Quotes by Huxley, Aldous

"Single-mindedness is all very well in cows or baboons; in an animal claiming to belong to the same species as Shakespeare it is simply disgraceful."

Huxley, Aldous on obsession   

"One of the many reasons for the bewildering and tragic character of human existence is the fact that social organization is at once necessary and fatal. Men are forever creating such organizations for their own convenience and forever finding themselves the victims of their home-made monsters."

Huxley, Aldous on organization   

"If it were not for the intellectual snobs who pay -- in solid cash -- the tribute which philistinism owes to culture, the arts would perish with their starving practitioners. Let us thank heaven for hypocrisy."

Huxley, Aldous on patronage   

"Speed provides the one genuinely modern pleasure."

Huxley, Aldous on pleasure   

"Abused as we abuse it at present, dramatic art is in no sense cathartic; it is merely a form of emotional masturbation. It is the rarest thing to find a player who has not had his character affected for the worse by the practice of his profession. Nobody can make a habit of self-exhibition, nobody can exploit his personality for the sake of exercising a kind of hypnotic power over others, and remain untouched by the process."

Huxley, Aldous on acting and actors   

"The finest works of art are precious, among other reasons, because they make it possible for us to know, if only imperfectly and for a little while, what it actually feels like to think subtly and feel nobly."

Huxley, Aldous on art
3 fans of this quote   

"An atheist is a person who has no invisible means of support"

Huxley, Aldous on atheism
7 fans of this quote   

"Idealism is the noble toga that political gentlemen drape over their will to power."

Huxley, Aldous on politics   

"Cant is always rather nauseating; but before we condemn political hypocrisy, let us remember that it is the tribute paid by men of leather to men of God, and that the acting of the part of someone better than oneself may actually commit one to a course of behavior perceptibly less evil than what would be normal and natural in an avowed cynic."

Huxley, Aldous on politics   

"To his dog, every man is Napoleon; hence the constant popularity of dogs."

Huxley, Aldous on popularity
5 fans of this quote   

"Orthodoxy is the diehard of the world of thought. It learns not, neither can it forget."

Huxley, Aldous on prejudice   

"Proverbs are always platitudes until you have personally experienced the truth of them."

Huxley, Aldous on proverbs   

"The amelioration of the world cannot be achieved by sacrifices in moments of crisis; it depends on the efforts made and constantly repeated during the humdrum, uninspiring periods, which separate one crisis from another, and of which normal lives mainly consist."

Huxley, Aldous on reform   

"You never see animals going through the absurd and often horrible fooleries of magic and religion. Dogs do not ritually urinate in the hope of persuading heaven to do the same and send down rain. Asses do not bray a liturgy to cloudless skies. Nor do cats attempt, by abstinence from cat's meat, to wheedle the feline spirits into benevolence. Only man behaves with such gratuitous folly. It is the price he has to pay for being intelligent but not, as yet, quite intelligent enough."

Huxley, Aldous on religion
3 fans of this quote   

"Classic remorse, as all the moralists are agreed, is a most undesirable sentiment. If you have behaved badly, repent, make what amends you can and address yourself to the task of behaving better next time. On no account brood over your wrongdoing. ROLLING IN THE MUCK IS NOT THE BEST WAY OF GETTING CLEAN."

Huxley, Aldous on repentance   

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

Huxley, Aldous on sacrifice
3 fans of this quote   

"Science has explained nothing; the more we know the more fantastic the world becomes and the profounder the surrounding darkness."

Huxley, Aldous on science
3 fans of this quote   

"We are living now, not in the delicious intoxication induced by the early successes of science, but in a rather grisly morning-after, when it has become apparent that what triumphant science has done hitherto is to improve the means for achieving unimproved or actually deteriorated ends."

Huxley, Aldous on science   

"Those who believe that they are exclusively in the right are generally those who achieve something."

Huxley, Aldous on self-confidence
3 fans of this quote   

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

Huxley, Aldous on self-improvement
3 fans of this quote   

"Silence is as full of potential wisdom and wit as the unshown marble of great sculpture. The silent bear no witness against themselves."

Huxley, Aldous on silence   

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

Huxley, Aldous on solitude
13 fans of this quote   

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

Huxley, Aldous on speed   

"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."

Huxley, Aldous on spirituality   

"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."

Huxley, Aldous on beauty
3 fans of this quote   

"Beauty for some provides escape, who gain a happiness in eyeing the gorgeous buttocks of the ape or Autumn sunsets exquisitely dying."

Huxley, Aldous on beauty   

"What we feel and think and are is to a great extent determined by the state of our ductless glands and viscera."

Huxley, Aldous on body   

"A bad book is as much of a labor to write as a good one; it comes as sincerely from the author's soul."

Huxley, Aldous on books - reading   

"The brotherhood of men does not imply their equality. Families have their fools and their men of genius, their black sheep and their saints, their worldly successes and their worldly failures. A man should treat his brothers lovingly and with justice, according to the deserts of each. But the deserts of every brother are not the same."

Huxley, Aldous on brotherhood   

"Official dignity tends to increase in inverse ratio to the importance of the country in which the office is held."

Huxley, Aldous on bureaucracy   

"The charm of history and its enigmatic lesson consist in the fact that, from age to age, nothing changes and yet everything is completely different."

Huxley, Aldous on charm
6 fans of this quote   

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

Huxley, Aldous on talent   

"Most of one's life is one prolonged effort to prevent oneself thinking."

Huxley, Aldous on thoughts and thinking
3 fans of this quote   

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

Huxley, Aldous on thoughts and thinking   

"We participate in tragedy. At comedy we only look."

Huxley, Aldous on tragedies
3 fans of this quote   

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

Huxley, Aldous on travel
3 fans of this quote   

"Your true traveler finds boredom rather agreeable than painful. It is the symbol of his liberty -- his excessive freedom. He accepts his boredom, when it comes, not merely philosophically, but almost with pleasure."

Huxley, Aldous on travel   

"Great is truth, but still greater, from a practical point of view, is silence about truth. By simply not mentioning certain subjects... totalitarian propagandists have influenced opinion much more effectively than they could have by the most eloquent denunciations."

Huxley, Aldous on truth   

"Ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you mad."

Huxley, Aldous on truth
5 fans of this quote   

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

Huxley, Aldous on tyranny