Aldous Huxley quotes - page 7

Of course some sort of general idea they must have, if they were to do their work intelligently - though as little of one as possible. For particulars, as every one knows, make for virtue and happiness; generalities are intellectually necessary evils. Not philosophers but fretsawyers and stamp collectors compose the backbone of society. (Aldous Huxley)
These effects of mescalin are the sort of effects you could expect to follow the administration of a drug having the power to impair the efficiency of the cerebral reducing valve. When the brain runs out of sugar, the undernourished ego grows weak, can't be bothered to undertake the necessary chores, and loses all interest in those spatial and temporal relationships which mean so much to an organism bent on getting on in the world. As Mind at Large seeps past the no longer watertight valve, all kinds of biologically useless things start to happen. ... Other persons discover a world of visionary beauty. To others again is revealed the glory, the infinite value and meaningfulness of naked existence, of the given, unconceptualized event. View quote
Aldous Huxley
To the gross senses the chair seems solid and substantial. But the gross senses and be refined by means of instruments. Closer observations are made, as the result of which we are forced to conclude that the chair is "really” a swarm of electric charges whizzing about in empty space. ... While the substantial chair is an abstraction easily made from the memories of innumerable sensations of sight and touch, the electric charge chair is a difficult and far-fetched abstraction from certain visual sensations so excessively rare (they can only come to us in the course of elaborate experiments) that not one man in a million has ever been in the position to make it for himself. The overwhelming majority of us accept the electric-charge chair on authority, as good Catholics accept transubstantiation. View quote
Aldous Huxley
The film concludes with ... the most nauseatingly luscious, the most penetratingly vulgar mammy song that it has ever been my lot to hear. My flesh crept as the loud speaker poured out those sodden words, the greasy, sagging melody. I felt ashamed of myself for listening to such things, for even being a member of the species to which such things are addressed. View quote
Aldous Huxley
I strongly suspect that most of the great knowers of Suchness paid very little attention to art.... (To a person whose transfigured and transfiguring mind can see the All in every this, the first-rateness or tenth-rateness of even a religious painting will be a matter of the most sovereign indifference.) Art, I suppose, is only for beginners, or else for those resolute dead-enders, who have made up their minds to be content with the ersatz of Suchness, with symbols rather than with what they signify, with the elegantly composed recipe in lieu of actual dinner. View quote
Aldous Huxley
The second doctrine of the Perennial Philosophy - that it is possible to know the Divine Ground by a direct intuition higher than discursive reasoning - is to be found in all the great religions of the world. A philosopher who is content merely to know about the ultimate Reality - theoretically and by hearsay - is compared by Buddha to a herdsman of other men's cows. Mohammed uses an even homelier barnyard metaphor. For him the philosopher who has not realized his metaphysics is just an ass bearing a load of books. Christian, Hindu, Taoist teachers wrote no less emphatically about the absurd pretensions of mere learning and analytic reasoning. View quote
Aldous Huxley
Medical science has made such tremendous progress that there is hardly a healthy human left. View quote
Aldous Huxley
The most valuable of all education is the ability to make yourself do the thing you have to do, when it has to be done, whether you like it or not. View quote
Aldous Huxley
Liberties are not given, they are taken. View quote
Aldous Huxley
Everyone who wants to do good to the human race always ends in universal bullying. View quote
Aldous Huxley
We shall be permitted to live on this planet only for as long as we treat all nature with compassion and intelligence. (Aldous Huxley)
which is better - to be born stupid into an intelligent society or intelligent into an insane one? View quote
Aldous Huxley
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. View quote
Aldous Huxley
But the nature of the universe is such that ends can never justify means. On the contrary, the means always determine the end. View quote
Aldous Huxley
Consistency is contrary to nature, contrary to life. The only completely consistent people are dead. View quote
Aldous Huxley
If human beings were shown what they're really like, they'd either kill one another as vermin, or hang themselves. View quote
Aldous Huxley
What is absurd and monstrous about war is that men who have no personal quarrel should be trained to murder one another in cold blood. View quote
Aldous Huxley
The old idea that words possess magical powers is false; but its falsity is the distortion of a very important truth. Words do have a magical effect - but not in the way that magicians supposed, and not on the objects they were trying to influence. Words are magical in the way they affect the minds of those who use them. View quote
Aldous Huxley
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. View quote
Aldous Huxley
Universal education has created an immense class of what I may call the New Stupid, hungering for certainty yet unable to find it in the traditional myths and their rationalizations. View quote
Aldous Huxley
Consciousness is only possible through change; change is only possible through movement. (Aldous Huxley)
...most men and women will grow up to love their servitude and will never dream of revolution. View quote
Aldous Huxley
I know the outer world as well as you do, and I judge it. You know nothing of my inner world, and yet you presume to judge that world. View quote
Aldous Huxley
Sons have always a rebellious wish to be disillusioned by that which charmed their fathers. View quote
Aldous Huxley
Your true traveller 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. View quote
Aldous Huxley