Quotes by Huxley, Aldous




Aldous Leonard Huxley (July 26, 1894 November 22, 1963) was a British writer who emigrated to the United States. He was a member of the famous Huxley family who produced a number of brilliant scientific minds. Best known for his novels and wide-ranging output of essays, he also published short stories, poetry, travel writing, and film stories and scripts. Through his novels and essays Huxley functioned as an examiner and sometimes critic of social mores, societal norms and ideals, and possible misapplications of science in human life. While his earlier concerns might be called "humanist," ultimately, he became quite interested in "spiritual" subjects like parapsychology and mystically based philosophy, which he also wrote about. By the end of his life, Huxley was considered, in certain circles, a 'leader of modern thought'..

"Most vices demand considerable self-sacrifices. There is no greater mistake than to suppose that a vicious life is a life of uninterrupted pleasure. It is a life almost as wearisome and painful -- if strenuously led -- as Christian's in The Pilgrim's Progress."

Huxley, Aldous on vice    Share


"The business of a seer is to see; and if he involves himself in the kind of God-eclipsing activities which make seeing impossible, he betrays the trust which his fellows have tacitly placed in him."

Huxley, Aldous on vision    Share

"A democracy which makes or even effectively prepares for modern, scientific war must necessarily cease to be democratic. No country can be really well prepared for modern war unless it is governed by a tyrant, at the head of a highly trained and perfectly obedient bureaucracy."

Huxley, Aldous on war    Share

"Words from the thread on which we string our experiences."

Huxley, Aldous on words    Share

"Industrial man --a sentient reciprocating engine having a fluctuating output, coupled to an iron wheel revolving with uniform velocity. And then we wonder why this should be the golden age of revolution and mental derangement."

Huxley, Aldous on work    Share

"Like every man of sense and good feeling, I abominate work."

Huxley, Aldous on work    Share

"But a priest's life is not supposed to be well-rounded; it is supposed to be one-pointed -- a compass, not a weathercock."

Huxley, Aldous on churches    Share

"A large city cannot be experientially known; its life is too manifold for any individual to be able to participate in it."

Huxley, Aldous on life    Share

"Consistency is contrary to nature, contrary to life. The only completely consistent people are the dead."

Huxley, Aldous on consistency
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"The only completely consistent people are the dead."

Huxley, Aldous on consistency    Share

"Now, a corpse, poor thing, is an untouchable and the process of decay is, of all pieces of bad manners, the vulgarest imaginable. For a corpse is, by definition, a person absolutely devoid of savoir vivre."

Huxley, Aldous on death    Share

"Ignore death up to the last moment; then, when it can't be ignored any longer, have yourself squirted full of morphia and shuffle off in a coma. Thoroughly sensible, humane and scientific, eh?"

Huxley, Aldous on death
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"A belief in hell and the knowledge that every ambition is doomed to frustration at the hands of a skeleton have never prevented the majority of human beings from behaving as though death were no more than an unfounded rumor."

Huxley, Aldous on death    Share

"Most ignorance is invincible ignorance.We don't know because we don't want to know."

Huxley, Aldous on ignorance    Share

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