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The War of the Worlds

by H. G. Wells

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What are some important quotes in The War of the Worlds?

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The War of the Worlds by H.G. Wells is a very pessimistic view of humankind, who are judged to be arrogant, complacent and completely ignorant of their true place in the world.

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The following quotations from The War of the Worlds are particularly useful as they present us with Wells' somewhat less than flattering view of humanity, a constant refrain throughout the book.

With infinite complacency men went to and fro over this globe about their little affairs, serene in their assurance of their empire over matter.

This particular quotation is a withering indictment of humankind. Everyone blithely goes about their business, thinking that things will go on just as they always have. It's this arrogant complacency which makes it more difficult for humankind to deal with the Martian threat when it finally arrives.

Men like Schiaparelli watched the red planet – it is odd, by-the-bye, that for countless centuries Mars has been the star of war – but failed to interpret the fluctuating appearances of the markings they mapped so well.

Our enormous scientific advances enabled us to see that Mars...

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had changed. Unfortunately, we were unable to detect exactly what those changes represented, with tragic consequences for our planet. Once again, Wells alerts us to the limitations of humankind, which we often overlook in our arrogance and complacency.

And before we judge of them too harshly we must remember what ruthless and utter destruction our own species has wrought, not only upon animals, such as the vanished bison and the dodo, but upon its inferior races. The Tasmanians, in spite of their human likeness, were entirely swept out of existence in a war of extermination waged by European immigrants, in the space of fifty years. Are we such apostles of mercy as to complain if the Martians warred in the same spirit?

Yes, the Martians may be war-like and destructive, but then so are we. Although we're separated by vast distances and completely different minds and bodily forms, we're not really that different after all.

I think everyone expected to see a man emerge – possibly something a little unlike us terrestrial men, but in all essentials a man. I know I did.

Even when an alien creature from another planet comes to visit we still somehow expect it to look just like us. It says a lot about us that even an encounter with a life-form not of this earth isn't enough to make us change our parochial, small-minded attitude towards the world outside our own. 

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