- Imlac Defraits: It *has* been invented, by the Americans; I was reading about it in the "New York Times".
- Oldenshaw: Wishful thinking by the popular press.
- Imlac Defraits: If you imagine the "New York Times" to be the popular press...
- Oldenshaw: It's enormously popular. Every disenchanted intellectual in England reads it.
- Imlac Defraits: Would a child organise property deals, develop a revolutionary weapon?
- Oldenshaw: Mozart wrote his first symphony at five, Milton's Latin and Greek - and Hebrew - are perfect today; there are plenty of precedents for precocious children. It's only modern psychology and free milk that hold 'em back.
- Imlac Defraits: [Waves set of photographs] Isn't the point to find the person who passed the Chinese these?
- Oldenshaw: Is that a joke?
- Imlac Defraits: What?
- Oldenshaw: "Chinese these".
- Imlac Defraits: Not for me, but if you find it amusing, I mean...
- [waves hand airily]
- Oldenshaw: The trouble with modern education, Imlac, is that it caters chiefly for the unintelligent.
- Hubert Hatton: If you can make that shed light on our problems, you're a better man than I am.
- Oldenshaw: I must say I'd always hoped I was.