Jack London

Civilization's going to pieces. I've gotten to be a terrible pessimist about things. Have you read 'The Rise of the Colored Empires' by this man Goddard? ... The idea is if we don't look out the white race will be utterly submerged. It's all scientific stuff; it's been proved.

By the time I was twenty-one, I had learned to forget the pain of my hands in the pain of my stomach.

The men were like automatons, slaving all day long in the fierce heat, the women toiling all day long in the monotonous round of washing clothes, cooking, and nursing the sick, the children crying with hunger, their bellies empty and their thin, puny bodies racked by the never-ending fevers of the coast.

I became a scavenger. I have seen things, unspeakable things, things that have made me afraid of the dark.

The disease was spreading at such a pace that I was afraid to go away from the house. The death rate was terrific.

The plague was upon us; and, much as I had scorned the suggestion in the past, here, in my own flesh, the plague was upon me.

I tell you, boys, it has been a long time between drinks and tobacco, and I've learned the lesson of the ages, which is that man, unlike the brute, does not live by physical exertion alone.

I had learned long ago that there is no such thing as chance or accident; there is only law and order.

Ah, the good old days, when we could lose our youth in riotous living, and not be afraid of the morrow.

Man, who was born of woman, and who is the most helpless of all creatures when he first meets the cold, robs the earth of its treasures by means of his cunning and skill.

The old men are a burden. They can neither hunt nor fish, and as they are not good to eat, the young men do not wish to feed them.

We are the meat. And we are so mad that we have destroyed the earth that feeds us.