“The word "feral" has a kind of magic potency which allied itself to two other words, "ferocious" and "free." To revert to a feral state!”

“Merlin: "Grown-ups have developed an unpleasant habit lately, I notice, of comforting themselves for their degradation by pretending that children are childish. I trust we are free of this?"Arthur: "Everybody knows that children are more intelligent than their parents."Merlin: "You and I know it, but the people who are going to read this book do not.Our readers of that time (...) have exactly three ideas in their magnificent noodles. The first is that the human species is superior to others. The second, that the twentieth century is superior to other centuries. And the third, that human adults of the twentieth century are superior to their young. (...)”

“As for you, Man, you will be a naked tool all your life, though a user of tools. You will look like an embryo till they bury you, but all the others will be embryos before your might. Eternally undeveloped, you will always remain potential in Our image, able to see some of Our sorrows and to feel some of Our joys. We are partly sorry for you, Man, but partly hopeful. Run along then, and do your best.”

“The most difficult thing in the world is to know how to do a thing and to watch someone else do it wrong without comment.”

“Our mental conditions are simply the symbols in consciousness of the changes which take place automatically in the organism; . . . to take an extreme illustration, the feeling we call volition is not the cause of a voluntary act, but the symbol of that state of the brain which is the immediate cause of that act. We are conscious automata.”

“All men who run for presidency of the United States are amateurs; there is no way of becoming a professional at it, and all of them, win or lose, are forever altered in spirit of character by the ordeal.”

“Words at night were feral things.”