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Island

Book by Aldous Huxley · 34 quotes · Huxley, La Isla, Abuse

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Island Quotes

“What happens out there is public—or at least fairly public," he qualified. "And what happens when somebody speaks or writes words—that's also public. But the things that go on inside these little circles are private. Private." He laid a hand on his chest. "Private." He rubbed his forehead. "Private." He touched his eyelids and the tip of his nose with a brown forefinger. "Now let's make a simple experiment. Say the word 'pinch.' " "Pinch," said the class in ragged unison. "Pinch . . ." "P-I-N-C-H—pinch. That's public, that's something you can look up in the dictionary. But now pinch yourselves. Hard! Harder!" To an accompaniment of giggles, of aies and ows, the children did as they were told. "Can anybody feel what the person sitting next to him is feeling?" There was a chorus of noes. "So it looks," said the young man, "as though there were-— let's see, how many are we?" He ran his eyes over the desks before him. "It looks as though there were twenty-three distinct and separate pains. Twenty-three in this one room. Nearly three thousand million of them in the whole world. Plus the pains of all the animals. And each of these pains is strictly private. There's no way of passing the experience from one center of pain to another center of pain.”

SelfPainEmpathyExperiencePrivacy
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“It must be something voluntary, something self induced - like getting drunk, or talking yourself into believing some piece of foolishness because it happens to be in the Scriptures. And then look at their idea of what's normal. Believe it or not, a normal human being is one who can have an orgasm and is adjusted to society. It's unimaginable! No question about what you do with your orgasms. No question about the quality of your feelings and thoughts and perceptions. And then what about the society you're supposed to be adjusted to? Is it a mad society or a sane one? And even if it's pretty sane, is it right that anybody should be completely adjusted to it?”

IdeasFreedomSocietyChoiceOrgasm
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“Somewhere between brute silence and last Sunday's Thirteen hundred thousand sermons; Somewhere between Calvin on Christ (God help us!) and the lizards; Somewhere between seeing and speaking, somewhere Between our soiled and greasy currency of words And the first star, the great moths fluttering About the ghosts of flowers, Lies the clear place where I, no longer I, Nevertheless remember Love's nightlong wisdom of the other shore; And, listening to the wind, remember too That other night, that first of widowhood, Sleepless, with death beside me in the dark. Mine, mine, all mine, mine inescapably! But I, no longer I, In this clear place between my thought and silence See all I had and long, anguish and joys, Glowing like gentians in the Alpine grass, Blue, unpossessed and open.”

LoveLossContemplation
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“Our primary emphasis isn’t on physics and chemistry; it’s on the sciences of life.” “Is that a matter of principle?” “Not entirely. It’s also a matter of convenience and economic necessity. We don’t have the money for large-scale research in physics and chemistry, and we don’t really have any practical need for that kind of research—no heavy industries to be made more competitive, no armaments to be made more diabolical, not the faintest desire to land on the backside of the moon. Only the modest ambition to live as fully human beings in harmony with the rest of life on this island at this latitude on this planet. We can take the results of your researches in physics and chemistry and apply them, if we want to or can afford it, to our own purposes. Meanwhile we’ll concentrate on the research which promises to do us the greatest good—in the sciences of life and mind.”

Scientific ResearchIndustrializationScience Of MindLife SciencesArmaments
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“Distance reminds us that there’s a lot more to the universe than just people—that there’s even a lot more to people than just people. It reminds us that there are mental spaces inside our skulls as enormous as the spaces out there. The experience of distance, of inner distance and outer distance, of distance in time and distance in space—it’s the first and fundamental religious experience.”

Religious ExperienceSpacesDistances
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“Or consider another field where one can use games to implant an understanding of basic principles. All scientific thinking is in terms of probability. The old eternal verities are merely a high degree of likeliness; the immutable laws of nature are just statistical averages. How does one get these profoundly unobvious notions into children’s heads? By playing roulette with them, by spinning coins and drawing lots. By teaching them all kinds of games with cards and boards and dice.”

ProbabilityScientific ThinkingStatistical Literacy
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“Ustedes piensan primero en obtener la producción más grande posible en el menor tiempo posible. Nosotros pensamos primero en los seres humanos y en sus satisfacciones. El cambio de trabajo no es lo mejor para obtener una gran producción en pocos días. Pero a la mayoría de la gente le gusta más que hacer un solo trabajo toda la vida. Si se trata de elegir entre la eficiencia mecánica y la satisfacción humana, elegimos la satisfacción.”

HuxleyElecciónLa IslaEficienciaSatisfacción
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“It’s dark because you are trying too hard. Lightly child, lightly. Learn to do everything lightly. Yes, feel lightly even though you’re feeling deeply. Just lightly let things happen and lightly cope with them. I was so preposterously serious in those days, such a humorless little prig. Lightly, lightly – it’s the best advice ever given me. When it comes to dying even. Nothing ponderous, or portentous, or emphatic. No rhetoric, no tremolos, no self conscious persona putting on its celebrated imitation of Christ or Little Nell. And of course, no theology, no metaphysics. Just the fact of dying and the fact of the clear light. So throw away your baggage and go forward. There are quicksands all about you, sucking at your feet, trying to suck you down into fear and self-pity and despair. That’s why you must walk so lightly. Lightly my darling, on tiptoes and no luggage, not even a sponge bag, completely unencumbered.”

Inspirational
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“È buio perché ti stai sforzando troppo. [...] Con leggerezza, bimba, con leggerezza. Impara a fare ogni cosa con leggerezza. [...] Sì, usa la leggerezza nel sentire, anche quando il sentire è profondo. Con leggerezza lascia che le cose accadano, e con leggerezza affrontale. [...] Dunque getta via il tuo bagaglio e procedi. Sei circondata ovunque da sabbie mobili, che ti risucchiano i piedi, che cercano di risucchiarti nella paura, nell’autocommiserazione e nella disperazione. Ecco perché devi camminare con tale leggerezza. Con leggerezza, tesoro mio.”

IslandHuxleyAldous HuxleyLeggerezza
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“En tanto que nosotros hemos preferido siempre adaptar nuestra economía y tecnología a los seres humanos, no nuestros seres humanos a la economía y tecnología de otros. Importamos lo que no podemos fabricar; pero fabricamos e importamos sólo lo que podemos permitirnos. Y lo que podemos permitirnos está limitado, no sólo por las libras, marcos y dólares que poseemos, sino también, y principalmente... principalmente por nuestro deseo de ser felices, nuestra ambición de ser humanos.”

HuxleyEconomíaLa IslaLimitaciones
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“Do you know the city of Palmyra?' 'No.' 'Once it was a major city of the world. A place of temples to the sun and moon and of great archways curving against the desert sky. A place of trade, where all races lived as one. Then it fell as all civilisations can sem to fall. It was destroyed, its people were put to death.' 'That's terrible.' 'The destroyers were the Romans, those thought to be the great civilisers of the ancient world.”

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“It's dark because you're trying too hard," said Susila. "Dark because you want it to be light. Remember what you used to tell me when I was a little girl. 'Lightly, child, lightly. You've got to learn to do everything lightly. Think lightly, act lightly, feel lightly. Yes, feel lightly, even though you're feeling deeply. Just lightly let things happen and lightly cope with them.' I was so preposterously serious in those days, such a humorless little prig. Lightly, lightly—it was the best advice ever given me. Well, now I'm going to say the same thing to you, Lakshmi . . . Lightly, my darling, lightly. Even when it comes to dying. Nothing ponderous, or portentous, or emphatic. No rhetoric, no tremolos, no self-conscious persona putting on its celebrated imitation of Christ or Goethe or Little Nell. And, of course, no theology, no metaphysics. Just the fact of dying and the fact of the Clear Light. So throw away all your baggage and go forward. There are quicksands all about you, sucking at your feet, trying to suck you down into fear and self-pity and despair. That's why you must walk so lightly. Lightly, my darling. On tiptoes; and no luggage, not even a sponge bag. Completely unencumbered.”

LightDarknessLightly
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“I'd wanted to understand how my father came to fall, but I don't think it matters anymore. Or that it matters beyond the more important truth: that my father is gone, released from himself - and that we, Key and I, are free. I feel strange. I feel something I may not have felt in a long time, if ever. It feels warm. It feels easy. It feels like control. Light streams through the windows. My father's ghosts have disappeared. And I'm breathing, steadily, slowly. I'm at peace. That's what this is. It's peace.”

DeathPeaceAbuse
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