Quotes from Aldous Huxley

The more powerful and original a mind, the more it will incline towards the religion of solitude.

I want to know what passion is. I want to feel something strongly.

I wanted to change the world. But I have found that the only thing one can be sure of changing is oneself.

An intellectual is a person who has discovered something more interesting than sex.

One believes things because one has been conditioned to believe them.

That men do not learn very much from the lessons of history is the most important of all the lessons that history has to teach.

I am I, and I wish I weren't.

The secret of genius is to carry the spirit of the child into old age, which means never losing your enthusiasm.

Most human beings have an almost infinite capacity for taking things for granted.

I like being myself. Myself and nasty.

Experience is not what happens to a man; it is what a man does with what happens to him.

most men and women will grow up to love their servitude and will never dream of revolution.

Every man's memory is his private literature.

The surest way to work up a crusade in favor of some good cause is to promise people they will have a chance of maltreating someone. To be able to destroy with good conscience, to be able to behave badly and call your bad behavior 'righteous indignation' — this is the height of psychological luxury, the most delicious of moral treats.

Happiness is not achieved by the conscious pursuit of happiness; it is generally the by-product of other activities.

There is only one corner of the universe you can be certain of improving, and that's your own self.

Dream in a pragmatic way.

The third petition of the Lord's Prayer is repeated daily by millions who have not the slightest intention of letting anyone's will be done but their own.

Generalized intelligence and mental alertness are the most powerful enemies of dictatorship and at the same time the basic conditions of effective democracy.

It's a little embarrassing that after 45 years of research & study, the best advice I can give people is to be a little kinder to each other.

Let us be kinder to one another.

The deepest sin against the human mind is to believe things without evidence.

People are much too solemn about things - I'm all for sticking pins into episcopal behinds.

Chastity - the most unnatural of all the sexual perversions.