J. G. Farrell

Why do people insist on defending their ideas and opinions with such ferocity, as if defending honour itself? What could be easier to change than an idea?

We look on past ages with condescension, as a mere preparation for us....but what if we are a mere after-glow of them?

The British could leave and half India wouldn't notice us leaving just as they didn't notice us arriving. All our reforms of administration might be reforms on the moon for all it has to do with them.

Surely there’s no need to abandon one’s reason simply because one is in Ireland.

I read somewhere that the boatman who rowed King William back across the river after the Battle of the Boyne is supposed to have asked the King which side won … To which the King replied: “What’s it to you? You’ll still be a boatman.

How few human beings, the major thought with a sigh, can exert by hard work, thrift, intelligence or any other virtue the slightest influence on their own destiny.

Not everyone, the Collector was aware, is improved by the job he does in life; some people are visibly disimproved.

It seems that’s there a ghastly Darwinian principle of economics known as the Law of Substitution which declares, more or less, that “the cheapest will survive”. This has all sorts of unpleasant consequences, one of which is that non-economic values tend to be eliminated.