Simon Barnes Quotes

“Humans lived for several million years as fully wild beings: only in the last 10, 000 did we invent agriculture; only in the last couple of centuries did we invent industry. We are a species that has spent 99 per cent of its history as hunter-gatherers. We haven't had time for our unconscious minds and our unconscious needs to have changed. If you like, our souls have not changed, and this is true whether or not we believe that we have them.”

— Simon Barnes

Nature is not horrible. Nature is not wonderful. Nature is not cruel. Nature is not beautiful. Nature only is.

— Simon Barnes

“The comfort zone is always the most desirable place to be. But in settling for comfort, there is a price to pay and it comes in the death of ambition, of hope, of youth and the death of self.”

— Simon Barnes

“We share a common ancestor with chimps that is not shared by mandrills, we share a common ancestor with mandrills that is not shared by bushbabies, and on and on and on, to the ancestor we share with nematode worms that is not shared with oak trees.”

— Simon Barnes

“What politician ever thinks beyond 4 or 5 years? But such thinking is hopelessly inadequate for the big questions that involve the fabric of the world we live in”

— Simon Barnes

“Sport is something that does not matter, but is performed as if it did. In that contradiction lies its beauty”

— Simon Barnes

“A living countryside is not a luxury but a necessity for the human population; if you let conservation go hang until your pockets are jingling there will be a lot less to conserve”

— Simon Barnes

“Everybody loves birdsong. It's a human need ... the sound of birds gives a deep, if sometimes almost unnoticed, pleasure”

— Simon Barnes

“Penalties are not football. They are not even as television people keep telling us, great drama. They are cheap melodrama.”

— Simon Barnes

“It is a truism that no row is ever about what it is about.”

— Simon Barnes

“If you are old and you wish to be young again, if only for a moment, try and identify a dragonfly.”

— Simon Barnes

Never mind, love, it's not the end of the world.

— Simon Barnes

Sven must have neglected to pay tribute to one of those strict Nordic gods. But instead of cursing Eriksson himself, Thor has done a still crueller thing and cursed the England strikers. I can only assume that Eriksson was never informed of this curse, otherwise he might have more than a 17-year-old up his sleeve.

— Simon Barnes

“An innings of neurotic violence, of eccentric watchfulness, of brainless impetuosity and incontinent savagery - it was an extraordinary innings, a masterpiece and it secured the Ashes for England [on Pietersen's Ashes winning innings, 2005”

— Simon Barnes

“There are three great international team sports in Australia: cricket, rugby (two codes), and Pom-bashing. But the greatest of these is the last, and it is time we prepared ourselves for the greatest celebration of Pom-bashing since Bodyline, the 1930s cricket tour that became an international incident. That one rankles to this day and is otherwise known as the longest whinge in sporting history.”

— Simon Barnes

The traditional dress of the Australian cricketer is the baggy green cap on the head and the chip on the shoulder. Both are ritualistically assumed

— Simon Barnes

“Acquiring the trick of listening to birds will teach you how better to enjoy life and how better to endure it”

— Simon Barnes

“We can only truly be civilised people when we have regular and meaningful contact with the wild world”

— Simon Barnes

“Behind every footballing tough guy there lurks a mincing aesthete with a love of art for art's sake, football for football's sake. A win without art is somehow less than a victory; less, almost, than a beautiful defeat. In football, the romantic and the pragmatist are ever at war in the same breast. Beauty, it must be understood here, is not Barcelona's aim but their method. And last night they were ready to use this method at every opportunity - quick-fire passing of wit and purpose in the danger areas, seeking always to produce an unlooked-for player in a position of threat.”

— Simon Barnes

“Football is based on desperation. All clubs are desperate in one form or another - desperate to succeed, desperate to survive, desperate to stay where they are, desperate that things get no worse, desperate to arrest the slide.”

— Simon Barnes