"Just as the historian can teach no..." - Quote by George Bernard Shaw

“We should have had socialism already, but for the socialists, am quite willing to drop the name if dropping it will help me to get the thing.”

“From Mozart I learnt to say important things in a conversational way.”

“Whenever an obviously well founded statement is made in England by a person specially well acquainted with the facts, that unlucky person is instantly and frantically contradicted by all the people who obviously know nothing about it.”

“Beauty is for the artist something outside all orders of rank, because in beauty opposites are tamed; the highest sign of power, namely power over opposites; moreover, without tension: - that violence is no longer needed: that everything follows, obeys, so easily and so pleasantly - that is what delights the artist's WILL TO POWER.”

“You can rave about Stravinsky without the slightest risk of being classified as a lunatic by the next generation .”

“There is a metaphysical honour in ending the world's absurdity. Conquest or play-acting, multiple loves, absurd revolt are tributes that man pays to his dignity in a campaign in which he is defeated in advance.... War cannot be negated. One must live it or die of it. So it is with the absurd: it is a question of breathing with it, of recognizing its lessons and recovering their flesh. In this regard the absurd joy par excellence is creation. "Art and nothing but art", said Nietzsche, "we have art in order not to die of the truth."”

“The history of science fiction started in the caves 20,000 years ago. The ideas on the walls of the cave were problems to be solved. It's problem solving. Primitive scientific knowledge, primitive dreams, primitive blueprinting: to solve problems.”

“The year I was born, 1955, the first big disease-eradication program in the world was declared for malaria. After about a decade of work, they realized that, at least in the tropical areas, they did not have the tools to get it done.”

“I claim to have been a lifelong and wholly disinterested friend of the British people.”