# Quote — H.G. Wells, The War of the Worlds

> And before we judge of them too harshly we must remember what ruthless and utter destruction our own species has wrought, not only upon animals, such as the vanished bison and the dodo, but upon its inferior races. The Tasmanians, in spite of their human likeness, were entirely swept out of existence in a war of extermination waged by European immigrants, in the space of fifty years. Are we such apostles of mercy as to complain if the Martians warred in the same spirit?

- Author: [H.G. Wells](https://www.leafyquotes.com/hg-wells.md)
- Book: [The War of the Worlds](https://www.leafyquotes.com/hg-wells/the-war-of-the-worlds.md)
- Source: [Wikiquote](https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/H._G._Wells#The_War_of_the_Worlds_(1898)) ([CC BY-SA 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/))
- Quote page: https://www.leafyquotes.com/hg-wells/the-war-of-the-worlds/and-before-we-judge

## More from this book

> Night, the mother of fear and mystery, was coming upon me.

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/hg-wells/the-war-of-the-worlds/night-the-mother.md)

> And this Thing I saw! How can I describe it? A monstrous tripod, higher than many houses, striding over the young pine trees, and smashing them aside in its career; a walking engine of glittering metal, striding now across the heather; articulate ropes of steel dangling from it, and the clattering tumult of its passage mingling with the riot of the thunder.

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/hg-wells/the-war-of-the-worlds/and-this-thing.md)

> In another moment I had scrambled up the earthen rampart and stood upon its crest, and the interior of the redoubt was below me. A mighty space it was, with gigantic machines here and there within it, huge mounds of material and strange shelter places. And scattered about it, some in their overturned war-machines, some in the now rigid handling-machines, and a dozen of them stark and silent and laid in a row, were the Martians—dead!—slain by the putrefactive and disease bacteria against which their systems were unprepared; slain as the red weed was being slain; slain, after all man's devices had failed, by the humblest things that God, in his wisdom, has put upon this earth.

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/hg-wells/the-war-of-the-worlds/in-another-moment.md)