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Aldous Huxley Quotes - Page 19

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You can't make flivers without steel - and you can't make tragedies without social instability. The world's stable now. People are happy; they get what they want, and they never want what they can't get. They're well

You can't make flivers without steel - and you can't make tragedies without social instability. The world's stable now. People are happy; they get what they want, and they never want what they can't get. They're well off; they're safe; they're never ill; they're not afraid of death; they're blissfully ignorant of passion and old age; they're plagued with no mothers or fathers; they've got no wives, or children, or lovers to feel strongly about; they're so conditioned that they pratically can't help behaving as they ought to behave.

Love, Mother, Children

You got rid of them. Yes, that’s just like you. Getting rid of everything unpleasant instead of learning to put up with it. Whether ‘tis better in the mind to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, or to take arms against a sea of troubles and by opposing end them… But you don’t do either. Neither suffer nor oppose. You just abolish the slings and arrows. It’s too easy.

Sea, Arrows, Mind

Aldous Huxley (1933). “Retrospect: an omnibus of Aldous Huxley's books”

A man may have strong humanitarian and democratic principles, but if he happens to have been brought up as a bath-taking, shirt-changing lover of fresh air, he will have to overcome certain physical repugnance before he can bring himself to put those principles into practice.

Strong, Men, Air

When an artist deserts to the side of the angels, it is the most odious of treasons.

Art, Philosophy, Angel

Aldous Huxley (1956). “The collected works of Aldous Huxley”

Every individual is at once the beneficiary and the victim of the linguistic tradition into which he has been born.

Language, Tradition, Individual

Aldous Huxley (2009). “The Doors of Perception and Heaven and Hell”, p.15, Harper Collins

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.

Practice, Tyrants, Majority

Aldous Huxley (1937). “Ends and Means: An Inquiry Into the Nature of Ideals and Into the Methods Employed for Their Realization”, p.84, Transaction Publishers

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.

Beautiful, Army, Power

Aldous Huxley (1954). “The Collected Works of Aldous Huxley: Point counter point”

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.

Religious, Differences, Effectiveness

Aldous Huxley, Robert S. Baker, James Sexton (2002). “Complete Essays: 1956-1963, and supplement, 1920-1948”, Ivan R. Dee Publisher

Both of us victims of the same twentieth-century plague. Not the Black Death, this time; the Gray Life.

Black, Victim, Century

Aldous Huxley (2009). “Island”, p.69, Random House

There is no substitute for talent. Industry and all its virtues are of no avail.

Talent, Virtue, Substitutes

I don't care where I'm from, nor where I'm going. From hell to hell.

Care, Hell, I Don't Care

Aldous Huxley (2010). “Island”, p.25, Harper Collins

In a word, they failed to take into account man's almost infinite appetite for distractions.

Men, Infinite, Distraction

Aldous Huxley, Robert S. Baker, James Sexton (2002). “Complete Essays: 1956-1963, and supplement, 1920-1948”, Ivan R. Dee Publisher

The ductless glands secrete among other things our moods, our aspirations, our philosophy of life.

Philosophy, Philosophical, Science

Aldous Huxley (2000). “Complete Essays: 1930-1935”, Ivan R Dee

Proportion ... You can't help thinking about it in these London streets, where it doesn't exist ... It's like listening to a symphony of cats to walk along them. Senseless discords and a horrible disorder all the way ... We need no barbarians from outside; they're on the premises, all the time.

Cat, Thinking, Symphony

To aspire to be superhuman is a most discreditable admission that you lack the guts, the wit, the moderating judgment to be successfully and consummately human.

Judgment, Wit, Admission

Aldous Huxley (1970). “Collected Works: Do what you will”

People will insist on treating the mons Veneris as though it were Mount Everest. Too silly!

Silly, People, Lust

To write fiction, one needs a whole series of inspirations about people in an actual environment, and then a whole lot of work on the basis of those inspirations.

Inspiration, Writing, People

Aldous Huxley (1999). “Moksha: Aldous Huxley's Classic Writings on Psychedelics and the Visionary Experience”, p.214, Inner Traditions / Bear & Co

I know very dimly when I start what's going to happen. I just have a very general idea, and then the thing develops as I write.

Writing, Ideas, Happens

I met, not long ago, a young man who aspired to become a novelist. Knowing that I was in the profession, he asked me to tell him how he should set to work to realize his ambition. I did my best to explain. 'The first thing,' I said, 'is to buy quite a lot of paper, a bottle of ink, and a pen. After that you merely have to write.'

Writing, Ambition, Men

Aldous Huxley (2000). “Complete Essays: 1930-1935”, Ivan R Dee

The Alexander Technique gives us all things we have been looking for in a system of physical education: relief from strain due to maladjustment, and constant improvement in physical and mental health. We cannot ask for more from any system; nor, if we seriously desire to alter human beings in a desirable direction, can we ask for any less.

Giving, Desire, Relief

Wherever we turn we find that the real obstacles to peace are human will and feeling, human convictions, prejudices, opinions. If we want to get rid of war we must get rid first of all of its psychological causes. Only when this has been done will the rulers of the nations even desire to get rid of the economic and political causes.

Real, War, Political

Aldous Huxley (2017). “Ends and Means: An Inquiry into the Nature of Ideals”, p.78, Routledge

In life, man proposes, God disposes.

Life, Men, Propose

Aldous Huxley (2009). “The Doors of Perception and Heaven and Hell”, p.19, Harper Collins

Dying is almost the least spiritual of our acts, more strictly carnal even than the act of love. There are Death Agonies that are like the strainings of the Costive at stool.

Spiritual, Agony, Dying

Aldous Huxley (1983). “After Many a Summer Dies the Swan”, Harpercollins

Her cheeks were flushed. She caught hold of the Savage's arm and pressed it, limp, against her side. He looked down at her for a moment, pale, pained, desiring, and ashamed of his desire. He was not worthy, not... Their eyes for a moment met. What treasures hers promised! A queen's ransom of temperament. Hastily he looked away, disengaged his imprisoned arm. He was obscurely terrified lest she should cease to be something he could feel himself unworthy of.

Queens, Eye, Desire

Happiness has got to be paid for. You're paying for it, Mr. Watson–paying because you happen to be too much interested in beauty. I was too much interested in truth; I paid too.

Too Much, Brave New World Happiness, Brave New World Freedom

"Brave New World". Book by Aldous Huxley, Chapter 16, 1932.

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