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Herbert George (H.G.) Wells
(21 Sep 1866 - 13 Aug 1946)

English author who is famous for his science fiction novels, but was a prolific writer of both non-fiction and fiction in various genres. His best-known works include The Time Machine, The War of the Worlds and The Invisible Man. He was a socialist and active as a pacifist.

Science Quotes by Herbert George (H.G.) Wells (2)

Heresies are experiments in man's unsatisfied search for truth.
— Herbert George (H.G.) Wells
Crux Ansata: An Indictment of the Roman Catholic Church (1943, 2000), 15.
See also:  |  Experiment (115)

Why had we come to the moon?
The thing presented itself to me as a perplexing problem. What is this spirit in man that urges him for ever to depart from happiness and security, to toil, to place himself in danger, to risk an even a reasonable certainty of death? It dawned upon me that there in the moon as a thing I ought always to have known, that man is not made to go about safe and comfortable and well fed and amused. ... against his interest, against his happiness, he is constantly being driven to do unreasonable things. Some force not himself impels him, and he must go.
— Herbert George (H.G.) Wells
The First Men in the Moon (1901)
See also:  |  Adventure (4)  |  Exploration (15)



Quotes by others about Herbert George (H.G.) Wells (2)

I do not see the possibility of comparison between his [H. G. Wells] work and mine. We do not proceed in the same manner. It occurs to me that his stories do not repose on a very scientific basis. ... I make use of physics. He invents. I go to the moon in a cannon-ball, discharged from a cannon. Here there is no invention. He goes to Mars in an airship, which he constructs of a metal which does not obey the law of gravitation. Ça c'est très joli ... but show me this metal. Let him produce it.
Quoted in R. H. Sherard, 'Jules Verne Re-Visited', T.P.'s Weekly (9 Oct 1903).
See also:  |  Science Fiction (4)

I consider [H. G. Wells], as a purely imaginative writer, to be deserving of very high praise, but our methods are entirely different. I have always made a point in my romances of basing my so-called inventions upon a groundwork of actual fact, and of using in their construction methods and materials which are not entirely without the pale of contemporary engineering skill and knowledge. ... The creations of Mr. Wells, on the other hand, belong unreservedly to an age and degree of scientific knowledge far removed from the present, though I will not say entirely beyond the limits of the possible.
Gordon Jones, 'Jules Verne at Home', Temple Bar (Jun 1904), 129, 670.
See also:  |  Science Fiction (4)


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