Melvyn Bragg Quotes

#1. Heresy is a word which, when it is used without passion, signifies a private opinion. So the different sects of the old philosophers, Academians, Peripatetics, Epicureans, Stoics, &c., were called heresies.

Thomas Hobbes

#2. Occasionally now I feel a wang that goes in my head - once you've got it you've got it. The [illness] was quite severe, leaving me deeply unhappy and frightened.

Melvyn Bragg

#3. Writing novels is a way of living alternative lives.

Melvyn Bragg

#4. The Internet took off in English and although there are now fifteen hundred languages on the Internet, seventy percent of it is still in English.

Melvyn Bragg

#5. Let's not confuse traditional behaviours with good manners. The definition of etiquette is gender neutral - it simply means we strive at all times to ensure a person in our company feels at ease.

Lynn Coady

#6. You can't just tell your team, 'Think long term.' It doesn't work that way. When you are starting out, you have to always think about trying to build something of value for the customer: something they can use all the time, something of use.

Ram Shriram

#7. Sometimes the greatest power comes from showing mercy,

Shannon Messenger

#8. Shakespeare shoved into bed together words that scarcely knew each other before, had never even been introduced.

Melvyn Bragg

#9. To hear the Treorchy Male Choir in full throat is one of the great joys of choral music.

Melvyn Bragg

#10. The only valid cure for any kind of depression is the acceptance of real suffering. To climb out of it any other way is simply laying the foundation for the next depression.

Helen M. Luke

#11. There's nothing the British like better than a bloke who comes from nowhere, makes it, and then gets clobbered.

Melvyn Bragg

#12. History is too often the refuge of the tidy-minded, making neat patterns when the dust has settled.

Melvyn Bragg

#13. The more sophisticated we become - as we pierce reality and see the void beyond - the more our sense of wonder is destroyed, along with our reasons for being.

Eric Maisel

#14. I think the idea of getting out of a traffic jam and getting out of work each week and going and doing all this stuff would be really exhausting.

Paul McCartney

#15. When anybody tells you something about writing, somebody will tell you something completely different and they will also be right

Melvyn Bragg

#16. A gazebo on top of a welding rig" was how Yul might have described it, if only he had been here.

Neal Stephenson

#17. The highest function of humanity is belief, that activity of spirit that proceeds upon the pathway of reason, until it comes to some great promontory, and then spreads its wings, and upon the basis of its earlier journeying, takes eternity into its grasp.

G. Campbell Morgan

#18. During these three months I have gone through much; I mean, I have gone through much in myself; and now there are the things I am going to see and go through. There will be much to be written.

Fyodor Dostoyevsky

#19. Life is all about balance.

One Direction

#20. When you set out, you were four. Six with friends who could not stay behind. Now you are one.

Erin Hunter

#21. Why...do you find this...distracting?

Suzanne Collins

#22. More people now work in the arts than the steel, coal and car industries combined.

Melvyn Bragg