William Golding quotes - page 4

We need more humanity, more care, more love. There are those who expect a political system to produce that; and others who expect the love to produce the system. My own faith is that the truth of the future lies between the two and we shall behave humanly and a bit humanely, stumbling along, haphazardly generous and gallant, foolishly and meanly wise until the rape of our planet is seen to be the preposterous folly that it is. (William Golding)
Basically I'm an optimist. Intellectually I can see man's balance is about fifty-fifty, and his chances of blowing himself up are about one to one. I can't see this any way but intellectually. I'm just emotionally unable to believe that he will do this.
William Golding
Now we, if not in the spirit, have been caught up to see our earth, our mother, Gaia Mater, set like a jewel in space.
William Golding
Reason, when it is refined into logic, has something to offer but only in terms of itself and depends for its effect and use on the nature of the premise.
William Golding
Simon's head was tilted slightly up. His eyes could not break away and the Lord of the Flies hung in space before him.
William Golding
Jack held the head and jammed the soft throat down on the pointed end of the stick which pierced through into the mouth. He stood back and the head hung there, a little blood dribbling down the stick." Instinctively the boys drew back too; and the forest was very still. They listened, and the loudest noise was the buzzing of the flies over the spilled guts."
William Golding
I suffer those varying levels or intensities of belief which are, it seems, the human condition.
William Golding
My book was to say you think that now the war is over and an evil thing destroyed, you are safe because you are naturally kind and decent. But I know why the thing rose in Germany. I know it could it could happen in any country. It could happen here.
William Golding
He wanted to explain how people were never quite what you thought they were.
William Golding
Novelists do not write as birds sing, by the push of nature. It is part of the job that there should be much routine and some daily stuff on the level of carpentry.
William Golding
Marx, Darwin and Freud are the three most crashing bores of the Western World. Simplistic popularization of their ideas has thrust our world into a mental straitjacket from which we can only escape by the most anarchic violence. (William Golding)
The rules!» shouted Ralph, «you're breaking the rules!» «Who cares?» Ralph summoned his wits. «Because the rules are the only thing we've got!
William Golding
Basically I'm an optimist. Intellectually I can see man's balance is about fifty-fifty, and his chances of blowing himself up are about one to one. I can't see this any way but intellectually. I'm just emotionally unable to believe that he will do this. This means that I am by nature an optimist and by intellectual conviction a pessimist, I suppose.
William Golding
"Aren't you going to swim?" Piggy shook his head. "I can't swim. I wasn't allowed. My asthma-" "Sucks to your ass-mar!" Piggy bore this with a kind of humble patience.
William Golding
The chant was audible but at that distance still wordless. Behind Jack walked the twins, carrying a great stake on their shoulders. The gutted carcass of a pig swung from the stake, swinging heavily as the twins toiled over the uneven ground. The pig's head hung down with gaping neck and seemed to search for something on the ground. At last the words of the chant floated up to them, across the bowl of blackened wood and ashes. "Kill the pig! Cut her throat! Spill the blood!" Yet as the words became audible, the procession reached the steepest part of the mountain, and in a minute or two the chant had died away.
William Golding