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Aldous Huxley

Aldous Huxley Quotes

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Famous Aldous Huxley Quotes

“The effectiveness of political and religious propaganda depends upon the methods employed, not upon the doctrines taught. These doctrines may be true or false, wholesome or pernicious it makes little or no difference.”

MayLittlesPoliticalDifferencesReligiousTaughtDependsMethodDoctrineBeing TruePropagandaEmployedEffectivenessPerniciousTrue Or False
Book:Complete Essays: 1956-1963, and supplement, 1920-1948
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“Suddenly to realise that one is sitting, damned, among the other damned--it is a most disquieting experience; so disquieting thatmost of us react to it by immediately plunging more deeply into our particular damnation in the hope, generally realized, that we may be able, at least for a time, to stifle our revolutionary knowledge.”

MayAbleParticularSittingRevolutionaryRealisingDamnation
Book:The collected works of Aldous Huxley
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“The real hopeless victims of mental illness are to be found among those who appear to be most normal. Many of them are normal because they are so well adjusted to our mode of existence, because their human voice has been silenced so early in their lives that they do not even struggle or suffer or develop symptoms as the neurotic does. They are normal not in what may be called the absolute sense of the word; they are normal only in relation to a profoundly abnormal society.”

HumansWellsMayDoeHas BeensRealPoliticalSufferingFoundPoliticsVoiceExistenceStruggleNormalRelationAbsolutesVictimIllnessMental IllnessHopelessSymptomsNeuroticAbnormalHuman Voice
Author:Aldous Huxley
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“Uncontrolled, the hunger and thirst after God may become an obstacle, cutting off the soul from what it desires. If a man would travel far along the mystic road, he must learn to desire God intensely but in stillness, passively and yet with all his heart and mind and strength.”

IfsMenMindHeartMaySoulDesireCuttingTravelHungerObstaclesMysticismStillnessThirstFunny TravelHeart And MindMysticCutting OffHunger And Thirst
Book:The collected works of Aldous Huxley
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“Under the present dispensation, the great majority of factories are little despotisms, benevolent in some cases, malevolent in others. Even where benevolence prevails, passive obedience is demanded by the workers, who are ruled by overseers, not of their own election, but appointed from above. In theory they may be the subjects of a democratic state; but in practice they spend the whole of their working lives as the subjects of a petty tyrant.”

MayLittlesStatesWholePracticeCasesSubjectsTheoryElectionMajorityDemocraticWorkersObedienceTyrantsFactoriesPassivePettyBenevolenceDespotismBenevolentWorking LifePetty Tyrants
Book:Ends and Means: An Inquiry Into the Nature of Ideals and Into the Methods Employed for Their Realization
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“The soul of wit may become the very body of untruth. However elegant and memorable, brevity can never, in the nature of things, do justice to all the facts of a complex situations. On such a theme one can be brief only by omission and simplification. Omission and simplification help us to understand - but help is, in many cases, to understand the wrong thing; for our comprehension may be only of the abbreviator's neatly formulated notions, not of the vast, ramifying reality from which these notions have been so arbitrarily abstracted.”

MayHas BeensRealSoulFactsHelpingBodyRealityJusticeSituationCasesComplexesNotionWitReal LifeMemorableThemeElegantComprehensionWrong ThingsBrevityUntruthSimplificationOmission
Author:Aldous Huxley
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“The place is good. How good, one must have circumnavigated the globe to discover. Why not stay? Take root? But roots are chains. I have a terror of losing my freedom. Free, without ties, unpossessed by any possessions, free to do as one will, to go at a moment's notice wherever the fancy may suggest--it is good. But so is this place. Might it not be better? To gain freedom one sacrifices something [...] and all that these things and people signify. One sacrifices something--for a greater gain in knowledge, in understanding, in intensified living? I sometimes wonder.”

PeopleMaySometimesMomentsMightUnderstandingWonderGreaterSacrificeLosingGainsRootsTerrorPossessionChainsTiesFancyWhy NotGlobes
Book:The Collected Works of Aldous Huxley: Point counter point
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“"All right then," said the savage defiantly, I'm claiming the right to be unhappy." "Not to mention the right to grow old and ugly and impotent; the right to have syphilis and cancer; the right to have too little to eat, the right to be lousy; the right to live in constant apprehension of what may happen tomorrow; the right to catch typhoid; the right to be tortured by unspeakable pains of every kind." There was a long silence. "I claim them all," said the Savage at last.”

KindMayLittlesLongSaidHappensPainLastsGrowsSilenceTomorrowClaimsConstantCancerUglyUnhappySavagesApprehensionUnspeakableBrave New World HappinessBrave New World FreedomSyphilisBrave New World CharacterBrave New World TechnologyBrave New World LeninaBrave New World ConsumerismBrave New World JohnLong SilenceTyphoid
Author:Aldous Huxley
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“God isn't the son of Memory; He's the son of Immediate Experience. You can't worship a spirit in spirit, unless you do it now. Wallowing in the past may be good literature. As wisdom, it's hopeless. Time Regained is Paradise Lost, and Time Lost is Paradise Regained. Let the dead bury their dead. If you want to live at every moment as it presents itself, you've got to die to every other moment.”

IfsWantMayMomentsPastSpiritDiesLiteratureLostMemoriesSonWorshipBe GoodParadiseHopelessHuxleyWallowingGood Literature
Book:The Genius and the Goddess: A Novel
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“Pleasure cannot be shared; like Pain, it can only be experienced or inflicted, and when we give Pleasure to our Lovers or bestow Charity upon the Needy, we do so, not to gratify the object of our Benevolence, but only ourselves. For the Truth is that we are kind for the same reason as we are cruel, in order that we may enhance the sense of our own Power.”

GivingKindMayReasonPainOrderPleasureObjectsLoversTruth IsCharityBenevolenceNeedy
Book:After Many a Summer Dies the Swan
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“To the exponents of the Perennial Philosophy, the question whether Progress is inevitable or even real is not a matter of primary importance. For them, the important thing is that individual men and women should come to the unitive knowledge of the divine Ground, and what interests them in regard to the social environment is not its progressiveness or non-progressiveness (whatever those terms may mean), but the degree to which it helps or hinders individuals in the their advance towards man's final end.”

MenShouldMayMeanImportantRealEndsMatterPhilosophyHelpingIndividualSocialTermInterestEnvironmentProgressDivineDegreesMen And WomenImportanceRegardImportant ThingsFinalsPrimariesInevitableHinderExponentsSocial Environment
Author:Aldous Huxley
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“Our business is to wake up. We have to find ways in which to detect the whole of reality in the one illusory part which our self-centered consciousness permits us to see. We must not live thoughtlessly, taking our illusion for the complete reality, but at the same time we must not live too thoughtfully in the sense of trying to escape from the dream state. We must be continuously on watch for ways in which we may enlarge our consciousness.”

WayTryingMaySelfStatesWholeDreamRealityConsciousnessWatchesIllusionWake UpAwakeningPermitSelf CenteredIllusory
Book:Complete Essays: 1956-1963, and supplement, 1920-1948
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“What I may call the messages of Brave New World, but it is possible to make people contented with their servitude. I think this can be done. I think it has been done in the past. I think it could be done even more effectively now because you can provide them with bread and circuses and you can provide them with endless amounts of distractions and propaganda.”

PeopleThinkingWorldMayHas BeensDonePastAmountMessagesBraveEndlessBreadPropagandaDistractionNew WorldCircusServitudeBrave New WorldBread And Circuses
Author:Aldous Huxley
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“Cant is always rather nauseating; but before we condemn political hypocrisy, let us remember that it is the tribute paid by men of leather to men of God, and that the acting of the part of someone better than oneself may actually commit one to a course of behavior perceptibly less evil than what would be normal and natural in an avowed cynic.”

MenMayWould BeRememberPoliticalCoursesEvilPoliticsNaturalActingSocietyPoliticianBehaviorNormalPaidOneselfCommitHypocrisyCantLeatherTributeCynicMan Of God
Book:Complete Essays: 1939-1956
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