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

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William Golding
Age: 81 †
Born: 1911
Born: September 19
Died: 1993
Died: June 19
Novelist
Poet
Science Fiction Writer
Screenwriter
Writer
Newquay
Cornwall
William Gerald Albert Golding
Sir William Gerald Golding
Animal
Hills
Pointing
Gregarious
Belief
Beliefs
Warming
Thinkers
Enjoy
Crowds
Cows
Enjoys
Three
Prejudice
Thinker
Contradictions
Hands
Thank
Grades
Shouting
Thing
Side
Contradiction
Prejudices
Way
Sides
Crowd
Hill
Men
Fire
Agreement
Grade
Graze

More quotes by William Golding

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I'm scared of him, said Piggy, and that's why I know him. If you're scared of someone you hate him but you can't stop thinking about him. You kid yourself he's all right really, an' then when you see him again it's like asthma an' you can't breathe.
William Golding
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Nothing is so impenetrable as laughter in a language you don't understand.
William Golding
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Among the virtues and vices that make up the British character, we have one vice, at least, that Americans ought to view with sympathy. For they appear to be the only people who share it with us. I mean our worship of the antique. I do not refer to beauty or even historical association. I refer to age, to a quantity of years.
William Golding
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Ralph... would treat the day's decisions as though he were playing chess. The only trouble was that he would never be a very good chess player.
William Golding
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I am not a theologian or a philosopher. I am a story teller.
William Golding
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We just got to go on, that's all. That's what grownups would do.
William Golding
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They accepted the pleasures of morning, the bright sun, the whelming sea and sweet air, as a time when play was good and life so full that hope was not necessary and therefore forgotten.
William Golding
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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
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I do like people to read the books twice, because I write my novels about ideas which concern me deeply and I think are important, and therefore I want people to take them seriously. And to read it twice of course is taking it seriously.
William Golding
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Simon became inarticulate in his effort to express mankind's essential illness.
William Golding
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Even if you got rid of paper, you would still have story-tellers. In fact, you had the story-tellers before you had the paper.
William Golding
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I do think that art that doesn't communicate is useless.
William Golding
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This is our island. It's a good island. Until the grownups come to fetch us we'll have fun.
William Golding
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The thing is - fear can't hurt you any more than a dream.
William Golding
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For a small island [Great Britain], the place is remarkably diverse.
William Golding
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Heaven lies around us in our infancy.
William Golding
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Which is better, law and rescue, or hunting and breaking things up?
William Golding
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The trouble was, if you were a chief you had to think, you had to be wise.
William Golding
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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
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Together, joined in effort by the burden, they staggered up the last steep of the mountain. Together, they chanted One! Two! Three! and crashed the log on to the great pile. Then they stepped back, laughing with triumphant pleasure.
William Golding