text:
Moshe Dayan

Moshe Dayan (20 May 1915 – 16 October 1981) was an Israeli military leader and politician. As commander of the Jerusalem front in the 1948 Arab–Israeli War, Chief of Staff of the Israel Defense Forces (1953–1958) during the 1956 Suez Crisis, but mainly as Defense Minister during the Six-Day War in 1967, he became a worldwide fighting symbol of the new state of Israel. In the 1930s, Dayan joined the Haganah, the pre-state Jewish defense force of Mandatory Palestine. He served in the Special Night Squads under Orde Charles Wingate during the Arab revolt in Palestine and later lost an eye in a raid on Vichy forces in Lebanon during World War II.

Quotes

 * The Israeli army is called a "defense force" but it is not a defensive army. . . . The Sinai campaign (1956), the reprisal acts and the raids across the border were purely offensive operations, and were of decisive value. . . . Not only the actions which were actually carried out but also the IDF's prevailing conception is offensive. . . . The most significant technical expression of the new approach . . . is the absence of fortifications and fencing along the country's borders. Although the Government's policy is, politically speaking, essentially defensive – those responsible for the armed forces have refrained from adopting defensive measures. Their response to Arab provocation has been counter-attacks, raids on enemy bases, transferring the war to the Arab countries . . . to put it simply: the IDF is a characteristically offensive army as regards theory, planning and execution, in body and spirit.
 * April 1967. This quote is the epigraph to The Israeli Military and the Origins of the 1967 War by Ami Gluska (Routledge, 2007), ISBN: 978-0-415-39245-7
 * We came to this country which was already populated by Arabs, and we are establishing a Hebrew, that is a Jewish state here. In considerable areas of the country we bought lands from the Arabs. Jewish villages were built in the place of Arab villages. You do not even know the names of these Arab villages, and I do not blame you, because these geography books no longer exist; not only do the books not exist, the Arab villages are not there either. Nahalal arose in the place of Mahalul, Gevat — in the place of Jibta, Sarid — in the place of Haneifs and Kefar Yehoshua — in the place of Tell Shaman. There is no one place built in this country that did not have a former Arab population.
 * From an address given to Technion University students (19 March 1969), a transcription of which appeared in Ha'aretz (4 April 1969), quoted in The Question of Palestine (1980) by Edward Said, p. 14

 * There is no more Palestine. Finished . ..
 * As quoted in TIME Magazine (30 July 1973)

 * If you want to make peace, you don't talk to your friends. You talk to your enemies.
 * As quoted in Newsweek (17 October 1977)

 * Let's say "we don't have a solution, and you will continue living like dogs, and whoever wants will go, and we'll see how this procedure will work out." For now, it works out. Let's say the truth. We want peace. If there is no peace, we will maintain military rule and we will have four to five military compounds on the mountains, and they will sit ten years under the Israeli military regime. Whoever wants to go, will want. It's possible that in five years, there will be 200,000 fewer people, and that's an enormous thing.
 * Strategizing an approach to the refugees in West Bank if Jordan rejects a peace deal, in Mehiro shel Ihud (Revivim, 1985) by Yossi Beilin, p. 42

 * It is not in our hands to prevent the murder of workers… and families… but it is in our hands to fix a high price for our blood, so high that the Arab community and the Arab military forces will not be willing to pay it.
 * As quoted in Warrior : The Autobiography of Ariel Sharon (1989)

 * In two cases I did not fulfill my role as defense minister, in that I did not stop things that I was sure should have been stopped.
 * On Israeli settlements on the Golan Heights and in Hebron, in a private conversation in 1976 with Rami Tal, as quoted in Associated Press reports (11 May 1997)

 * Along the Syria border there were no farms and no refugee camps — there was only the Syrian army... The kibbutzim saw the good agricultural land … and they dreamed about it... They didn't even try to hide their greed for the land... We would send a tractor to plow some area where it wasn't possible to do anything, in the demilitarized area, and knew in advance that the Syrians would start to shoot. If they didn't shoot, we would tell the tractor to advance further, until in the end the Syrians would get annoyed and shoot. And then we would use artillery and later the air force also, and that's how it was...The Syrians, on the fourth day of the war, were not a threat to us.
 * On pre-1967 clashes with the Syrians, from a private conversation in 1976 with Rami Tal, as quoted in The New York Times and Associated Press reports (11 May 1997)

 * Let us not today cast blame on the murderers. Who are we to argue against their potent hatred for us? For eight years they have been sitting in the refugee camps in Gaza, and before their eyes we have been turning the land and villages in which they and their forefathers lived into our own inheritance... We are the generation of settlement, and without steel helmets and the maw of the cannon we will not be able to plant a tree or build a home. Our children will not live if we do not dig shelters, and without barbed wire fences and machine guns we will not be able to pave roads or drill for water. Millions of Jews, annihilated because they had no country, gaze at us from the dust of Jewish history and command us to settle and raise up a land for our people.
 * Rise and Kill First (2018) by Ronen Bergman, p. 49. Citing Moshe Dayan by Mordechai Bar-On, p. 128-129

Righteous Victims (1999)

 * Quotes of Dayan from Righteous Victims : A History of the Zionist-Arab Conflict, 1881-1999 by Benny Morris

 * The only method that proved effective, not justified or moral but effective, when Arabs plant mines on our side [is retaliation]. If we try to search for the [particular] Arab [who planted mines], it has not value. But if we harass the nearby village . . . then the population there comes out against the [infiltrators] . . . and the Egyptian Government and the Transjordanian Government are [driven] to prevent such incidents, because their prestige is [assailed], as the Jews have opened fire, and they are unready to begin a war . . . the method of collective punishment so far has proved effective.

The Iron Wall (1999)

 * Quotes of Dayan from The Iron Wall: Israel and the Arab World by Avi Shlaim

 * Let us not today fling accusation at the murderers. What cause have we to complain about their fierce hatred to us? For eight years now, they sit in their refugee camps in Gaza, and before their eyes we turn into our homestead the land and villages in which they and their forefathers have lived. We should demand his blood not from the Arabs of Gaza but from ourselves. . . . Let us make our reckoning today. We are a generation of settlers, and without the steel helmet and gun barrel, we shall not be able to plant a tree or build a house. . . . Let us not be afraid to see the hatred that accompanies and consumes the lives of hundreds of thousands of Arabs who sit all around us and wait for the moment when their hands will be able to reach our blood.

 * We could not guard every water pipeline from being blown up and every tree from being uprooted. We could not prevent every murder of a worker in an orchard or a family in their beds. But it was in our power to set high price for our blood, a price too high for the Arab community, the Arab army, or the Arab governments to think it worth paying. . . It was in our power to cause the Arab governments to renounce 'the policy of strength' toward Israel by turning it into a demonstration of weakness.

 * All that is required is to find an officer, even a captain would do, to win his heart or buy him with money to get him to agreed to declare himself the savior of the Maronite population. Then the Israeli army will enter Lebanon, occupy the necessary territory, create a Christian regime that will ally itself with Israel. The territory from Litani southward will be totally annexed to Israel, and everything will fall into place.
 * While trying to work out a plan to internally destabilize Lebanon in favor of a Christian-Maronite government.

 * A new State of Israel with broad frontiers, strong and solid, with the authority of the Israel Government extending from the Jordan to the Suez Canal.
 * Statement made in April 1973 from the peaks of Masada.

 * During the last 100 years our people have been in a process of building up the country and the nation, of expansion, of getting additional Jews and additional settlements in order to expand the borders here. Let no Jew say that the process has ended. Let no Jew say that we are near the end of the road.
 * Ma'ariv, 7 July 1968.

Misattributed

 * [Israel] must see the sword as the main, if not the only, instrument with which to keep its morale high and to retain its moral tension. Toward this end it may, no — it must — invent dangers, and to do this it must adopt the method of provocation-and-revenge...
 * This has been reported to be a direct quotation of Dayan in the diaries of Moshe Sharett, but is actually derived from an interpretive commentary by Livia Rokach in "Israel's Sacred Terrorism" (1980) upon statements of Dayan reported in Sharett's diaries, from accounts provided to him by Ya'acob Herzog and Gideon Raphael — in other words, it is a third-hand interpretation of Dayan's meaning, based on a second hand report of his arguments. Sharett's summation of Dayan's statements of 26 May 1955 read:
 * We do not need a security pact with the U.S.: such a pact will only constitute an obstacle for us. We face no danger at all of an Arab advantage of force for the next 8-10 years. Even if they receive massive military aid from the West, we shall maintain our military superiority thanks to our infinitely greater capacity to assimilate new armaments. The security pact will only handcuff us and deny us the freedom of action which we need in the coming years. Reprisal actions which we couldn't carry out if we were tied to a security pact are our vital lymph ... they make it possible for us to maintain a high level of tension among our population and in the army. Without these actions we would have ceased to be a combative people and without the discipline of a combative people we are lost. We have to cry out that the Negev is in danger, so that young men will go there....
 * Rokach's interpretive assessment of this diary entry by Sharett produces:
 * The conclusions from Dayan's words are clear: This State has no international obligations, no economic problems, the question of peace is nonexistent... It must calculate its steps narrow-mindedly and live on its sword. It must see the sword as the main, if not the only, instrument with which to keep its morale high and to retain its moral tension. Toward this end it may, no — it must — invent dangers, and to do this it must adopt the method of provocation-and-revenge.. . . And above all — let us hope for a new war with the Arab countries, so that we may finally get rid of our troubles and acquire our space.

Quotations about Dayan

 * He would wake up with a hundred ideas. Of them ninety-five were dangerous; three more were bad; the remaining two, however, were brilliant.
 * Ariel Sharon

 * He jumped to the sky with anger about Hebron and the provocation of Levinger that has become such a tragedy.
 * Yael Dayan, Moshe's daughter.

 * Dayan didn't want the government to allow the kibbutzim to build there afterwards — he hoped to trade it back for peace.
 * Amos Eran on the taking of the Golan Heights, as quoted in The Washington Post (12 May 1997)

 * Moshe Dayan unfolded one plan after another for direct action. The first — what should be done to force open blockade of the Gulf of Eilat. A ship flying the Israeli flag should be sent, and if the Egyptians bomb it, we should bomb the Egyptian base from the air, or conquer Ras al-Naqb, or open our way south of Gaza Strip to the coast. There was a general uproar. I asked Moshe: Do you realize that this would mean war with Egypt?, he said: Of course.
 * Moshe Sharett, as quoted in Iron Wall (1999) by Avi Shlaim, on a suggestion in the mid-1950s to lure Egypt into a war to neutralize the modernization of its army.

 * Moshe Dayan saw no need for American guarantees of Israel's security and strongly opposed America's conditions i.e. that Israel forswear territorial expansion and military retaliation. In an informal talk with the ambassadors to Washington, London, and Paris, Dayan describe military retaliations as a "life drug" to the Israel Army. First, it obliged the Arab governments to take drastic measures to protect their borders. Second, and this was the essence, it enabled the Israeli government to maintain a high degree of tension in the country and the army. Gideaon Rafael, also present at the meeting with Dayan, remarked to Moshe Sharett: "This is how fascism began in Italy and Germany!"
 * Iron Wall (1999) by Avi Shlaim

 * Rocking the boat is his favorite tactic, not to overturn it, but to sway it sufficiently for the helmsman to lose his grip or for some of its unwanted passengers to fall overboard.*
 * Ambassador Gideon Rafael, about Dayan

title: Moshe Dayan


text:
Antonio Machado

Antonio Cipriano José María y Francisco de Santa Ana Machado y Ruiz (26 July 1875 – 22 February 1939), known as Antonio Machado, was a Spanish poet and one of the leading figures of the literary movement known as the Generation of '98.

Quotes

 * Caminante, son tus huellas el camino, y nada más; caminante, no hay camino, se hace camino al andar. Al andar se hace camino, y al volver la vista atrás se ve la senda que nunca se ha de volver a pisar. Caminante, no hay camino, sino estelas en la mar.
 * Wanderer, your footprints are the path, and nothing else; wanderer, there is no path, the path is made by walking. Walking makes the path, and on glancing back one sees the path that must never be trod again. Wanderer, there is no path— Just your wake in the sea.
 * "Proverbios y cantares XXIX" [Proverbs and Songs 29], Poesías Completas (1917); trans. Betty Jean Craige in Selected Poems of Antonio Machado (Louisiana State University Press, 1979)

 * "Estos días azules y este sol de infancia"
 * "These blue days and this sun of childhood". It was his last verse, found on his jacket after he died. It always appears at the end of all publications of his works.
 * Bookrags wiki

Quotes about

 * Out of the Spanish poets, I love Antonio Machado. Juan Ramón Jiménez was my mentor, and I loved him, but Antonio Machado—I feel him more.
 * Claribel Alegría Interview (2017)

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

title: Antonio Machado


text:
Philip Wylie

Philip Gordon Wylie (12 May 1902 – 25 October 1971) was a U.S. author of social criticism, short stories, screenplays, and several science-fiction novels.

Quotes

 * What egotism, what stupid vanity, to suppose that a thing could not happen because you could not conceive it!
 * When Worlds Collide (1933), co-written with Edwin Balmer

 * There is no advance without strife.
 * After Worlds Collide (1934), co-written with Edwin Balmer

Generation of Vipers (1942)

 * Page numbers may refer to one of the following editions: Farrar & Rinehart, 1942; Rinehart, "Newly annotated by the author", 1955; Dalkey Archive Press, 1996

 * But we are as other men, exactly. Of one blood, one species, one brain, one figure, one fundamental set of collective instincts, one solitary body of information, one everything. Superiority and inferiority are individual, not racial or national.
 * On Americans, p. 7

 * Absolute dominion of a powerful people by a minority always produces national aggression.
 * p. 18

 * The blame for Armageddon lies on man. And the millennium will come only when the average man exhibits a scientific integrity about all he is and does — instead of half of it. Many a psychological Archimedes has put signposts on the hard road man must follow if he is to avoid self-destruction and come into his own. A few very great modern scientists have added to the lore. Indications of what man may expect of himself are everywhere at hand. But most men must first be persuaded that the task lies ahead and not behind — that we are infants still, with loaded guns for toys.
 * p. 20

 * Ignorance is not bliss — it is oblivion. Determined ignorance is the hastiest kind of oblivion.
 * p. 44

 * The church has stood, a rock colossus of bigotry, in the path of ten thousand proposed reforms. Sane efforts to legalize birth control information, the manufacture of proper birth control appliances, appliances for the inhibition of the spread of venereal disease, public instruction in sex hygiene, free clinics for the treatment of venereal disease, the inspection and treatment of prostitutes, controlled prostitution itself, the publication of psychological and physical sex information, aid for unwed mothers—myriad attempts by sane men acting sanely on real problems — have been fought down by church-frightened legislatures and church-dominated courts.
 * p. 74

 * Few men, indeed, are so mad that they do not know when they are doing wrong. But so avid is their pursuit of goods that wrongdoing has become an element of all they do. To protest that fact is idle. Our politics, our business — little and big, our professions, our labor, are smitten in every facet with a corruption occasioned by reckless determination to make not just a reasonable profit but all the profit that can be wrung from every enterprise. Our commonest man, emulating his superiors, forges ahead with a brick on the safety valve of his conscience. Think over your morning paper in that light.
 * p. 104

 * Common man has at long last got himself so far out of gear with nature and his environment that he is beginning to see the shape of extinction, whether he recognizes it as such or not.
 * p. 116

 * There are in America from fifteen to twenty million religious fundamentalists who are dedicated to doctrines incompatible with democracy in that they insist on their prerogatives as first principles. An even larger group feebly follows the trail of fire breathed by those fundamentalists. They are the most dangerous minority we have because they categorically eschew the reasoned judgments of the majority. Democracy properly allows them the right to worship as they choose. It should never have conceded them the right to establish schools. Education is not a function of any church — or even of a city — or a state; it is a function of all mankind.
 * p. 324

title: Philip Wylie


text:
Talk:Jonas Zalk

Hmm. Should this be "Jonas Salk" instead of "Jonas Zalk"? -- Cimon avaro 07:38, 2 Oct 2003 (UTC)

title: Talk:Jonas Zalk


text:
Talk:Richard Dawkins

Old issues
Several quotes are included multiple times (in different sections). Is this intended?

Aragorn2 17:43, 2 Oct 2003 (UTC)

 * Unless he said the same thing in multiple books, they are probably duplicates. Possibly some of the ones in General Quotes are selections from his books? Nanobug

That's how it seems to be. If you read it sequentially (as I did, in part), there are some General Quotes that show up again in later sections, which is somewhat irritating. But I'm not sure whether they should be deleted (in GQ), since some people might prefer reading only the General Quotes, where a compilation of the most interesting quotes should go. Maybe a small note should be included at the beginning of General Quotes that some are also found in other sections.

An example of such a quote is

 * Faith is the great cop-out, the great excuse to evade the need to think and evaluate evidence. Faith is belief in spite of, even perhaps because of, the lack of evidence.

But there are many more. Aragorn2 22:13, 12 Oct 2003 (UTC)

The page these quotes were copied from had the general quotes as small concise quotes which would be good for use in signatures for posts or e-mails. So like favourites. Quoth 02:06, 13 Oct 2003 (UTC)

Cleanup
This article needs some reformatting based on Templates/People. Specifically, it should be split cleanly into "Sourced" and "Attributed" sections. The former should include subheadings for all the cited works, which are by definition "sourced". We can also lose the "from this and that" and just give the titles of the works (and preferably their years of publication) as headings. Finally, We Should Lose The Excessive Capitalization. I'll try to get to this shortly, but if someone else wants to jump in, feel free. ~ Jeff Q (talk) 05:33, 2 September 2005 (UTC)

 * I done the basic Sourced/Attributed separation, based on the claims existing in the article. However, none of the quotes from others' works are properly sourced; i.e., identifies a publication or other medium from which one can identify the article or interview and verify the cited quotes. All we have are apparent titles, some of which (e.g., "An Interview by Sheena McDonald") which seem likely to have an actual title different from what is listed. If these aren't properly sourced, they will have to be moved into the Attributed section. ~ Jeff Q (talk) 01:41, 30 January 2006 (UTC)

I understand that "I believe in an open mind, but not [one] so open that your brains fall out." is by Arthur Sulzberger (publisher, 1891-1968). 203.82.87.67 05:51, 3 January 2011 (UTC) 3 January 2011

BBC Newsnight interview (Sep 06)
I recall that some good, simple statements were made in this interview with Paxman. Anyone know where a transcript can be found? 86.7.208.240 14:17, 5 October 2006 (UTC)

Books copyrights
Is there a blanket fair use or whatever agreement applicable to Dawkins's books? I could add my reading notes from Climbing Mount Improbable (about 12 quotes). Marc Girod 23:30, 14 January 2008 (UTC)

Dawkins's "laws"
Perhaps someone could select some quotes from The Edge Annual Question - 2004: "What's Your Law?" See esp. "Dawkins's Law of Divine Invulnerability, Lemma 4":

 * "The fury with which untenable beliefs are defended is inversely proportional to their defensibility."

--72.70.15.249 12:57, 8 February 2009 (UTC)

'Black hole'
I don't know who included this but it made me laugh so much I wish to thank him|her very much.

I have a source for an 'unsourced' quote
"If somebody believes that the world is only a few thousand years old, when the true age of the Earth is of the order of a few billion years old, that means they are out by a factor of... a million. Which is not a trivial error! It's equivalent to believing the distance from New York to San Francisco to be 28 feet." - I have a source. A video, with him talking and answering questions, taken from a lecture at Liberty University. He was also reading Chapter 2 of "The God Delusion" during the lecture. The link is to a video of the quote itself: YouTube Video of Quote

It is also said as a footnote in The God Delusion (page 378 of my paperback edition). The text says: "One of Emmanuel's alumni, Peter French, has equally categorically stated, 'We were taught that the earth was 6000 years old'*"

And the footnote: "* To get an idea of the scale of this error, it is equivalent to believing that the distance from New York to San Francisco is 7.8 yards." --C0d3b0y 14:37, 16 May 2011 (UTC)

Repeated vandalism in 'sourced' section
A user has twice added the following quote in the sourced section: "'I occasionally doubt that Atheists will win the war against Religion, but then my conscious tucks at me and I go on to think of new ways to harm religion and religious people. Whenever a religious person dies, I get a jolt of happiness. People like Francis Collins need to be killed, because they show it is possible to believe in god and evolution at the same time. Since I want to either kill every religious person or convert them to atheism, this is not accetable.' -At a pro-atheist rally in Miami" I highly doubt Dawkins said anything like this, and have removed the quote until such a time as a source is found.
 * It is an obvious hoax effort. That IP has been pasting the same phony "quote" or part of it on pages of several different people. I reverted edits on several of them the other day, and posted a standard warning at User talk:173.161.2.238. Long term blocking of that IP seems in order. ~ Touchstone 20:04, 2 October 2009 (UTC)
 * I have just blocked that IP for 6 months, for repeated vandalism and malicious hoaxing. ~ Kalki 20:20, 2 October 2009 (UTC)
 * I have just blocked that IP for 6 months, for repeated vandalism and malicious hoaxing. ~ Kalki 20:20, 2 October 2009 (UTC)

 * The above incident has been cited as if it were a clearly an act of unethical use of two of my accounts by some people. I do NOT see how this is so. It might be an absurdly bold indiscretion, but hardly an inately unethical one. I made a comment here, and I do not remember all that might have been involved in my decision to switch to my main account, and block the vandal. If I had SIMPLY done that without commenting at all here, HONESTLY in BOTH cases, there would be NO controversy about that act at all. To post a declaration of that fact here was perhaps was admitedly somewhat deceiving, but certainly not maliciously so to anyone, and done more out of politeness to the commentor, than out of any actual need, desire or intent to deceive — nor was it actually detrimental to anyone but myself — as it has now been cited by some as if it were an incident of manifestly unethical behavior. Frankly I don't believe it as clearly unethical or contemptible a deception as declaring it such is — but I grant other people with other biases have the right to their opinions. ~ Kalki (talk · contributions) 05:14, 30 May 2011 (UTC)

Please add link
Please add this link to a big list of RD quoatations: http://www.positiveatheism.org/hist/quotes/dawkins.htm

Also: please remove the link because that website is dead.--Livingrm 18:22, 8 October 2009 (UTC)
 * These suggestions have now been used. ~ Kalki 18:55, 8 October 2009 (UTC)

Please consider adding this link, which is about 50 quotes at Dawkins' own web site: http://richarddawkins.net/quotes --Livingrm 08:44, 10 October 2009 (UTC)
 * This link has also been added. ~ Kalki 15:53, 10 October 2009 (UTC)

Please add "What if you're wrong?" quote
To a question posed by a Liberty University student (in the sprit of Pascal's wager) at his God Delusion book tour stop at Randolph College on 2006-10-23 : What if you're wrong? Richard Dawkins: "Well, what if I'm wrong, I mean... anybody could be wrong. We could all be wrong about the Flying Spaghetti Monster and the Pink Unicorn and the flying teapot. Uhm, you happen to have been brought up, I would presume, in the Christian faith. You know what it's like to not believe in a particular faith because you're not a Muslim. You're not a Hindu. Why aren't you a Hindu? Because you happen to have been brought up in America, not in India. If you had of been brought up in India, you'd be a Hindu. If you had been brought up in... in uh.. Denmark in the time of the Vikings you'd be believing in Wotan and Thor. If you were brought up in classical Greece you'd be believing in, in Zeus. If you were brought up in central Africa you'd be believing in the great Juju up the mountain. There's no particular reason to pick on the Judeo-Christian god, in which by the sheerest accident you happen to have been brought up and, and ask me the question, "What if I'm wrong?" What if you're wrong about the great Juju at the bottom of the sea?"

 * Ref: Pascal's Wager Girl (Lynchburg, Virginia - The God Delusion Book Tour
 * Ref: What if you're wrong?
 * Ref: What if you're wrong? 2006-10-23
 * Ref: Dawkins at Lynchvill, VA

- unsigned comment by 75.36.188.181 on 16:14, 14 October 2009

 * This is an example of the "Genetic Fallacy"
 * - unsigned comment by 122.59.170.23 on 21:38, 14 February 2013

 * No, no part of that was a genetic fallacy. A genetic fallacy has nothing to do with where a person was raised, it has to do with valuing an idea based on its origin rather than its merit.
 * But thanks for suggesting this quote. Please sign your posts with  ~  in the future. ~ Robin Lionheart (talk) 23:38, 16 February 2013 (UTC)
 * It would have been a genetic fallacy if Richard had claimed to "disprove" God by simply showing how one comes to believe in Him. But he made no such claim. He did NOT say "you only believe in X because of the way you were brought up, therefore X is false"; what he did imply was that the way people come to believe in their particular Gods makes X very likely to be false. No logical fallacy there. ~ Daniel Tomé (talk) 00:10, 17 February 2013 (UTC)

You're wrong. It's actually a straw man. He doesn't answer the question and instead rebounds the question back at her because she's highlighting the fact it is a logical fallacy to assert the answer 'there is no God'. - unsigned comment by 93.96.82.72 on 21:00, 3 February 2015
 * A straw man would be if he misrepresents her position as something easier to defeat. All Dawkins does is assume she's Christian, probably because "What if you're wrong?" is a staple of Christian evangelical scripts. But her actual religion is irrelevant to his response. If she were Muslim instead, his response would be just the same with the words "Christian" and "Muslim" swapped.
 * It isn't a logical fallacy to assert "there is no God", it's merely an assertion. It's also a straw man of Dawkins' position, because he doesn't assert that. The slogan of the bus campaign he supported was "There's probably no God...", and what he actually asserts in The God Delusion is "There almost certainly is no God". He makes a point of not saying he knows it for a fact. ~ Robin Lionheart (talk) 12:19, 30 June 2015 (UTC)
 * Indeed, he does not answer the question on its own terms, which entail unstated suppositions: the putative consequences of unbelief (not to mention the particulars of what must be believed) depend in a circular way on the particular belief system in question. By responding with the argument from inconsistent revelations Dawkins is saying that Pascal's Wager depends on beliefs that are only an accident of birth. This is no straw man: Pascal himself was well aware of this argument but thought, on its merits, that Christianity is the only faith worthy of consideration. ~ Ningauble (talk) 16:46, 30 June 2015 (UTC)
 * I think there is a straw man. It should not be a problem to swap "Christian" and "Muslim" according to a religion of asker, but it is harder to swap "Atheist" and "Christian". I think everyone should ask oneself, what would be true, if he were wrong, which proofs and evidence one has etc (this is not only a matter of religion, but also of a science and the other things we believe in - may it be because it was in Nature_(journal) or we read it in newspaper). This answer would be valid answer to the question "I inherited the faith from my ancestors. Have they lied each other for dozens of generations?". But it is possible also atheist could have laid that question and the counterattack was completely off the question. As the answer would not be the same, if the atheist had asked, I think the answer uses a straw man.37.48.46.146 19:22, 27 September 2015 (UTC)

Unsourced
Moving to Talk for analysis per current guideline at WQ:LOQ. Gordonofcartoon 00:41, 10 December 2009 (UTC)

 * Life results from the non-random survival of randomly varying replicators.
 * Supposedly offered in response to physicist and Nobel laureate Leon Lederman's half-jokingly remark that the real goal of physics was to come up with an equation that could explain the universe but still be small enough to fit on a T-shirt.

 * Hot on the heels of its magnanimous pardoning of Galileo, the Vatican has now moved with even more lightning speed to recognise the truth of Darwinism.

 * Science offers us an explanation of how complexity (the difficult) arose out of simplicity (the easy). The hypothesis of God offers no worthwhile explanation for anything, for it simply postulates what we are trying to explain.

 * ... the stereo-type of scientists being scruffy nerds with rows of pens in their top pocket is just about as wicked as racist stereotypes.

 * Who will say with confidence that sexual abuse is more permanently damaging to children than threatening them with the eternal and unquenchable fires of hell?

 * Justifying space exploration because we get non-stick frying pans is like justifying music because it is good exercise for the violinist's right arm. (RD paraphrases this argument in a discussion with Lawrence Krauss, 3:50 min - 5:10 min)

 * If somebody believes that the world is only (...) a few thousand years old, when the true age of the Earth is of the order of a few billion years old, that means they are out by a factor of... a million. Which is not a trivial error...It's akin to believing the distance from New York to San Francisco to be 28 feet.

Dawkins's Evolution

 * ... a fairly common pattern in television news: right at the end a smile comes onto the face of the newsreader and this is the scientific joke – "some scientist has proved that such and such is the case." ... And it's clearly the bit of fun at the end, it's not serious at all. I want science to be taken seriously, because, after all, it's less ephemeral – it has a more eternal aspect than whatever the politics of the day might be, which, of course, gets the lead in the news.

 * Very often in science one finds that there are ideas in the air, and lots of people hold them, but they don't even realise they hold them. The person who can crystallize them, and lay out not only the central idea but its implications for future scientific research can often make a tremendous contribution. And I think that's what "The Selfish Gene" did. Lots of scientists, they'd been Darwinians all their lives, but they'd been inarticulate Darwinians. And now they really understood what was foundational to Darwinism and what was peripheral. And once you understand what is foundational, then you begin to deduce conclusions.

 * I really want to say that there are no major disagreements ... I think the tendency of American intellectuals to learn their evolution from him [ Gould ] is unfortunate, and that's putting it mildly.

 * Religions do make claims about the universe – the same kinds of claims that scientists make, except they're usually false.

 * It is almost as if the human brain were specifically designed to misunderstand Darwinism, and to find it hard to believe.

 * I'm a friendly enough sort of chap ... I'm not a hostile person to meet. But I think it's important to realise that when two opposite points of view are expressed with equal intensity, the truth does not necessarily lie exactly halfway between them. It is possible for one side to be simply wrong.

On Debating Religion

 * When one person suffers from a delusion, it is called insanity. When a million people suffer from a delusion, it is called religion.

 * Religious people split into three main groups when faced with science. I shall label them the "know-nothings", the "know-alls", and the "no-contests".

 * I suspect that today if you asked people to justify their belief in God, the dominant reason would be scientific. Most people, I believe, think that you need a God to explain the existence of the world, and especially the existence of life. They are wrong, but our education system is such that many people don't know it.

 * A universe with a God would look quite different from a universe without one. A physics, a biology where there is a God is bound to look different. So the most basic claims of religion are scientific. Religion is a scientific theory.

 * The trouble is that God in this sophisticated, physicist's sense bears no resemblance to the God of the Bible or any other religion. If a physicist says God is another name for Planck's constant, or God is a superstring, we should take it as a picturesque metaphorical way of saying that the nature of superstrings or the value of Planck's constant is a profound mystery. It has obviously not the smallest connection with a being capable of forgiving sins, a being who might listen to prayers, who cares about whether or not the Sabbath begins at 5pm or 6pm, whether you wear a veil or have a bit of arm showing; and no connection whatever with a being capable of imposing a death penalty on his son to expiate the sins of the world before and after he was born.

 * Out of all of the sects in the world, we notice an uncanny coincidence: the overwhelming majority just happen to choose the one that their parents belong to. Not the sect that has the best evidence in its favour, the best miracles, the best moral code, the best cathedral, the best stained glass, the best music: when it comes to choosing from the smorgasbord of available religions, their potential virtues seem to count for nothing, compared to the matter of heredity. This is an unmistakable fact; nobody could seriously deny it. Yet people with full knowledge of the arbitrary nature of this heredity, somehow manage to go on believing in their religion, often with such fanaticism that they are prepared to murder people who follow a different one.

 * Science offers us an explanation of how complexity (the difficult) arose out of simplicity (the easy). The hypothesis of God offers no worthwhile explanation for anything, for it simply postulates what we are trying to explain. It postulates the difficult to explain, and leaves it at that.

Revolutionary Evolutionist

 * When I wrote this program, I never thought that it would evolve anything more than a variety of treelike shapes. I had hoped for weeping willows, cedars of Lebanon, Lombardy poplars, seaweeds, perhaps deer antlers. Nothing in my biologist's intuition, nothing in my 20 years experience of programming computers, and nothing in my wildest dreams prepared me for what actually emerged on screen. I can't remember exactly when in the sequence it first began to dawn on me that an evolved resemblance to something like an insect was possible. With a wild surmise, I began to breed, generation after generation, from whichever child looked most like an insect. My incredulity grew in parallel with the evolving resemblance ... I still cannot conceal from you my feeling of exultation as I first watched these exquisite creatures emerging before my eyes. I distinctly heard the triumphal opening chords of "Also Sprach Zarathustra" (the 2001 theme) in my mind. I couldn't eat, and that night "my" insects swarmed behind my eyelids as I tried to sleep.

 * My prize would be for a visually appealing world in which the life-forms have a visible, and preferably 3-D, morphology on the computer screen. They must evolve adaptations not just to "inanimate" factors like the weather (which would produce essentially predictable, not emergent evolution) but to other evolving life forms (which is a recipe for emergent properties).

Science Offers Solace for the Selfish Gene

 * What are all of us but self-reproducing robots? ... We have been put together by our genes and what we do is roam the world looking for a way to sustain ourselves and ultimately produce another robot, a child.

Speciesism and Vegetarianism

 * ...what I am doing is going along with the fact that I live in a society where meat eating is accepted as the norm, and it requires a level of social courage which I haven’t yet produced to break out of that. It’s a little bit like the position which many people would have held a couple of hundred years ago over slavery. Where lots of people felt morally uneasy about slavery but went along with it because the whole economy of the South depended upon slavery.
 * In reply to a question from Peter Singer author of Animal Liberation during an interview on Point of Inquiry

The Real Romance in the Stars

 * We should take astrology seriously. No, I don't mean we should believe in it. I am talking about fighting it seriously instead of humoring it as a piece of harmless fun.

 * There's this thing called being so open-minded your brains drop out.

 * Note, accordingly, how little it means to say something like "Uranus moves into Aquarius". Aquarius is a miscellaneous set of stars all at different distances from us, which have no connection with each other except that they constitute a (meaningless) pattern when seen from a certain (not particularly special) place in the galaxy (here). A constellation is not an entity at all, not the kind of thing that Uranus, or anything else, can sensibly be said to "move into".

 * The shape of a constellation, moreover, is ephemeral. A million years ago our Homo erectus ancestors gazed out nightly at a set of very different constellations. A million years hence, our descendants will see yet other shapes in the sky, and their astrologer (if our species has not grown up and sent them packing long since) will be fabricating their oracles on the basis of a different zodiac.

 * Scientific truth is too beautiful to be sacrificed for the sake of light entertainment or money. Astrology is an aesthetic affront. It cheapens astronomy, like using Beethoven for commercial jingles.

 * Scorpio could go retrograde up Uranus and it wouldn't make any difference.

Where'd You Get Those Peepers

 * Thus the creationist's favourite question "What is the use of half an eye?" Actually, this is a lightweight question, a doddle to answer. Half an eye is just 1 per cent better than 49 per cent of an eye, which is already better than 48 per cent, and the difference is significant.

 * Nilsson and Pelger began with a flat retina atop a flat pigment layer and surmounted by a flat, protective transparent layer. The transparent layer was allowed to undergo localised random mutations of its refractive index. They then let the model deform itself at random, constrained only by the requirement that any change must be small and must be an improvement on what went before ... The results were swift and decisive. A trajectory of steadily mounting acuity led unhesitatingly from the flat beginning through a shallow indentation to a steadily deepening cup, as the shape of the model eye deformed itself on the computer screen. The transparent layer thickened to fill the cup and smoothly bulged its outer surface in a curve. And then, almost like a conjuring trick, a portion of this transparent filling condensed into a local, spherical subregion of higher refractive index. Not uniformly higher, but a gradient of refractive index such that the spherical region functioned as an excellent graded-index lens.

 * But even with these conservative assumptions, the time taken to evolve a fish eye from flat skin was minuscule: fewer than 400,000 generations. For the kinds of small animals we are talking about, we can assume one generation per year, so it seems that it would take less than half a million years to evolve a good camera eye.

 * I'm not a very good politician, and it doesn't really occur to me to think about what's the best way to achieve something politically. If you look at the historical struggle for women's suffrage, for example...women who militantly campaigned for the right to vote were written off as strident extremists, and people accused them of alienating the very people whose support they should have been courting. But today, the idea of women not being allowed to vote is preposterous. Would you be moderate? Would you be respectful? You wouldn't.
 * "A Frank Interview with Richard Dawkins" Frank: Academics for the Real World, http://www.frankmagazine.org/Dawkins.asp (broken link)

Quote limit
Shouldn't this page be trimmed by now? It contains to many quotes here.(StarWarsFanBoy 20:26, 19 January 2010 (UTC))

No.
This quote should probably be removed. It is taken out of context and not really notable. The reason he received a standing ovation was that the answer concluded his speech and q&a. They weren't applauding the answer. - unsigned comment by 24.22.117.131 at 00:20, 13 February 2010

Twitter Section
Why include those speech? I don't think it reflect his best ones. If there is no justification, I shall remove them. --維基小霸王 (talk) 13:52, 9 November 2014 (UTC)

Naked queen
One of the listed quotes is: "Elizabeth II is a direct descendant of William the Conqueror. Yet it is quite probable that she bares not a single one of the old king's genes." I don't have access to the cited source, but someone should recheck this and either correct the spelling ('bears') or mark it as an editorial error ('[sic]'). Agricolae (talk) 15:55, 14 July 2018 (UTC)

title: Talk:Richard Dawkins


text:
Herodotus

Herodotus of Halicarnassus (Greek: Ἡρόδοτος, Hēródotos) (c. 484 BC – c. 425 BC) was a historian, known for his writings on the conflict between Greece and Persia, as well as the descriptions he wrote of different places and people he met on his travels.

The Histories

 * I know that human happiness never remains long in the same place.
 * Book 1, Ch.5.

 * Men trust their ears less than their eyes.
 * Book 1, Ch. 8.

 * When this response reached Croesus, it afforded him far more pleasure than anything else the oracle had told him, because he was sure that a mule would never replace a man as the Persian king, and that in consequence he and his descendants would rule for ever. He next turned his mind to investigating which was the most powerful Greek state, so that he could gain them as his allies. As a result of his enquiries, he discovered that Lacedaemon and Athens were the outstanding states, and that Lacedaemon was populated by Dorians while Athens was populated by Ionians. For these two peoples—the one Pelasgian, the other Hellenic—had been pre-eminent in the old days. The Pelasgians never migrated anywhere, but the Hellenes were a very well-travelled race. When Deucalion was their king, they were living in Phthia, but in the time of Dorus the son of Hellen they were in the territory around Mounts Ossa and Olympus, known as Histiaeotis. Then they were evicted from Histiaeotis by the Cadmeans and settled on Mount Pindus, where they were called Macedonians. Next they moved to Dryopis, and from Dryopis they finally reached the Peloponnese and became known as the Dorians.
 * Book 1, Ch. 56; as translated in The Histories (1998) by Robin Waterfield and Carolyn Dewald pp. 23-24 ISBN 0192824252, 9780192824257

 * In peace sons bury fathers, but in war fathers bury sons.
 * Variant translation: In peace, children inter their parents; war violates the order of nature and causes parents to inter their children.
 * Book 1, Ch. 87.

 * It was a kind of Cadmean victory.
 * Book 1, Ch. 166, referring to a victory where both sides suffer extreme losses. Derived from the legends of Thebes, where the sons of Oedipus, and hence descendants of Cadmus, fought to the death.

 * I am going to talk at some length about Egypt, because it has very many remarkable features and has produced more monuments which beggar description than anywhere else in the world.
 * Book 2, Ch. 35.

 * From great wrongdoing there are great punishments from the gods.
 * Book 2, Ch. 120.

 * If a man insisted always on being serious, and never allowed himself a bit of fun and relaxation, he would go mad or become unstable without knowing it.
 * Book 2, Ch. 173.

 * For if one should propose to all men a choice, bidding them select the best customs from all the customs that there are, each race of men, after examining them all, would select those of his own people; thus all think that their own customs are by far the best
 * Book 3, Ch. 38
 * It is better to be envied than pitied.
 * Book 3, Ch. 52
 * Variant: How much better a thing it is to be envied than to be pitied.

 * Force has no place where there is need of skill.
 * Book 3, Ch. 127.

 * The Scythians take kannabis seed, creep in under the felts, and throw it on the red-hot stones. It smolders and sends up such billows of steam-smoke that no Greek vapor bath can surpass it. The Scythians howl with joy in these vapor-baths, which serve them instead of bathing, for they never wash their bodies with water.
 * Book 4, Ch. 74.

 * Tell your king (Xerxes), who sent you, how his Greek viceroy (Alexander I) of Macedonia has received you hospitably.
 * Book 5, Ch. 20, 4 (Loeb).

 * Now, that these descendants of Perdiccas are Greeks, as they themselves say, I myself chance to know.
 * Book 5, Ch. 22, 1 (Loeb).

 * But Alexander (I of Macedon), proving himself to be an Argive, was judged to be a Greek; so he contended in the furlong race and ran a dead heat for first place.
 * Book 5, Ch. 22, 2.

 * It is the gods' custom to bring low all things of surpassing greatness.
 * Book 7, Ch. 10.

 * Haste in every business brings failures.
 * Book 7, Ch. 10.

 * When life is so burdensome death has become a sought after refuge.
 * Book 7, Ch. 46.

 * Circumstances rule men; men do not rule circumstances.
 * Book 7, Ch. 49.

 * Great deeds are usually wrought at great risks.
 * Book 7, Ch. 50.

 * Far better is it to have a stout heart always, and suffer one's share of evils, than to be ever fearing what may happen.
 * Book 7, Ch. 50 (trans. George Rawlinson)
 * Variant translation: It is better by noble boldness to run the risk of being subject to half of the evils we anticipate than to remain in cowardly listlessness for fear of what might happen.

 * I am bound to tell what I am told, but not in every case to believe it.
 * Book 7, Ch. 152.

 * Although he had plenty of troops he did not have many men.
 * Book 7, Ch. 210.

 * The Lacedaemonians fought a memorable battle; they made it quite clear that they were the experts, and that they were fighting against amateurs.
 * Book 7, Ch. 211.

 * Before battle was joined they say that someone from Trachis warned him how many Persians there were by saying that when they fired their bows, they hid the sun with the mass of arrows. Dianeces, so the story goes, was so dismissive of the Persian numbers that he calmly replied, "All to the good, my friend from Trachis. If the Persians hide the sun, the battle will be in shade rather than sunlight."
 * Book 7, Ch. 226.

 * Stranger, tell the people of Lacedaemon That we who lie here obeyed their commands.
 * Book 7, Ch. 228.

 * From Peloponnesos (came) the Lakedaimonians..., the Corinthians..., the Sikyonians..., the Epidaurians..., the Troiezenians... All these (groups)... belong to the Dorian and Macedonian nation (and) had emigrated last from Erineus and Pindos and Dryopis.
 * Book 8, Ch. 43.

 * "It is sound planning that invariably earns us the outcome we want; without it, even the gods are unlikely to look with favour on our designs."
 * Book 8, Ch. 60.

 * "At sea your men will be as far inferior to Greeks as women are to men." (By Artemisa, the best persian warrior in Salamina, a very courageous woman. A superbe irony!).
 * Book 8, Ch. 68.

 * "My men have turned into women and my women into men!"
 * Book 8, Ch. 98.

 * It is said that as many days as there are in the whole journey, so many are the men and horses that stand along the road, each horse and man at the interval of a day’s journey; and these are stayed neither by snow nor rain nor heat nor darkness from accomplishing their appointed course with all speed.
 * Book 8, Ch. 98
 * variant:  Not snow, no, nor rain, nor heat, nor night keeps them from accomplishing their appointed courses with all speed. (Book 8, Ch. 98)
 * Paraphrase:  "Neither snow, nor rain, nor heat, nor gloom of night stays these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed rounds" ”
 * Appears carved over entrance to Central Post Office building in New York City.

 * The king's might is greater than human, and his arm is very long.
 * Book 8, Ch. 140.

 * This is the bitterest pain among men, to have much knowledge but no power.
 * Book 9, Ch. 16
 * Variant translations:
 * Of all men's miseries the bitterest is this: to know so much and to have control over nothing.
 * The most hateful torment for men is to have knowledge of everything but power over nothing.

 * In soft regions are born soft men.
 * Book 9, Ch. 122

Misattributed

 * Call no man happy till he dies.
 * Herodotus actually attributes this to Solon in a conversation with King Crœsus.
 * Variants:
 * Deem no man happy, until he passes the end of his life without suffering grief
 * Many very wealthy men are not happy, while many who have but a moderate living are fortunate; and in truth the very rich man who is not happy has two advantages only as compared with the poor man who is fortunate, whereas this latter has many as compared with the rich man who is not happy. The rich man is able better to fulfil his desire, and also to endure a great calamity if it fall upon him; whereas the other has advantage over him in these things which follow: — he is not indeed able equally with the rich man to endure a calamity or to fulfil his desire, but these his good fortune keeps away from him, while he is sound of limb, free from disease, untouched by suffering, the father of fair children and himself of comely form; and if in addition to this he shall end his life well, he is worthy to be called that which thou seekest, namely a happy man; but before he comes to his end it is well to hold back and not to call him yet happy but only fortunate. Now to possess all these things together is impossible for one who is mere man, just as no single land suffices to supply all things for itself, but one thing it has and another it lacks, and the land that has the greatest number of things is the best: so also in the case of a man, no single person is complete in himself, for one thing he has and another he lacks; but whosoever of men continues to the end in possession of the greatest number of these things and then has a gracious ending of his life, he is by me accounted worthy, O king, to receive this name.
 * The History of Herodotus Book I, Chapter 32.

 * Knowledge may give weight, but accomplishments give lustre, and many more people see than weigh.
 * Actually a quotation from a letter of Lord Chesterfield dated May 8, 1750.

 * Some men give up their designs when they have almost reached the goal; while others, on the contrary, obtain a victory by exerting, at the last moment, more vigorous efforts than ever before.
 * Though widely attributed to Herodotus this in fact comes from the Histories of Polybius, Book 16, chapter 28: "Some men, like bad runners in the stadium, abandon their purposes when close to the goal; while it is at that particular point, more than at any other, that others secure the victory over their rivals". (Translation of Evelyn S Shuckburgh).

 * The only good is knowledge, and the only evil is ignorance.
 * The words of Socrates, as quoted by Diogenes Laertius.

 * Very few things happen at the right time, and the rest do not happen at all. The conscientious historian will correct these defects.
 * This statement is not to be found in the works of Herodotus. It appears in the acknowledgements to Mark Twain's A Horse's Tale (1907) preceded by the words "Herodotus says", but Twain was simply summarizing what he took to be Herodotus' attitude to historiography.

Quotes about Herodotus

 * The invention of brewing is ascribed to the Egyptians... from whence it seems to have passed to... western nations... Herodotus attributes the discovery of the art of brewing to the wife of.
 * , A Treatise on the Art of Brewing (1821) pp. 1-2.

title: Herodotus


text:
J. R. R. Tolkien

John Ronald Reuel Tolkien (January 3 1892 – September 2 1973) was an English writer, poet, philologist, and university professor, most famous for his classic high fantasy works.
 * See also:
 * The Hobbit (1937)
 * The Lord of the Rings
 * The Fellowship of the Ring (1954)
 * The Two Towers (1954)
 * The Return of the King (1955)
 * Appendices to The Lord of the Rings (1955)
 * The Silmarillion (1977)
 * The Hobbit (1977 animated film based upon his novel)
 * The Lord of the Rings (1978 animated film based upon his novel)
 * The Lord of the Rings (films based upon his novel)
 * The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring (2001)
 * The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers (2002)
 * The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King (2003)
 * The Hobbit (films based upon his novel)
 * The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey (2012)
 * The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug (2013)
 * The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies (2014)

Quotes

 * Wars are not favourable to delicate pleasures.
 * "A Secret Vice" (lecture, 1931) published in The Monsters And The Critics And Other Essays (1983), edited by Christopher Tolkien

 * The significance of a myth is not easily to be pinned on paper by analytical reasoning. It is at its best when it is presented by a poet who feels rather than makes explicit what his theme portends; who presents it incarnate in the world of history and geography, as our poet has done. Its defender is thus at a disadvantage: unless he is careful, and speaks in parables, he will kill what he is studying by vivisection, and he will be left with a formal or mechanical allegory, and what is more, probably with one that will not work. For myth is alive at once and in all its parts, and dies before it can be dissected.
 * "Beowulf: The Monsters and the Critics" (1936), p. 14

 * My advice to all who have the time or inclination to concern themselves with the international language movement would be: 'Back Esperanto loyally.'
 * "A Philologist on Esperanto" in The British Esperantist (May 1932).
 * Years later, in an incomplete draft of a letter (1956; quoted more extensively below) he stated that Esperanto and other constructed languages like Volapuk, Ido and Novial were "dead, far deader than ancient unused languages, because their authors never invented any Esperanto legends." - It remains unclear why the authors of Volapuk, Ido or Novial should invent Esperanto legends.

 * Nearly all marriages, even happy ones, are mistakes: in the sense that almost certainly (in a more perfect world, or even with a little more care in this very imperfect one) both partners might be found more suitable mates. But the real soul-mate is the one you are actually married to.
 * Letter to Michael Tolkien (March 1941)

 * There was a solemn article in the local paper seriously advocating systematic exterminating of the entire German nation as the only proper course after military victory: because, if you please, they are rattlesnakes, and don't know the difference between good and evil! (What of the writer?) The Germans have just as much right to declare the Poles and Jews exterminable vermin, subhuman, as we have to select the Germans: in other words, no right, whatever they have done.
 * Letter (September 1944)

 * Well, the first War of the Machines seems to be drawing to its final inconclusive chapter — leaving, alas, everyone the poorer, many bereaved or maimed and millions dead, and only one thing triumphant: the Machines. As the servants of the Machine are becoming a privileged class, the Machines are going to be enormously more powerful. What's their next move?
 * Letter to his son, Christopher (30 January 1945); published in The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien (1981), Letter 96

 * That story was the only thing I have ever done which cost me absolutely no pains at all. Usually I compose only with great difficulty and endless rewriting. I woke up one day (more than 2 years ago) with that odd thing virtually complete in my head. It took only a few hours to get down, and then copy out.
 * About "Leaf by Niggle", in a letter to Stanley Unwin (18 March 1945)

 * You can make the Ring an allegory of our own time, if you like: an allegory of the inevitable fate that awaits all attempts to defeat evil power by power. But that is only because all power magical or mechanical does always so work.
 * Letter to his publisher (31 July 1947); published in The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien (1981), Letter 109

 * "The Shire" is based on rural England and not any other country in the world... The toponymy of The Shire...is a "parody" of that of rural England, in much the same sense as are its inhabitants: they go together and are meant to. After all the book is English, and by an Englishman, and presumably even those who wish its narrative and dialogue turned into an idiom that they understand, will not ask of a translator that he should deliberately attempt to destroy the local colour.
 * Letter to Rayner Unwin (3 July 1956), quoted in The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien (1981), p. 250

 * I should say that, in addition to my tree-love (it was originally called The Tree), it arose from my own pre-occupation with the Lord of the Rings, the knowledge that it would be finished in great detail or not at all, and the fear (near certainty) that it would be 'not at all'. The war had arisen to darken all horizons. But no such analyses are a complete explanation even of a short story...
 * About "Leaf by Niggle", in a letter to Caroline Everett (24 June 1957)

 * I am in fact a Hobbit (in all but size). I like gardens, trees, and unmechanized farmlands; I smoke a pipe, and like good plain food (unrefrigerated), but detest French cooking; I like, and even dare to wear in these dull days, ornamental waistcoats. I am fond of mushrooms (out of a field); have a very simple sense of humor (which even my appreciative critics find tiresome); I go to bed late and get up late (when possible). I do not travel much.
 * Letter to Deborah Webster (25 October 1958)

 * I have the hatred of apartheid in my bones...
 * Valedictory address to the University of Oxford (1959)

 * It is impossible for an author still writing to be fair to another author working along the same lines. At least I find it so. In fact I dislike Dune with some intensity, and in that unfortunate case it is much the best and fairest to another author to keep silent and refuse to comment.
 * Letter to John Bush, 12 March 1966. Quoted in "Tolkien's Library: An Annotated Checklist" by Oronzo Cilli

 * Every morning I wake up and think good, another 24 hours' pipe-smoking.
 * A rare interview with Tolkien (1966) — "Tolkien's shire" by John Ezard, The Guardian (28 December 1991)

 * If you really come down to any large story that interests people – holds the attention for a considerable time ... human stories are practically always about one thing, aren't they? Death. The inevitability of death.
 * Tolkien in Oxford (1968), a BBC 2 television documentary (at 21:49)

 * It gives me great pleasure, a good name. I always in writing start with a name. Give me a name and it produces a story, not the other way about normally.
 * 1964 BBC Interview with Denys Gueroult, first broadcast on the BBC Radio 4 programme "Now Read On" (January 1971)

 * I do so dearly believe that no half-heartedness and no worldly fear must turn us aside from following the light unflinchingly.
 * Letter to Edith, as quoted in J. R. R. Tolkien: a biography (1977) by Humphrey Carpenter, p. 66

 * "I wish life was not so short," he thought. "Languages take such a time, and so do all the things one wants to know about."
 * "Alboin Errol", in The Lost Road (1987). Compare this with "The lyf so short, the craft so longe to lerne" by Geoffrey Chaucer

 * "[M]y friend Professor Tolkien asked me the very simple question, 'What class of men would you expect to be most preoccupied with, and most hostile to, the idea of escape?' and gave the obvious answer: jailers."
 * Quoted by

 * I liked him better than all the other characters[…]
 * Referring to Gollum. From J. R. R. Tolkien: An Audio Portrait, BBC Radio Collection (2001), ISBN 0-563-53692-6. CD 1, track 17. Originally from the 1964 interview with Denys Gueroult, first broadcast in 1971.

 * [C]ontrary to most people, I think that touching your cap to the squire may be damn bad for the squire but it's damn good for you.
 * Originally from the 1964 interview with Denys Gueroult, first broadcast in 1971. Excerpted in J. R. R. Tolkien: An Audio Portrait, BBC Radio Collection (2001), ISBN 0-563-53692-6. CD 2, track 10.

Mythopoeia (1931)

 * Written following a discussion with C. S. Lewis and Hugo Dyson at Magdalen College, Oxford which took place on the night of 19 September 1931. First published in the second edition of Tree and Leaf (1988), ed. Christopher Tolkien. · Full text online

and never were so named, till those had been who speech's involuted breath unfurled, faint echo and dim picture of the world
 * Yet trees are not 'trees', until so named and seen

but draws some wisdom from the only Wise, and still recalls him.''' Though now long estranged, man is not wholly lost nor wholly changed.
 * '''The heart of man is not compound of lies,

fulfilment we devise — for pain is pain, not for itself to be desired, but ill; or else to strive or to subdue the will alike were graceless; and of Evil this alone is deadly certain: Evil is.
 * All wishes are not idle, nor in vain

with elves and goblins, though we dared to build gods and their houses out of dark and light, and sow the seeds of dragons, 'twas our right (used or misused). '''The right has not decayed. We make still by the law in which we're made.'''
 * Though all the crannies of the world we filled

of things not found within recorded time.'''
 * '''Blessed are the legend-makers with their rhyme

from gazing upon everlasting Day to see the day-illumined, and renew from mirrored truth the likeness of the True. Then looking on the Blessed Land 'twill see that '''all is as it is, and yet made free: Salvation changes not, nor yet destroys, garden nor gardener, children nor their toys.''' Evil will not see, for evil lies not in God's picture but in crooked eyes, not in the source but in malicious choice, and not in sound but in the tuneless voice. '''In Paradise they no more look awry; and though they make anew, they make no lie. Be sure they still will make, not being dead, and poets shall have flames upon their head, and harps whereon their faultless fingers fall: there each shall choose for ever from the All.'''
 * In Paradise perchance the eye may stray

On Fairy-Stories (1939)

 * Originally given as an Andrew Lang Lecture at the University of St. Andrews on 8 March 1939, and published in Essays presented to Charles Williams in 1947. It was republished with minor alterations in Tree and Leaf in 1964, in The Tolkien Reader in 1966, and in The Monsters and the Critics and Other Essays in 1983. Tolkien On Fairy-stories, an expanded edition containing the essay, unpublished manuscripts, background material, contemporary reports, and notes and commentary, edited by Verlyn Flieger and Douglas A. Anderson, was published by HarperCollins in 2008.

 * The mind that thought of light, heavy, grey, yellow, still, swift also conceived of magic that would make heavy things light and able to fly, turn grey lead into yellow gold, and the still rock into a swift water. If it could do the one, it could do the other; it inevitably did both. When we can take green from grass, blue from heaven, and red from blood, we have already an enchanter's power.

 * In such 'fantasy', as it is called, new form is made; Faerie begins; Man becomes a sub-creator.

 * Small wonder that spell means both a story told, and a formula of power over living men.

 * The story-maker proves a successful 'sub-creator'. He makes a Secondary World which your mind can enter. Inside it, what he relates is 'true': it accords with the laws of that world. You therefore believe it, while you are, as it were, inside. The moment disbelief arises, the spell is broken; the magic, or rather art, has failed.

 * I desired dragons with a profound desire. Of course, I in my timid body did not wish to have them in the neighbourhood, intruding into my relatively safe world, in which it was, for instance, possible to read stories in peace of mind, free from fear. But the world that contained even the imagination of Fáfnir was richer and more beautiful, at whatever cost of peril.

 * Fantasy is a higher form of Art, indeed the most nearly pure form, and so (when achieved) the most potent.

 * Fantasy remains a human right: we make in our measure and in our derivative mode, because we are made: and not only made, but made in the image and likeness of a Maker.

 * I have claimed that Escape is one of the main functions of fairy-stories, and since I do not disapprove of them, it is plain that I do not accept the tone of scorn or pity with which 'Escape' is now so often used. Why should a man be scorned if, finding himself in prison, he tries to get out and go home? Or if he cannot do so, he thinks and talks about other topics than jailers and prison-walls? The world outside has not become less real because the prisoner cannot see it.

 * We find it difficult to conceive of evil and beauty together. The fear of the beautiful fay that ran through the elder ages almost eludes our grasp. Even more alarming: goodness is itself bereft of its proper beauty. In Faërie one can indeed conceive of an ogre who possesses a castle hideous as a nightmare (for the evil of the ogre wills it so), but one cannot conceive of a house built with a good purpose – an inn, a hostel for travellers, the hall of a virtuous and noble king – that is yet sickeningly ugly. At the present day it would be rash to hope to see one that was not – unless it was built before our time.

 * And lastly there is the oldest and deepest desire, the Great Escape: the Escape from Death. Fairy-stories provide many examples and modes of this … Fairy-stories are made by men not by fairies. The Human-stories of the elves are doubtless full of the Escape from Deathlessness.

 * The Gospels contain a fairy-story, or a story of a larger kind which embraces all the essence of fairy-stories. … But this story has entered History and the primary world; … It has pre-eminently the "inner consistency of reality." There is no tale ever told that men would rather find was true, and none which so many sceptical men have accepted as true on its own merits. For the Art of it has the supremely convincing tone of Primary Art, that is, of Creation. ...this story is supreme; and it is true. Art has been verified. God is the Lord, of angels, and of men — and of elves. Legend and History have met and fused.

 * The Evangelium has not abrogated legends; it has hallowed them, especially the "happy ending." The Christian has still to work, with mind as well as body, to suffer, hope, and die; but he may now perceive that all his bents and faculties have a purpose, which can be redeemed. So great is the bounty with which he has been treated that he may now, perhaps, fairly dare to guess that in Fantasy he may actually assist in the effoliation and multiple enrichment of creation. All tales may come true; and yet, at the last, redeemed, they may be as like and unlike the forms that we give them as Man, finally redeemed, will be like and unlike the fallen that we know.

Leaf by Niggle (1945)

 * First published in Dublin Review (January 1945); written in 1938 or 1939

 * There was once a little man called Niggle, who had a long journey to make. He did not want to go, indeed the whole idea was distasteful to him; but he could not get out of it. He knew he would have to start some time, but he did not hurry with his preparations.

 * There was one picture in particular which bothered him. It had begun with a leaf caught in the wind, and it became a tree; and the tree grew, sending out innumerable branches, and thrusting out the most fantastic roots.

 * "It's a gift!" he said. He was referring to his art, and also to the result; but he was using the word quite literally.

 * "I think we shall have to give the region a name. What do you propose?" "The Porter settled that some time ago," said the Second Voice. "Train for Niggle's Parish in the bay."

English and Welsh (1955)

 * A lecture given at the University of Oxford, (21 October 1955) published in The Monsters And The Critics And Other Essays (1983), edited by Christopher Tolkien

 * To many, perhaps to most people outside the small company of the great scholars, past and present, 'Celtic' of any sort is, nonetheless, a magic bag, into which anything may be put, and out of which almost anything may come. … Anything is possible in the fabulous Celtic twilight, which is not so much a twilight of the gods as of the reason.

 * No language is justly studied merely as an aid to other purposes. It will in fact better serve other purposes, philological or historical, when it is studied for love, for itself.

 * For myself I would say that more than the interest and uses of the study of Welsh as an adminicle of English philology, more than the practical linguist's desire to acquire a knowledge of Welsh for the enlargement of his experience, more even than the interest and worth of the literature, older and newer, that is preserved in it, these two things seem important: Welsh is of this soil, this island, the senior language of the men of Britain; and Welsh is beautiful.

 * The basic pleasure in the phonetic elements of a language and in the style of their patterns, and then in a higher dimension, pleasure in the association of these word-forms with meanings, is of fundamental importance. This pleasure is quite distinct from the practical knowledge of a language, and not the same as an analytic understanding of its structure. It is simpler, deeper-rooted, and yet more immediate than the enjoyment of literature.

 * Most English-speaking people … will admit that cellar door is "beautiful," especially if dissociated from its sense (and from its spelling). More beautiful than, say, sky, and far more beautiful than beautiful...Well then, in Welsh, for me cellar doors are extraordinarily frequent, and moving to the higher dimension, the words in which there is pleasure in the contemplation of the association of form and sense are abundant.

The Letters of J. R. R. Tolkien (1981)

 * I must say the enclosed letter from Rütten and Loening is a bit stiff. Do I suffer this impertinence because of the possession of a German name, or do their lunatic laws require a certificate of 'arisch' origin from all persons of all countries? … I do not regard the (probable) absence of all Jewish blood as necessarily honourable; and I have many Jewish friends, and should regret giving any colour to the notion that I subscribed to the wholly pernicious and unscientific race-doctrine.
 * No. 30: Letter to Stanley Unwin (25 July, 1938); Tolkien's German publishers had written to ask him whether he was of "Aryan" origin.

 * I regret that I am not clear as to what you intend by 'arisch'. I am not of Aryan extraction: that is Indo-Iranian; as far as I am aware none of my ancestors spoke Hindustani, Persian, Gypsy, or any related dialects. … But if I am to understand that you are enquiring whether I am of Jewish origin, I can only reply that I regret that I appear to have no ancestors of that gifted people. … I have been accustomed, nonetheless, to regard my German name with pride, and continued to do so throughout the period of the late regrettable war, in which I served in the English army. I cannot, however, forbear to comment that if impertinent and irrelevant inquiries of this sort are to become the rule in matters of literature, then the time is not far distant when a German name will no longer be a source of pride.
 * One of two draft letters (25 July, 1938) written for Stanley Unwin to select as a response to his German publishers inquiry about his ancestry. The other letter refused to answer altogether on his ancestry; since the quoted letter persists, it seems that the other letter was sent.

 * I have in this War a burning private grudge — which would probably make me a better soldier at 49 than I was at 22: against that ruddy little ignoramus Adolf Hitler (for the odd thing about demonic inspiration and impetus is that it in no way enhances the purely intellectual stature: it chiefly affects the mere will). Ruining, perverting, misapplying, and making for ever accursed, that noble northern spirit, a supreme contribution to Europe, which I have ever loved, and tried to present in its true light.
 * No. 45: To his son Michael Tolkien (09 June, 1941)

 * My political opinions lean more and more to Anarchy (philosophically understood, meaning abolition of control not whiskered men with bombs) … the most improper job of any man, even saints (who at any rate were at least unwilling to take it on), is bossing other men. Not one in a million is fit for it, and least of all those who seek the opportunity.
 * No. 52: To his son Christopher Tolkien (29 November, 1943)

 * As for what you say or hint of 'local' conditions: I knew of them. I don't think they have much changed (even for the worse). I used to hear them discussed by my mother; and have ever since taken a special interest in that part of the world. The treatment of colour nearly always horrifies anyone going out from Britain, & not only in South Africa. Unfort[unately], not many retain that generous sentiment for long.
 * No. 61: To Christopher Tolkien in South Africa (18 April, 1944)

 * A story must be told or there'll be no story, yet it is the untold stories that are most moving.
 * No. 96: To his son Christopher (30 January 1945)

 * The news today about "Atomic bombs" is so horrifying one is stunned. The utter folly of these lunatic physicists to consent to do such work for war-purposes: calmly plotting the destruction of the world! Such explosives in men's hands, while their moral and intellectual status is declining, is about as useful as giving out firearms to all inmates of a gaol and then saying that you hope "this will ensure peace". But one good thing may arise out of it, I suppose, if the write-ups are not overheated: Japan ought to cave in. Well we're in God's hands. But He does not look kindly on Babel-builders.
 * No. 102: From a letter to his son Christopher Tolkien (9 August, 1945)

 * 'Power' is an ominous and sinister word in all these tales, except as applied to the gods.
 * No. 131: letter to Milton Waldman (c. 1951)

 * The Lord of the Rings is of course a fundamentally religious and Catholic work; unconsciously so at first, but consciously in the revision. That is why I have not put in, or have cut out, practically all references to anything like 'religion', to cults or practices, in the imaginary world. For the religious element is absorbed into the story and the symbolism.
 * No. 142: letter to his friend Robert Murray, S.J. (December 1953)

 * Nothing has astonished me more (and I think my publishers) than the welcome given to The Lord of the Rings. But it is, of course, a constant source of consolation and pleasure to me. And, I may say, a piece of singular good fortune, much envied by some of my contemporaries. Wonderful people still buy the book, and to a man 'retired' that is both grateful and comforting.
 * No. 165: To Houghton Mifflin Co. (30 June, 1955); also quoted in 'Tolkien on Tolkien' in Diplomat magazine (October 1966).

 * It was just as the 1914 War burst on me that I made the discovery that 'legends' depend on the language to which they belong; but a living language depends equally on the 'legends' which it conveys by tradition. … Volapuk, Esperanto, Ido, Novial, &c &c are dead, far deader than ancient unused languages, because their authors never invented any Esperanto legends...
 * No. 180: To a Mr. Thompson (incomplete draft of a letter, 1956).

 * Most important, perhaps, after Gothic was the discovery in Exeter College library, when I was supposed to be reading for Honour Mods, of a Finnish Grammar. It was like discovering a complete wine-filled cellar filled with bottles of an amazing wine of a kind and flavor never tasted before. It quite intoxicated me; and I gave up the attempt to invent an 'unrecorded' Germanic language, and my 'own language' – or series of invented languages – became heavily Finnicized in phonetic pattern and structure. That is of course long past now. ...
 * No. 163: On his discovery of Finnish language, in a letter to W. H. Auden (1955)

 * I am doubtful myself about the undertaking. Part of the attraction of the L.R. is, I think, due to the glimpses of a large history in the background: an attraction like that of viewing far off an unvisited island, or seeing the towers of a distant city gleaming in a sunlit mist. To go there is to destroy the magic, unless new unattainable vistas are again revealed. Also many of the older legends are purely 'mythological', and nearly all are grim and tragic: a long account of the disasters that destroyed the beauty of the Ancient World, from the darkening of Valinor to the Downfall of Númenor and the flight of Elendil.
 * No. 247: To Colonel Worskett (20 September 1963)

 * Years before I had rejected as disgusting cynicism by an old vulgarian the words of warning given me by old Joseph Wright. 'What do you take Oxford for, lad?' 'A university, a place of learning.' 'Nay, lad, it's a factory! And what's it making? I'll tell you. It's making fees. Get that in your head, and you'll begin to understand what goes on.' Alas! by 1935 I now knew that it was perfectly true. At any rate as a key to dons' behaviour. Quite true, but not the whole truth. (The greater part of the truth is always hidden, in regions out of the reach of cynicism.)
 * No. 250: To Christopher Tolkien (1 November 1963)

 * The unpayable debt that I owe to him [C. S. Lewis] was not "influence" as it is ordinarily understood, but sheer encouragement. He was for long my only audience. Only from him did I ever get the idea that my "stuff" could be more than a private hobby. But for his interest and unceasing eagerness for more I should never have brought The L. of the R. to a conclusion.
 * No. 276: To Dick Plotz, 'Thain' of the Tolkien Society of America (12 September 1965)

Quotes about Tolkien

 * Alphabetised by author

 * Tolkien was, in modern jargon, "right-wing" in that he honoured his monarch and his country and did not believe in the rule of the people; but he opposed democracy simply because he believed that in the end his fellow-men would not benefit from it. He once wrote: "I am not a 'democrat', if only because 'humility' and equality are spiritual principles corrupted by the attempt to mechanize and formalize them, with the result that we get not universal smallness and humility, but universal greatness and pride, till some Orc gets hold of a ring of power—and then we get and are getting slavery." As to the virtues of an old-fashioned feudal society, this is what he once said about respect for one's superiors: "Touching your cap to the Squire may be damn bad for the Squire but it's damn good for you."
 * Humphrey Carpenter, J. R. R. Tolkien: A Biography (1977), p. 128

 * His commitment to Christianity and in particular to the Catholic Church was total... [A] source of unhappiness in his last years was the introduction of the vernacular mass, for the use of English in the liturgy rather than the Latin he had known and loved since boyhood pained him deeply. But even during an English mass...he would, when receiving communion, experience a profound spiritual joy, a state of contentment that he could reach in no other way. His religion was therefore one of the deepest and strongest elements in his personality.
 * Humphrey Carpenter, J. R. R. Tolkien: A Biography (1977), p. 128

 * Word-making is one of the roots of fantasy. It reaches its peak in Tolkien, who said he wrote The Lord of the Rings so that they could say "Good morning" in Elvish.
 * 1982 interview in Conversations with Ursula Le Guin

 * 1830 is about when the novel really got going. Increasingly from then on, literature becomes realism, to the point that you get big problems, like the exclusion of Tolkien, which I think is really insane. He is a major English writer, whether you like him or not. He is excluded not for lack of excellence but through pure genre prejudice-"He's for children," or "He's for people who read fantasy." But he's not. He's a major English author. You do have to have a canon of excellence, for teaching, for criticism, but it's got to be more flexible than it's been, that's really all I'm saying. In a genre like fantasy I'm appalled when I see every three-volume schlock fantasy compared to Tolkien. A lot of readers don't know the original. They need to be taught to see why Tolkien is really a much better writer and will last them the rest of their lives, whereas so-and-so who imitates him won't last the month. I'm not saying there isn't excellence, and that we don't need to teach it.
 * 1994 interview in Conversations with Ursula Le Guin

 * Fantasy changes the world deliberately, allowing impossible things which science fiction at least pretends not to allow. Yes, I say "what if magic worked, and then...," and "what if there were dragons... yes. Then you just follow out, you just follow the fictional enterprise like any novelist, it seems to me, and the more detailed and accurate you are, the better the book will be. And of course, the tricky thing about imaginative fiction, both science fiction and fantasy, is the coherence of the imagination, because you are making a whole world out of words only. It's all made to hold together. Tolkien is very clear about that in some of his essays. He's the best theorist of fantasy I know, actually, Tolkien himself. The European fantasy theorists, Todorov, and those people, they are terrible, terrible. The works they are talking about always seem so insignificant to me. That's not what I mean by fantasy.
 * 2002 interview in Conversations with Ursula Le Guin

 * It's one reason I adore Tolkien; he always tells you what the weather is, always. And you know pretty well where north is, and what kind of landscape you're in and so on. I really enjoy that. That's why I like Hardy. Again, you always know what the weather is.
 * 1982 interview in Conversations with Ursula Le Guin

 * He had been inside language.
 * C. S. Lewis, "Professor J. R. R. Tolkien: Creator of Hobbits and inventor of a new mythology", The Times (3 September 1973)

 * His standard of self criticism was high and the mere suggestion of publication usually set him upon a revision, in the course of which so many new ideas occurred to him that where his friends had hoped for the final text of an old work they actually got the first draft of a new one.
 * C. S. Lewis, "Professor J. R. R. Tolkien: Creator of Hobbits and inventor of a new mythology", The Times (3 September 1973)

 * The battle between Good and Evil is a theme of much of fantasy. But I think the battle between Good and Evil is fought largely within the individual human heart, by the decisions that we make. It’s not like evil dresses up in black clothing and you know, they’re really ugly. These are some of the things that Tolkien did; he made them work fabulously, but in the hands of his imitators, they become total clichés. I mean the orc-like creatures who always do dress in black and... they’re really ugly and they’ve got facial deformities or something. You can tell that if somebody’s ugly, he must be evil. And then Tolkien’s heroes are all very attractive people and all that, of course, again this became cliché in the hands of the Tolkien imitators.
 * George R. R. Martin, interview with TIME Entertainment, Fantasy and History (April 2011)

 * Much as I admire Tolkien, and I do admire Tolkien — he’s been a huge influence on me, and his Lord of the Rings is the mountain that leans over every other fantasy written since and shaped all of modern fantasy — there are things about it, the whole concept of the Dark Lord, and good guys battling bad guys, Good versus Evil, while brilliantly handled in Tolkien, in the hands of many Tolkien successors, it has become kind of a cartoon. We don’t need any more Dark Lords, we don’t need any more, ‘Here are the good guys, they’re in white, there are the bad guys, they’re in black. And also, they’re really ugly, the bad guys."
 * George R. R. Martin, AssignmentX interview (June 2011)

 *  "Leaf by Niggle" ends as a comedy, even as a "divine comedy," on more levels than one. But while it looks forward to "divine comedy", it incorporates and springs from a sense of earthly tragedy: failure, anxiety, and frustration.
 * Thomas Shippey, on Tolkien's autobiographical allegorical tale "Leaf by Niggle," in J. R. R. Tolkien: Author of the Century (2001), p. 277

 * What so impressed me on that first reading was the self-containedness of Tolkien's world. I suppose there are a few novelists who have created worlds that are uniquely their own -- Faulkner, for example, or Dickens. But since their world is fairly close to the actual world, it cannot really be called a unique creation. The only parallel that occurs to me is the Wagner Ring cycle, that one can only enter as if taking a holiday on a strange planet.
 * Colin Wilson in Tree By Tolkien, p. 8-9 (1974)

 * Dr. Tolkien has little skill at narrative and no instinct for literary form.
 * Edmund Wilson, "Oo, Those Awful Orcs!": A review of The Fellowship of the Ring, in The Nation (14 April 1956)

As for me, if we must read about imaginary kingdoms, give me James Branch Cabell's Poictesme. He at least writes for grown-up people, and he does not present the drama of life as a showdown between Good People and Goblins. He can cover more ground in an episode that lasts only three pages than Tolkien is able to in one of this twenty-page chapters, and he can create a more disquieting impression by a reference to something that is never described than Tolkien through his whole demonology.
 * I believe, that certain people — especially, perhaps, in Britain — have a lifelong appetite for juvenile trash. … You can see it in the tone they fall into when they talk about Tolkien in print: they bubble, they squeal, they coo; they go on about Malory and Spenser — both of whom have a charm and a distinction that Tolkien has never touched.
 * Edmund Wilson, "Oo, Those Awful Orcs!": A review of The Fellowship of the Ring, in The Nation (14 April 1956)

title: J. R. R. Tolkien