Quotes from Aldous Huxley

Dieu: Quelque chose qui reste et qui ne trompe pas.

The survival of democracy depends on the ability of large numbers of people to make realistic choices in the light of adequate information.

Money brings no satisfaction if one has to work for it; for if one works for it one has no time to spend it.

He held out his right hand in the moonlight. From the cut on his wrist the blood was still oozing. Every few seconds a drop fell, dark, almost colourless in the dead light. Drop, drop, drop. Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow. . . He had discovered the Time and Death and God.

And to think, Will Farnaby commented, to think that people complain about modern life having no meaning! Look at what life was like when it did have a meaning. A tale told by an idiot or a tale told by a Calvinist? Give me the idiot every time.

If ever I hear again of any lapse from a proper standard of infantile decorum, I shall ask for your transference to a Sub-Centre–preferably to Iceland. Good morning.

Wherever a choice has had to be made between the man of reason and the madman, the world has unhesitatingly followed the madman. For the madman appeals to what is fundamental, to passion and the instincts; the philosophers to what is superficial and supererogatory - reason.

Una dintre funcÈ›iile principale ale unui prienten este s? sufere(într-o form? mai blând?, simbolic?) pedepsele pe care am dori s? le aplic?m duÈ™manilor noÈ™tri, dar nu izbutim.

The insults bounced off their carapace of thick stupidity; they stared at him with a blank expression of dull and sullen resentment in their eyes. The gods are just. No doubt. But their code of law is dictated, in the last resort, by the people who organize society; Providence takes its cue from men

It is in the light of our beliefs about the ultimate nature of reality that we formulate our conceptions of right and wrong; and it is in the light of our conceptions of right and wrong that we frame our conduct, not only in the relations of private life, but also in the sphere of politics and economics. So far from being irrelevant, our metaphysical beliefs are the finally determining factor in all our actions.

No podemos salir de nuestra irracionalidad fundamental por medio del razonamiento. Lo único que podemos hacer es aprender el arte de ser irracional en forma racional.

And the present sheared asunder from the past, like an iceberg sheared off from its frozen parent cliffs, and went sailing out to sea in lonely pride. All the past ages had accomplished was as nothing.

Greatness is nothing more nor less than the harmonious functioning of the faculties of the head and heart; the shorter the neck, the more closely these two organs approach one another; argal…It was convincing.

La teología de un pueblo refleja el estado de las nalgas de sus niños.

Armaments, universal debt and planned obsolescence - those are the three pillars of Western prosperity. If war, waste and money-lenders were abolished, you'd collapse.

For the moment the interfering neurotic who, in waking hours, tries to run the show, was blessedly out of the way.

There are times, and this is one of them, when the world seems purposefully beautiful, when it is as though some mind in things had suddenly chosen to make manifest, for all who choose to see, the supernatural reality that underlies all appearances.

As a lover or a dipsomaniac, I've no doubt of your being a most fascinating specimen. But as a combiner of forms, you must honestly admit it, you're a bore.

Single-mindedness is all very well in cows or baboons; in an animal claiming to belong to the same species as Shakespeare it is simply disgraceful.

In the world of ideas everything was clear in life all was obscure, embroiled.

Éste es el secreto de la felicidad y la virtud: Amar lo que uno tiene que hacer. Todo condicionamiento tiende a esto: a lograr que la gente ame su inevitable destino social.

Success went fizzily to Bernard's head, and in the process completely reconciled him (as any good intoxicant should do) to a world which, up till then, he had found very unsatisfactory. In so far as it recognized him as important, the order of things was good.

Universal happiness keeps the wheels steadily turning; truth and beauty can't. Whenever the masses seized political power, then it was happiness rather than truth or beauty that mattered. Happiness has got to be paid for. It hasn't been very good for truth of course. But it's been very good for happiness.

Fortunately, however, birds don't understand pep talks. Not even St. Francis'. Just imagine, he went on, preaching sermons to perfectly good thrushes and goldfinches and chiff-chaffs! What presumption! Why couldn't he have kept his mouth shut and let the birds preach to him?