Top 100 Huxley's Quotes
#1. Selfhood is a heavy, hardly translucent medium, which cuts off most of the light of reality and distorts what little it permits to pass.' This is Huxley's central notion [of Grey Eminence], that we should 'stand out of our own light' in order to see the eternal truths.
Nicholas Murray
#2. Orwell's '1984' convinced me, rightly or wrongly, that Marxism was only a quantum leap away from tyranny. By contrast, Huxley's 'Brave New World' suggested that the totalitarian systems of the future might be subservient and ingratiating.
J.G. Ballard
#3. Television is the soma of Aldous Huxley's Brave New World.
Robert MacNeil
#4. A man got up [after one of Huxley's 'sermons'] and said 'they had never heard anything like that in Norwich before'. Never 'did Science seem so vast and mere creeds so little'.
Adrian Desmond
#5. You have to realize the truth of biologist Julian Huxley's idea that 'Life is just one damn relatedness after another' So you must have the models, and you must see the relatedness and the effects from the relatedness.
Charlie Munger
#6. Bottle of mine, it's you I've always wanted!
Bottle of mine, why was I ever decanted?
Skies are blue inside of you,
The weather's always fine;
For
There ain't no Bottle in all the world
Like that dear little Bottle of mine.
Aldous Huxley
#7. Seated upon the convex mound Of one vast kidney, Jonah prays And sings his canticles and hymns, Making the hollow vault resound God's goodness and mysterious ways, Till the great fish spouts music as he swims.
Aldous Huxley
#8. It is a bit embarrassing to have been concerned with the human problem all one's life and find at the end that one has no more to offer by way of advice than 'Try to be a little kinder.
Aldous Huxley
#9. Things somehow seem more real and vivid when one can apply somebody else's ready-made phrase about them ( ... ) you bring them out triumphantly, and feel you've clinched the argument with the mere magical sound of them. That's what comes of the higher education.
Aldous Huxley
#10. If you're always scared of dying," Obispo had said, "you'll surely die. Fear's a poison; and not such a slow poison either.
Aldous Huxley
#11. If you look up 'Intelligence' in the new volumes of the Encyclopeadia Britannica, you'll find it classified under the following three heads: Intelligence, Human; Intelligence, Animal; Intelligence, Military. My stepfather's a perfect specimen of Intelligence, Military.
Aldous Huxley
#12. Asceticism, it is evident, has a double motivation. If men and women torment their bodies, it is not only because they hope in this way to atone for past sins and avoid future punishments; it is also because they long to visit the mind's antipodes and do some visionary sightseeing.
Aldous Huxley
#13. Some experience of popular lecturing had convinced me that the necessity of making things plain to uninstructed people, was one of the very best means of clearing up the obscure corners in one's own mind.
Thomas Huxley
#14. At ordinary times, then, we are perfectly certain that men are not equal. But when, in a democratic country, we think or act politically we are no less certain that men are equal. Or at any rate - which comes to the same thing in practice - we behave as though we were certain of men's equality.
Aldous Huxley
#15. Henri IV's feet and armpits enjoyed an international reputation.
Aldous Huxley
#16. She spoke under her breath to Nick. "Is there a reason he's only wearing one sock?" "He puked on his foot." "Oh." She turned back to Huxley. "Can we get you another sock? Maybe a blanket or something?
Julie James
#17. That's why," he said speaking with averted face, "I wanted to do something first. I mean, to show I was worthy of you. Not that I could ever really be that. But at any rate to show I wasn't absolutely un-worthy. I wanted to do something.
Aldous Huxley
#18. Man's life on earth has only one end and purpose: to identify himself with his eternal Self and so to come to intuitive knowledge of the Divine Ground.
Aldous Huxley
#19. Industrial civilization is only possible when there's no self-denial. Self-indulgence up to the very limits imposed by hygiene and economics. Otherwise the wheels stop turning.
Aldous Huxley
#20. Art and religion, carnivals and saturnalia, dancing and listening to oratory - all these have served, in H. G. Wells's phrase, as Doors in the Wall.
Aldous Huxley
#21. Democracy is, among other things, the ability to say 'no' to the boss. But a man cannot say 'no' to the boss, unless he is sure of being able to eat when the boss's favour has been withdrawn.
Aldous Huxley
#22. True, Clara's eyebrows didn't meet. But she was really too pneumatic. Whereas Fifi and Joanna were absolutely right. Plump, blonde, not too large ... And it was that great lout, Tom Kawaguchi, who now took the seat between them.
Aldous Huxley
#23. To understand sympathetically, with one's whole beings, the state of mind of some one radically unlike oneself is very difficult - is, so far as I am concerned, impossible.
Aldous Huxley
#24. It takes a certain amount of intelligence and imagination to realize the extraordinary queerness and mysteriousness of the world in which we live. The fools, the innumerable fools, take it all for granted, skate about cheerfully on the surface and never think of inquiring what's underneath.
Aldous Huxley
#25. To quarrel with the uncertainty that besets us in intellectual affairs would be about as reasonable as to object to live one's life with due thought for the morrow because no man can be sure he will alive an hour hence.
Thomas Huxley
#26. God's the reason for everything noble and fine and heroic.
Aldous Huxley
#27. There's only one effectively redemptive sacrifice, the sacrifice of self-will to make room for the knowledge of God.
Aldous Huxley
#28. Surely there is a time to submit to guidance and a time to take one's own way at all hazards.
Thomas Huxley
#29. Power and wealth increase in direct proportion to a man's distance from the material objects from which wealth and power are ultimately derived.
Aldous Huxley
#30. Pure Spirit, one hundred degrees proof - that's a drink that only the most hardened contemplation-guzzlers indulge in. Bodhisattvas dilute their Nirvana with equal parts of love and work.
Aldous Huxley
#31. Isn't it remarkable how everyone who knew [D.H.] Lawrence has felt compelled to write about him? Why, he's had more books written about him than any writer since Byron!
Aldous Huxley
#32. There is assuredly no more effectual method of clearing up one's own mind on any subject than by talking it over, so to speak, with men of real power and grasp, who have considered it from a totally different point of view.
Thomas Huxley
#33. Hitler's the supreme example of the delinquent Peter Pan. Stalin's the supreme example of the delinquent Muscle Man.
Aldous Huxley
#34. The critics don't interest me because they're concerned with what's past and done, while I'm concerned with what comes next.
Aldous Huxley
#35. There is nothing of permanent value (putting aside a few human affections) nothing that satisfies quiet reflection
except the sense of having worked according to one's capacity and light to make things clear and get rid of cant and shams of all sorts.
Thomas Huxley
#36. It isn't only art that is incompatible with happiness, it's also science. Science is dangerous, we have to keep it most carefully chained and muzzled.
Aldous Huxley
#37. One's forty, one has lived more than half one's life, the world is marvellous and mysterious. And yet one spends four hours chattering about nothing at Tantamount House. Why should triviality be so fascinating? Or is there something else besides the triviality that draws one?
Aldous Huxley
#38. They're so hateful, the women here. Mad, mad and cruel. And of course they don't know anything about Malthusian Drill, or bottles, or decanting, or anything of that sort. So they're having children all the time - like dogs. It's too revolting.
Aldous Huxley
#39. Where beauty is worshipped for beauty's sake as a goddess, independent of and superior to morality and philosophy, the most horrible putrefaction is apt to set in. The lives of the aesthetes are the far from edifying commentary on the religion of beauty.
Aldous Huxley
#40. There is only one corner of the universe you can be certain of improving, and that's your own self.
Aldous Huxley
#41. The unequal distribution of food is one of the world's most tragic facts. Millions of people die because they have too little to eat, and many die because they have too much.
Laura Huxley
#42. I wish they'd hurry up with the second scene,' said Mrs. Viveash. 'If there's anything that bores me, it's entr'actes.'
'Most of one's life is an entr'acte,' said Gumbril.
Aldous Huxley
#43. That's what you men are always doing; it's so barbarously naive. You feel one of your loose desires for some woman, and because you desire her strongly you immediately accuse her of luring you on, of deliberately provoking and inviting the desire.
Aldous Huxley
#44. It is only when it takes the form of physical addiction that sex is evil. It is also evil when it manifests itself as a way of satisfying the lust for power or the climber's craving for position and social distinction.
Aldous Huxley
#45. Perhaps it's good for one to suffer. Can an artist do anything if he's happy? Would he ever want to do anything? What is art, after all, but a protest against the horrible inclemency of life?
Aldous Huxley
#46. One of the great attractions of patriotism - it fulfills our worst wishes. In the person of our nation we are able, vicariously, to bully and cheat. Bully and cheat, what's more, with a feeling that we are profoundly virtuous.
Aldous Huxley
#47. You should hurry up and acquire the cigar habit. It's one of the major happinesses. And so much more lasting than love, so much less costly in emotional wear and tear.
Aldous Huxley
#48. A man may be a pessimistic determinist before lunch and an optimistic believer in the will's freedom after it.
Aldous Huxley
#49. In regard to man's final end, all the higher religions are in complete agreement. The purpose of human life is the discovery of Truth, the unitive knowledge of the Godhead.
Aldous Huxley
#50. And as on Tullia's tomb one lamp burned clear,
Unchanged for fifteen hundred year ... '
He repeated the lines to himself, and was desolated to think of all the murdered past.
Aldous Huxley
#51. In what appears to have been an unplanned quip, Wilberforce asked Huxley if he thought he was descended from an ape on his father's or mother's side. Huxley retorted that he would rather have simian relatives than claim kinship with a man who used his charisma and authority to quash free debate.
Jonathan Clements
#52. I think the fact that Aldous Huxley wrote Brave New World and talked about anthrax bombs probably helped because at least we ... people had the understanding before the war began that's something we didn't want to get into.
Freeman Dyson
#53. When for whatever reason, men and women fail to transcend themselves by means of worship good works and spiritual exercises they are apt to resort to religion's chemical surrogates.
Aldous Huxley
#54. How difficult it is to sound persuasive at the top of one's voice!
Aldous Huxley
#55. If I may paraphrase Hobbes's well-known aphorism, I would say that 'books are the money of Literature, but only the counters of Science.
Thomas Henry Huxley
#57. So in a certain sense disintegration may have its advantages. But of course it's dangerous, horribly dangerous. Suppose you couldn't get back, out of the chaos ...
Aldous Huxley
#58. But then every man is ludicrous if you look at him from outside, without taking into account what's going on in his heart and mind.
Aldous Huxley
#59. Ah, that's because you don't know what it's like to have faith. You've no idea how amusing and exciting life becomes when you do believe. All that happens means something; nothing you do is ever insignificant. It makes life so jolly, you know.
Aldous Huxley
#60. Nonsense is an assertion of man's spiritual freedom in spite of all the oppressions of circumstance.
Aldous Huxley
#61. Because it is idiotic. Writing when there's nothing to say ...
Aldous Huxley
#62. To know a person's character you must at least have talked with him, and unless you are gifted with remarkable intuitive insight you are not likely to know much about him unless you have seen him living and acting over a considerable period of time.
Aldous Huxley
#63. Drill and uniforms impose an architecture on the crowd. An army's beautiful. But that's not all; it panders to lower instincts than the aesthetic. The spectacle of human beings reduced to automatism satisfies the lust for power. Looking at mechanized slaves, one fancies oneself a master.
Aldous Huxley
#64. Everybody strains after happiness, and the result is that nobody's happy.
Aldous Huxley
#65. Most of one's life is one prolonged effort to prevent oneself thinking.
Aldous Huxley
#66. The traveller's-eye view of men and women is not satisfying. A man might spend his life in trains and restaurants and know nothing of humanity at the end. To know, one must be an actor as well as a spectator.
Aldous Huxley
#67. The poet's place, it seems to me, is with the Mr. Hydes of human nature.
Aldous Huxley
#68. All crosses had their tops cut and became T's. There was also a thing called God.
Aldous Huxley
#69. You can't learn a science unless you know what it's all about.
Aldous Huxley
#70. Any culture which, in the interests of efficiency or in the name of some political or religious dogma, seeks to standardize the human individual, commits an outrage against man's biological nature.
Aldous Huxley
#71. Oh, these rags and tags of other people's making! Would he ever be able to call his brain his own? Was there, indeed, anything in it that was truly his own, or was it simply an education?
Aldous Huxley
#72. Since Mozart's day composers have learned the art of making music throatily and palpitatingly sexual.
Aldous Huxley
#73. Science is nothing but trained and organized common sense, differing from the latter only as a veteran may differ from a raw recruit: and its methods differ from those of common sense only as far as the guardsman's cut and thrust differ from the manner in which a savage wields his club.
Thomas Henry Huxley
#74. All men are born with an equal and inalienable right to disillusionment. So, until they choose to waive that right, it's three cheers for Technological Progress and a College Education for everybody.
Aldous Huxley
#75. Modern man's besetting temptation is to sacrifice his direct perceptions and spontaneous feelings to his reasoned reflections; to prefer in all circumstances the verdict of his intellect to that of his immediate intuitions.
Aldous Huxley
#76. What men of science want is only a fair day's wages for more than a fair day's work.
Thomas Huxley
#77. The truth does not cease to exist because it's ignored.
Aldous Huxley
#78. In the Brave New World of my prophetic fable technology had advanced far beyond the point it had reached in Hitler's day; consequently the recipients of orders were far less critical than their Nazi counterparts, far more obedient to the order-giving elite.
Aldous Huxley
#80. Unfortunately, it is much easier to shut one's eyes to good than to evil. Pain and sorrow knock at our doors more loudly than pleasure and happiness; and the prints of their heavy footsteps are less easily effaced.
Thomas Huxley
#81. There's a joke in everything, the trick is finding it. The best compliment a joke can get is what Huxley said about Darwin's theory of evolution - 'Why didn't I think of that?'
Emo Philips
#82. Aldous Huxley took the drug mescaline and then chronicled his experience in the book The Doors of Perception. Now, I don't actually think that's the first thing he wrote: he probably wrote 'my brain is melting' ten thousand times, but it was the book that the critics latched on to.
Bill Bailey
#83. I was socially isolated as a kid. I had friends, but I wasn't very good at sports and that sort of thing so I became quite comfortable being by myself, exploring. The world was my private playground, and in it, I was supreme. Darwin, Faraday, Huxley and other great scientists were my companions.
Vilayanur S. Ramachandran
#84. Well ... That's what you always forget, isn't it? I mean, you forget to pay attention to what's happening. And that's the same as not being here and now.
Aldous Huxley
#85. Happiness is a hard master, particularly other people's happiness.
Aldous Huxley
#86. Eternity," he answered. "Believe it or not, it's as real as shit.
Aldous Huxley
#87. You'll have a better understanding of what was actually done if you start by knowing what had to be done - what always and everywhere has to be done by anyone who has a clear idea about what's what.
Aldous Huxley
#88. I was a pretty good physicist in my time. Too good - good enough to realize that all our science is just a cookery book, with an orthodox theory of cooking that nobody's allowed to question, and a list of recipes that mustn't be added to except by special permission from the head cook.
Aldous Huxley
#89. A man's worst difficulties begin when he is able to do as he likes.
Thomas Huxley
#90. Finding bad reasons for what one believes for other bad reasons - that's philosophy. People believe in God because they've been conditioned to believe in God.
Aldous Huxley
#91. Words, words, words! They shut one off from the universe. Three quarters of the time one's never in contact with things, only with the beastly words that stand for them.
Aldous Huxley
#92. There's only one corner of the universe you can be certain of improving and that's your own self. - ALDOUS HUXLEY
Wayne W. Dyer
#93. Each man's memory is his own private literature
Aldous Huxley
#94. You all remember, I suppose, that beautiful and inspired saying of Our Ford's: History is bunk.
Aldous Huxley
#95. Near Shepherd's Bush two thousand Beta-Minus mixed doubles were playing Riemann-surface tennis.
Aldous Huxley
#96. Pain's a delusion."
Oh, is it?" said the Savage and, picking up a thick hzel switch, strode forward.
The man from the The Fordian Science Monitor made a dash for his helicopter.
Aldous Huxley
#97. One is creeping into middle age and is less easily distracted by one's appetites, which have grown feeble, and by one's passions, which seem such a bore - all but the consuming desire for knowledge and understanding. That grows. - Aldous Huxley
Nicholas Murray
#98. What's lemonade? Something you make out of lemons. And what's a crusade? Something you make out of crosses - a course of gratuitous violence motivated by an obsession with unanalyzed symbols.
Aldous Huxley
#99. You read and you're pierced. That's one of the things I try to teach my students-how to write piercingly.
Aldous Huxley
#100. Material advancement has its share in moral and intellectual progress. Becky Sharp's acute remark that it is not difficult to be virtuous on ten thousand a year has its applications to nations; and it is futile to expect a hungry and squalid population to be anything but violent and gross.
Thomas Huxley
