golding

  Together, Disharmony

  343 Copy quote

• What are we? Humans? Or animals? Or savages?

  William Golding

  Animal, Savages, Humans

  W. Meitcke, William Golding (1984). “William Golding's Lord of the Flies”, p.49, Barron's Educational Series

  17 Copy quote

• I began to see what people were capable of doing. Anyone who moved through those years without understanding that man produces evil as a bee produces honey, must have been blind or wrong in the head.

  William Golding

  Men, Years, People

  253 Copy quote

• However you disguise novels, they are always biographies.

  William Golding

  Biographies, Novel, Disguise

  Source: www.teachingbooks.net

  32 Copy quote

• I am astonished at the ease with which uninformed persons come to a settled, a passionate opinion when they have no grounds for judgment.

  William Golding

  Passionate, Ease, Opinion

  William Golding (2013). “To the Ends of the Earth”, p.414, Faber & Faber

  201 Copy quote

• The thing is - fear can't hurt you any more than a dream.

  William Golding

  Dream, Hurt, Piggy

  William Golding (2013). “Lord of the Flies : Text , Criticism , Giossary and Notes”, p.96, Al Manhal

  183 Copy quote

• I believe man suffers from an appalling ignorance of his own nature. I produce my own view in the belief that it may be something like the truth.

  William Golding

  Believe, Ignorance, Men

  180 Copy quote

• We're all mad, the whole damned race. We're wrapped in illusions, delusions, confusions about the penetrability of partitions, we're all mad and in solitary confinement.

  William Golding

  Race, Mad, Confusion

  WILLIAM GOLDING (1979). “DARKNESS VISIBLE”

  207 Copy quote

• No human endeavour can ever be wholly good... it must always have a cost.

  William Golding

  Cost, Endeavour, Humans

  110 Copy quote

• Consider a man riding a bicycle. Whoever he is, we can say three things about him. We know he got on the bicycle and started to move. We know that at some point he will stop and get off. Most important of all, we know that if at any point between the beginning and the end of his journey he stops moving and does not get off the bicycle he will fall off it. That is a metaphor for the journey through life of any living thing, and I think of any society of living things.

  William Golding

  Life, Moving, Fall

  248 Copy quote

• I am by nature an optimist and by intellectual conviction a pessimist.

  William Golding

  Intellectual, Conviction, Pessimist

  William Golding (1983). “Lord of the Flies”, p.211, Penguin

  180 Copy quote

• Maybe there is a beast… maybe it's only us.

  William Golding

  Beast, Lord

  William Golding (2016). “Lord of the Flies: (Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition)”, p.158, Penguin

  67 Copy quote

• Art is partly communication, but only partly. The rest is discovery.

  William Golding

  Inspirational, Life, Art

  Jack I. Biles, William Golding (1970). “Talk: conversations with William Golding”, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt P

  13 Copy quote

• A crowd of grade-three thinkers, all shouting the same thing, all warming their hands at the fire of their own prejudices, will not thank you for pointing out the contradictions in their beliefs. Man is a gregarious animal, and enjoys agreement as cows will graze all the same way on the side of a hill.

  William Golding

  Animal, Men, Fire

  222 Copy quote

• My yesterdays walk with me. They keep step, they are gray faces that peer over my shoulder.

  William Golding

  Past, Journey, Hiking

  168 Copy quote

• At the moment of vision, the eyes see nothing.

  William Golding

  Eye, Vision, Moments

  William Golding (2013). “The Spire: With an introduction by John Mullan”, p.21, Faber & Faber

  141 Copy quote

• The greatest ideas are the simplest.

  William Golding

  Ideas, Simplicity, Insight

  William Golding (1954). “Lord of the Flies”, p.181, Penguin

  117 Copy quote

• Utopias are presented for our inspection as a critique of the human state. If they are to be treated as anything but trivial exercises of the imagination. I suggest there is a simple test we can apply. We must forget the whole paraphernalia of social description, demonstration, expostulation, approbation, condemnation. We have to say to ourselves, How would I myself live in this proposed society? How long would it be before I went stark staring mad?

  William Golding

  Exercise, Simple, Long

  178 Copy quote

• The greatest pleasure is not - say - sex or geometry. It is just understanding. And if you can get people to understand their own humanity - well, that's the job of the writer.

  William Golding

  Jobs, Sex, People

  27 Copy quote

• What a man does defiles him, not what is done by others.

  William Golding

  Responsibility, Men, Doe

  William Golding (2013). “Rites of Passage: With an introduction by Robert McCrum”, p.156, Faber & Faber

  116 Copy quote

• But forgiveness must not only be given but received also.

  William Golding

  Forgiveness, Given

  11 Copy quote

• How can you expect to be rescued if you don’t put first things first and act proper?

  William Golding

  Firsts, Put First Things First, First Things First

  William Golding (1954). “Lord of the Flies”, p.57, Penguin

  24 Copy quote

• I will tell you what man is. He is a freak, an ejected foetus robbed of his natural development, thrown out into the world with a naked covering of parchment, with too little room for his teeth and a soft bulging skull like a bubble. But nature stirs a pudding there.

  William Golding

  Men, Skulls, World

  "The World and the Book: A Study of Modern Fiction". Book by Gabriel Josipovici, 1971.

  8 Copy quote

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