Quotes By Aldous Huxley

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.

Speed, it seems to me, provides the one genuinely modern pleasure.

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

Dream in a pragmatic way.

Chastity - the most unnatural of all the sexual perversions.

Beauty is worse than wine, it intoxicates both the holder and beholder.

Europe is so well gardened that it resembles a work of art, a scientific theory, a neat metaphysical system. Man has re-created Europe in his own image.

There's only one effectively redemptive sacrifice, the sacrifice of self-will to make room for the knowledge of God.

We participate in a tragedy; at a comedy we only look.

The most distressing thing that can happen to a prophet is to be proved wrong. The next most distressing thing is to be proved right.

To travel is to discover that everyone is wrong about other countries.

What with making their way and enjoying what they have won, heroes have no time to think. But the sons of heroes - ah, they have all the necessary leisure.

Every man who knows how to read has it in his power to magnify himself, to multiply the ways in which he exists, to make his life full, significant and interesting.

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.'

God isn't compatible with machinery and scientific medicine and universal happiness. You must make your choice. Our civilization has chosen machinery and medicine and happiness.

Defined in psychological terms, a fanatic is a man who consciously over-compensates a secret doubt.

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

Cynical realism is the intelligent man's best excuse for doing nothing in an intolerable situation.

It takes two to make a murder. There are born victims, born to have their throats cut, as the cut-throats are born to be hanged.

A man may be a pessimistic determinist before lunch and an optimistic believer in the will's freedom after it.

Man approaches the unattainable truth through a succession of errors.

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

Experience is not what happens to you; it's what you do with what happens to you.

Thought must be divided against itself before it can come to any knowledge of itself.

The worst enemy of life, freedom and the common decencies is total anarchy; their second worst enemy is total efficiency.

Technological progress has merely provided us with more efficient means for going backwards.

So long as men worship the Caesars and Napoleons, Caesars and Napoleons will duly arise and make them miserable.

De Sade is the one completely consistent and thoroughgoing revolutionary of history.

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

Amour is the one human activity of any importance in which laughter and pleasure preponderate, if ever so slightly, over misery and pain.