There is nothing new in the world except the history you do not know.

Please don’t make the mistake of thinking that ‚Oryx and Crake‘ is anti-science. Science is a way of knowing, and a tool. Like all ways of knowing and tools, it can be turned to bad uses. And it can be bought and sold, and it often is. But it is not in itself bad. Like electricity, it’s neutral.

I am a part of everything that I have read.

There are things known and there are things unknown, and in between are the doors of perception.

I am being frank about myself in this book. I tell of my first mistake on page 850.

A physician without a knowledge of Astrology has no right to call himself a physician.

Here is the rule to remember in the future, When anything tempts you to be bitter: not, ‚This is a misfortune‘ but ‚To bear this worthily is good fortune.‘

I don’t have the best track record with quotes.

One of the skills I had to learn and become proficient in is kissing a man. I had never kissed a man. Will Smith did it in his movies, so did Jake Gyllenhaal, and I figured it was my time. So it was me and Steve Carell – fantastic.

Have the humility to learn from those around you.

Woz is living his own life now. He hasn’t been around Apple for about five years. But what he did will go down in history.

Knowledge which is divorced from justice, may be called cunning rather than wisdom.

Anything can make me stop and look and wonder, and sometimes learn.

The gift of fantasy has meant more to me than my talent for absorbing positive knowledge.

A gem cannot be polished without friction, nor a man perfected without trials.

Moral authority is never retained by any attempt to hold on to it. It comes without seeking and is retained without effort.

It’s not an experiment if you know it’s going to work.

The bookful blockhead, ignorantly read, With loads of learned lumber in his head.

People who know little are usually great talkers, while men who know much say little.

I think history is collective memories. In writing, I’m using my own memory, and I’m using my collective memory.

Study the past, if you would divine the future.

Public sentiment is everything. With public sentiment, nothing can fail. Without it, nothing can succeed.

Neither a wise man nor a brave man lies down on the tracks of history to wait for the train of the future to run over him.

I am not ashamed to confess that I am ignorant of what I do not know.

Whatever you cannot understand, you cannot possess.

Repeal the Missouri Compromise – repeal all compromises – repeal the Declaration of Independence – repeal all past history, you still cannot repeal human nature. It will be the abundance of man’s heart that slavery extension is wrong; and out of the abundance of his heart, his mouth will continue to speak.

History shows that the majority of people that have done anything great have passed their youth in seclusion.

Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few to be chewed and digested.

I have learned silence from the talkative, toleration from the intolerant, and kindness from the unkind; yet, strange, I am ungrateful to those teachers.

The degree of one’s emotions varies inversely with one’s knowledge of the facts.

The greatest honor history can bestow is that of peacemaker.

You must become an old man in good time if you wish to be an old man long.

All of the books in the world contain no more information than is broadcast as video in a single large American city in a single year. Not all bits have equal value.

The desire of excessive power caused the angels to fall; the desire of knowledge caused men to fall.

Democracy cannot succeed unless those who express their choice are prepared to choose wisely. The real safeguard of democracy, therefore, is education.

Despair is the conclusion of fools.

Fools rush in where angels fear to tread.

The true university of these days is a collection of books.

The worst men often give the best advice.

Here’s what I’ve learned about deal-breakers. If you have enough natural chemistry with someone, you overlook every single thing that you said would break the deal.

Big stuff and little: learning how to order breakfast in a country where I don’t speak the language and haven’t been before – that’s really satisfying to me. I like that.

It always seems to me so odd that when a man dies, he takes out with him all the knowledge that he has got in his lifetime whilst sowing his wild oats or winning successes. And he leaves his sons or younger brothers to go through all the work of learning it over again from their own experience.

I used to read five psalms every day – that teaches me how to get along with God. Then I read a chapter of Proverbs every day and that teaches me how to get along with my fellow man.

In the 1960s, there was a point, 1968, ’69, when there was a very strong antiwar movement against the war in Vietnam. But it’s worth remembering that the war in Vietnam started – an outright war started in 1962.

To keep your secret is wisdom; but to expect others to keep it is folly.

When we are born we cry that we are come to this great stage of fools.

The aim of the wise is not to secure pleasure, but to avoid pain.

A fool is wise in his eyes.

Empire and liberty.

Let’s teach kids, at the kindergarten level, what the contributions of people of color were to building the United States of America.

Seeing much, suffering much, and studying much, are the three pillars of learning.

There is nothing which we receive with so much reluctance as advice.

Facts are stubborn things.

All my life I’ve been taught how to die, but no one ever taught me how to grow old.

If history repeats itself, and the unexpected always happens, how incapable must Man be of learning from experience.

In the 1940s, traveling for an African was a complicated process. All Africans over the age of sixteen were compelled to carry ‚Native passes‘ issued by the Native Affairs Department and were required to show that pass to any white policeman, civil servant, or employer. Failure to do so could mean arrest, trial, a jail sentence or fine.

Where ignorance is our master, there is no possibility of real peace.

Most people get a fair amount of fun out of their lives, but on balance life is suffering, and only the very young or the very foolish imagine otherwise.

Older people sit down and ask, ‚What is it?‘ but the boy asks, ‚What can I do with it?‘.

No greater thing is created suddenly, any more than a bunch of grapes or a fig. If you tell me that you desire a fig, I answer you that there must be time. Let it first blossom, then bear fruit, then ripen.

Colonies do not cease to be colonies because they are independent.