The mind has exactly the same power as the hands; not merely to grasp the world, but to change it.

- Colin Wilson

The average man is a conformist, accepting miseries and disasters with the stoicism of a cow standing in the rain.

- Colin Wilson

Being very famous is not the fun it sounds. It merely means you're being chased by a lot of people and you lose your privacy.

- Colin Wilson

Whereas in the past optimism had been regarded as rather shallow - because 'oh well, it's just your temperament, you happen to be just a cheerful sort of person' - what I wanted to do was to establish that in fact it is the pessimists who are allowing all kinds of errors to creep into their work.

- Colin Wilson

Criminals interest me, because they're driven by the same desires as we are, but they take these disastrous shortcuts and end up in a real mess.

- Colin Wilson

A symphony is a stage play with the parts written for instruments instead of for actors.

- Colin Wilson

I'm basically a writer of ideas, and the English aren't interested in ideas. The English, I'm afraid, are totally brainless.

- Colin Wilson

If you asked me what is the basis of all my work, it's the feeling there's something basically wrong with human beings.

- Colin Wilson

The complex develops out of the simple.

- Colin Wilson

When I was a teenager I was a total romantic escapist. My world was books.

- Colin Wilson

I've always been a pretty hard worker. That's how I've written over a hundred books.

- Colin Wilson

If I'd stayed on in London and carried on going to literary parties, it would have wrecked me as a writer.

- Colin Wilson

What I wanted to do was to try to create a philosophy upon a completely new foundation.

- Colin Wilson