Philip Pullman Quotes

Man has the power to act as his own destroyer - and that is the way he has acted through most of his history.

Do not seek death, seek destruction.

As barbaric is we are, it's a miracle we haven't blown ourselves off the face of the earth so far.

Violence is man re-creating himself.

If human beings were shown what they're really like, they'd either kill one another as vermin, or hang themselves.

In truth, I do not recollect in all the animal kingdom a single species but man which is eternally and systematically engaged in the destruction of its own species.

It was only when the giant got halfway down the incline that he suddenly, happily, burst into flame and continued his trip saying, "NO SURVIVORS, NO SURVIVORS!" in a manner that could only indicate deadly sincerity. It was seeing him happily burning and advancing that startled the Brute Squad to screaming. And once that happened, why, everybody panicked and ran.

ahhh the beauty of annihilation. There's nothing like it.

Beware the beast Man, for he is the Devil's pawn. Alone among God's primates, he kills for sport or lust or greed. Yea, he will murder his brother to possess his brother's land. Let him not breed in great numbers, for he will make a desert of his home and yours. Shun him; drive him back into his jungle lair, for he is the harbinger of death.

If war was hell and only hell and there were no other colors in the palate I don't think people would continue to make war.

There's in people simply an urge to destroy, an urge to kill, to murder and rage, and until all mankind, without exception, undergoes a great change, wars will be waged, everything that has been built up, cultivated, and grown will be destroyed and disfigured, after which mankind will have to begin all over again

Then I have some bad news for you, because humans are going to destroy each other as soon as it becomes easy enough to, which will be very soon.

Mankind, I hazard, wherever found, Civilized or Savage, cannot keep to any purpose for much length of time, except the purpose of destroying himself.

She touches me The jungle lights up with incinerating fire Looks like a flaming serpent I look into her eyes I see a movie flickering Car crashes People kicking corpses Men ripping their tracheas out and shaking them at the sky I think to myself: I don’t want to survive this one I want to burn up in the wreckage Cooking flesh in the jungle

There was one field in which man was unsurpassed; he showed unlimited ingenuity in devising bigger and more efficient ways to kill off, enslave, harass, and in all ways make an unbearable nuisance of himself to himself.

Both of us will die today, gunned down or smashed up or exploded in some terrible moment of fire and twisted metal, and when they go to bury us we'll be so melted together and entwined they won't be able to separate the bodies; pieces of him will go with me, and pieces of me will go with him.

I felt I was beating a rainbow to death

Almost as swiftly as he had imagined it, she had torn her clothes off, and when she flung them aside it was with that same magnificent gesture by which a whole civilization seemed to be annihilated.

About, about, in reel and rout the death fires danced at night.

Were the life of man prolonged, he would become such a proficient in villainy, that it would become necessary again to drown or to burn the world. Earth would become an hell; for future rewards when put off to a great distance, would cease to encourage, and future punishments to alarm.

Put a gun to my head and paint the wall with my brains.

Zeus most glorious and most great, Thundercloud, throned in the heavens! Let not the sun go down and the darkness come, until I cast down headlong the citadel of Priam in flames, and burn his gates with blazing fire, and tear to rags the shirt upon Hectors breast! May many of his men fall about him prone in the dust and bite the earth!

He'd been wrong, there was a light at the end of the tunnel, and it was a flamethrower.

destruction is ultimately self-destruction.

Drive your cart and plow over the bones of the dead.