Quotes from Aldous Huxley

Words can be like X-rays, if you use them properly – they'll go through anything.

From Lovelessness in relation to nature we to advance to lovelessness in relation to art –a lovelessness so extreme that we have effectively killed all the fundamental or useful arts and set up various kinds of mass production by machines in their place.

It is the inactivity of self-will and ego-centred cleverness that makes possible the activity within the emptied and purified soul of the eternal Suchness. And when eternity is known in the heights within, it is also known in the fullness of experience, outside in the world.

As flores do campo e as paisagens, advertiu, têm um grave-defeito: são gratuitas. O amor à natureza não estimula a atividade de nenhuma fábrica. Decidiu-se que era preciso aboli-lo, pelo menos nas classes baixas;

He's foredoomed

One of the first things that Homo Sapiens did with his newly developed rationality and self-consciousness was to set them to work finding out ways to by-pass analytical thinking and to transcend or, in extreme cases, temporarily obliterate, the isolating awareness of the self.

La organización excesiva transforma a los hombres y mujeres en autómatas, sofoca el espíritu creador y suprime la misma posibilidad de la libertad.

No dejes para mañana la diversión que puedes tener hoy.

All the natural narcotics, stimulants, relaxants and hallucinants known to the modern botanist and pharmacologist were discovered by primitive man and have been in use from time immemorial.

Gestalt psychologists, such as Samuel Renshaw, have devised methods for widening the range and increasing the acuity of human perceptions. But do our educators apply them? The answer is, No.

Words are man's first and most grandiose invention. With language he created a whole new universe; what wonder if he loved words and attributed power to them!

To think of God as mere Power, and not also, at the same time as Power, Love and Wisdom, comes quite naturally to the ordinary, unregenerate human mind. Only the totally selfless are in a position to know experimentally that, in spite of everything, 'all will be well' and, in some way, already is well.

My good boy!" The Director wheeled sharply round on him. "Can't you see? Can't you see?" He raised a hand; his expression was solemn. "Bokanovsky's Process is one of the major instruments of social stability!" Major instruments of social stability.

A War Memorial was, in its very nature, a work dedicated to God. It was a token of thankfulness that the first stage in the culminating world–war had been crowned by the triumph of righteousness; it was at the same time a visibly embodied supplication that God might not long delay the Advent which alone could bring the final peace.

Sex is often centre stage in utopias and dystopias – who can do what, with which set of genital organs, and with whom, being one of humanity's main preoccupations.

Âdem'in yarat?ld??? günün sabah?nda gördüklerini görüyordum: Ç?plak varoluÅŸ mucizesini, anbean yenilenen mucizeyi. Nas?l, iyi mi? diye sordu biri. Ne iyi ne de deÄŸil, dedim. Sadece öyle.

One knew in theory very well that others spoke of one contemptuously?—as one spoke of them. In practice?—it was hard to believe.

The older revolutionaries sought to change the social environment in the hope (if they were idealists and not mere power seekers) of changing human nature. Then coming revolutionaries will make their assault directly on human nature as they find it, in the minds and bodies of their victims or, if you prefer, their beneficiaries.

Plato seems to have made the enormous, the grotesque mistake of separating Being from becoming and identifying it with the mathematical abstraction of the Idea. He could never, poor fellow, have seen a bunch of flowers shining with their own inner light and all but quivering under the pressure of the significance with which they were charged; could never have perceived that what rose and iris and carnation so intensely signified was nothing more, and nothing less, than what they were.

Universal happiness keeps the wheels steadily turning; truth and beauty can't. And, of course, whenever the masses seized political power, then it was happiness rather than truth and beauty that mattered.

But I do," he insisted. "It makes me feel as though . . ." he hesitated, searching for words with which to express himself, "as though I were more me, if you see what I mean. More on my own, not so completely a part of something else. Not just a cell in the social body. Doesn't it make you feel like that, Lenina?" But

To prevent economic breakdown and to repress popular discontent, the governments of hungry countries will be tempted to enforce ever-stricter controls. Furthermore, chronic undernourishment reduces physical energy and disturbs the mind. Hunger and self-government are incompatible.

Consider the matter dispassionately, Mr. Foster, and you will see that no offence is so henious as unorthodoxy of behaviour.

Pero, aunque indispensable, la organización también puede ser fatal. La organización excesiva transforma a hombres y mujeres en autómatas, sofoca el espíritu creador y suprime la misma posibilidad de la libertad.