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The Iron Man came to the top of the cliff. How far had he walked? Nobody knows. Where did he come from? Nobody knows. How was he made? Nobody knows. Taller than a house the Iron Man stood at the top of the cliff, at the very brink, in the darkness.

— Ted Hughes The Iron Man (1968)

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Knowledge

More quotes by Ted Hughes

We now give more serious weight to the words of a country's poets than to the words of its politicians — though we know the latter may interfere more drastically with our lives.

Poetry International Programme note (1967)

However rootedly national it may be, poetry is less and less the prisoner of its own language.

Poetry International Programme note (1967)

The idea of global unity is not new, but the absolute necessity of it has only just arrived, like a sudden radical alteration of the sun, and we shall have to adapt or disappear.

Poetry International Programme note (1967)

The jaws' hooked clamp and fangs
Not to be changed at this date;
A life subdued to its instrument.

Lupercal (1960)

The deeps are cold:
In that darkness camaraderie does not hold:
Nothing touches but, clutching, devours.

Lupercal (1960)

All Ted Hughes quotes →

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The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents.

H. P. Lovecraft The Call of Cthulhu (1926)

It is not in the books of the Philosophers, but in the religious symbolism of the Ancients, that we must look for the footprints of Science, and re-discover the Mysteries of Knowledge.

Albert Pike Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry (1871)

Men are born ignorant, not stupid; they are made stupid by education.

Bertrand Russell

Attribution

Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: Ted Hughes (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.