Quote

The book is second only to the wheel as the best piece of technology human beings have ever invented. A book symbolises the whole intellectual history of mankind it's the greatest weapon ever devised in the war against stupidity.

Philip Pullman

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Philip Pullman
Age: 78
Born: 1946
Born: October 19
Audiobook Narrator
Executive Producer
Film Writer
Librarian
Novelist
Playwright
University Teacher
Writer
Norwich
Norfolk
Sir Philip Pullman
Humans
Pieces
Wheels
Book
Technology
Stupidity
Whole
Greatest
Piece
War
Weapons
History
Beings
Devised
Best
Intellectual
Wheel
Ever
Mankind
Weapon
Human
Second
Invented

More quotes by Philip Pullman

Image
We have to learn everything we do.
Philip Pullman
Image
I'm perfectly happy about being superstitious and atheistic.
Philip Pullman
Image
I don't see any sign of God in this world, in the place where we live and things we know. It can all be explained to my mind perfectly satisfactorily without God. But in the great darkness beyond this little spark of light where I live, of course there may be all kinds of things. There may be a god. So I'm really an agnostic.
Philip Pullman
Image
All the history of human life has been a struggle between wisdom and stupidity.
Philip Pullman
Image
What I couldn't help noticing was that I learned more about the novel in a morning by trying to write a page of one than I'd learned in seven years or so of trying to write criticism
Philip Pullman
Image
Then she was pressing her little proud broken self against his face, as close as she could get, and then they died.
Philip Pullman
Image
I write almost always in the third person, and I don't think the narrator is male or female anyway. They're both, and young and old, and wise and silly, and sceptical and credulous, and innocent and experienced, all at once. Narrators are not even human - they're sprites.
Philip Pullman
Image
Literary modernism kind of grew out of a sense that, “Oh my god! I’m telling a story! Oh, that can’t be the case, because I’m a clever person. I’m a literary person! What am I going to do to distinguish myself? I know! I’ll write Ulysses.”
Philip Pullman
Image
And barely ten minutes later the soft sound of wingbeats came to their ears, and Balthamos stood up eagerly. The next moment, the two angels were embracing, and Will, gazing into the flames, saw their mutual affection. More than affection: they loved each other with a passion.
Philip Pullman
Image
True education flowers at the point when delight falls in love with responsibility.
Philip Pullman
Image
We feel cold, but we don't mind it, because we will not come to harm. And if we wrapped up against the cold, we wouldn't feel other things, like the bright tingle of the stars, or the music of the aurora, or best of all the silky feeling of moonlight on our skin. It's worth being cold for that.
Philip Pullman
Image
She longed for cutlasses, pistols, and brandy she had to make do with coffee, and pencils, and verbs.
Philip Pullman
Image
Sticks and stones, I'll break yer bones, but names ain't worth a quarrel.
Philip Pullman
Image
...because where we are is always the most important place.
Philip Pullman
Image
If you want to write anything that works, you have to go with the grain of your talent, not against it. If your talent is inert and sullen in the face of business or politics...but takes fire at the thought of ghosts and vampires and witches and demons then feed the flames, feed the flames.
Philip Pullman
Image
When you live for many hundreds of years, you know that every opportunity will come again.
Philip Pullman
Image
I don't profess any religion I don't think it's possible that there is a God.... My books are about killing God.
Philip Pullman
Image
Religion begins in story. Yes, it does, because religion is an attempt to make sense of what is incomprehensible to us, what is inexplicable, what is awe-inspiring, what is frightening, what moves us to great wonder, and so on. That is the religious impulse, and it is part of our psychological makeup -- of everyone's psychological makeup.
Philip Pullman
Image
For a long time I thought I was a poet, but that's a high title to claim.
Philip Pullman
Image
The fairy tale is in a perpetual state of becoming and alteration. To keep to one version or one translation alone is to put robin redbreast in a cage.
Philip Pullman