Damian Mee

“Certainly it is possible that the advent to power of the masses marks one of the last stages of Western civilisation, a complete return to those periods of confused anarchy which seem always destined to precede the birth of every new society.”
― Gustave Le Bon, The Crowd: A Study of the Popular Mind

“But the polysemic champion must be set. Superficially it looks like a wholly unseeming monosyllable, the verbal equivalent of the single-celled organism. Yet it has 58 uses as a noun, 126 as a verb, and 10 as a participial adjective. Its meanings are so various and scattered that it takes the OED 60,000 words—the length of a short novel—to discuss them all.”
― Bill Bryson, The Mother Tongue: English and How it Got that Way

“Science promised us truth, or at least a knowledge of such relations as our intelligence can seize: it never promised us peace or happiness. Sovereignly indifferent to our feelings, it is deaf to our lamentations. It is for us to endeavour to live with science, since nothing can bring back the illusions it has destroyed.”
― Gustave Le Bon, The Crowd: A Study of the Popular Mind

“As a writer, I want to express my respect for the author. As fairy tales, these are very good.”
― Liu Cixin, Death's End