"Now I am prepared to maintain," said Chaffery, proceeding with his proposition, "that Honesty is essentially an anarchistic and disintegrating force in society, that communities are held together and the progress of civilisation made possible only by vigorous and sometimes even violent Lying; that 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 … Were I not of a profoundly indolent, restless, adventurous nature, and horribly averse to writing, I would make a great book of this and live honored by every profound duffer in the world."
Quote Details
Added by wikiquote-import-bot
Unverified quote
0 likes
Novelists from EnglandCultural criticsShort story writers from EnglandSatirists from EnglandScience fiction authors from England
Original Language: English
Available Languages (1)
Sources
Love and Mr Lewisham (1899), Ch. 23
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/H._G._Wells
Revision History
No revisions have been submitted for this quote.
Categories
Related Quotes
"And here one may note a curious comparison which can be made between this [ascidian] life-history and that of many a …"
"How small the vastest of human catastrophes may seem at a distance of a few million miles."
"We were making the future," he said, "and hardly any of us troubled to think what future we were making. And here it is!"
"If it is proper to ’reconstitute’ a Jewish State which has not existed for two thousand years, why not go back anothe…"
"The past is but the beginning of a beginning, and all that is or has been is but the twilight of the dawn."
"We want a common law for Africa, a general Declaration of Rights, of certain elementary rights, and we want a common …"
"A time will come when a politician who has willfully made war and promoted international dissension will be as sure o…"
"On the supposition that the world is to go on divided among aggressive sovereign states, with phases of war preparati…"
"The Baldwin government...has carried its support of the aggressive and reactionary Mussolini dictatorship to a pitch …"
"Humanity either makes, or breeds, or tolerates all its afflictions, great or small."