Quotes From "Brave New World" By Aldous Huxley

He was a philosopher, if you know what that was.’‘ A man who dreams of fewer things than there are in heaven and earth, ’ said the Savage promptly.‘ Quite so… Aldous Huxley

Actual happiness always looks pretty squalid in comparison with the overcompensations for misery. And, of course, stability isn't nearly so spectacular as instability. And being contented has none of the glamour of a good fight against misfortune, none of the picturesqueness of a struggle with temptation, or a fatal overthrow by passion or doubt. Happiness is never grand. Aldous Huxley

There was a thing called Heaven; but all the same they used to drink enormous quantities of alcohol.".." There was a thing called the soul and a thing called immortality.".." But they used to take morphia and cocaine.".." Two thousand pharmacologists and biochemists were subsidized in A.F. 178.".."Six years later it was being produced commercially. The perfect drug.".." Euphoric, narcotic, pleasantly hallucinant.".." All the advantages of Christianity and alcohol; none of their defects.".." Take a holiday from reality whenever you like, and come back without so much as a headache or a mythology.".." Stability was practically assured. Aldous Huxley

But I don't want comfort. I want God, I want poetry, I want real danger, I want freedom, I want goodness, I want sin.'' In fact, ' said Mustapha Mond, 'you're claiming the right to be unhappy.' 'All right then, ' said the Savage defiantly, 'I'm claiming the right to be unhappy.'' Not to mention the right to grow old and ugly and impotent; the right to have syphilis and cancer; the right to have too little to eat; the right to be lousy; the right to live in constant apprehension of what may happen tomorrow; the right to catch typhoid; the right to be tortured by unspeakable pains of every kind.' There was a long silence. 'I claim them all, ' said the Savage at last. Mustapha Mond shrugged his shoulders. 'You're welcome, " he said. Aldous Huxley

The Savage interrupted him. "But isn't it natural to feel there's a God?" "You might as well ask if it's natural to do up one's trousers with zippers, " said the Controller sarcastically. "You remind me of another of those old fellows called Bradley. He defined philosophy as the finding of bad reason for what one believes by instinct. As if one believed anything by instinct! One believes things because one has been conditioned to believe them. Finding bad reasons for what one believes for other bad reasons—that's philosophy. People believe in God because they've been conditioned to. . Aldous Huxley

And whatever troubled him and showed in his face might have been the same old trouble - the problem of occupying space in the world and having a name people could call you by, being somebody they thought they could know Aldous Huxley

This concern with the basic condition of freedom -- the absence of physical constraint -- is unquestionably necessary, but is not all that is necessary. It is perfectly possible for a man to be out of prison and yet not free -- to be under no physical constraint and yet to be a psychological captive, compelled to think, feel and act as the representatives of the national State, or of some private interest within the nation, want him to think, feel and act. Aldous Huxley

What would it be like if I were free, not enslaved by my conditioning? Aldous Huxley

Universal happiness keeps the wheels steadily turning; truth and beauty can't. And, of course, whenever the masses seized political power, then it was happiness rather than truth and beauty that mattered. Aldous Huxley

Back to culture. Yes, actually to culture. You can’t consume much if you sit still and read books. Aldous Huxley

A physical shortcoming could produce a kind of mental excess. The process, it seemed, was reversible. Mental excess could produce, for its own purposes, the voluntary blindness and deafness of deliberate solitude, the artificial impotence of asceticism. Aldous Huxley

Nature is powerless to put asunder. Aldous Huxley

Pain was a fascinating horror Aldous Huxley

All right then, " said the savage defiantly, I'm claiming the right to be unhappy."" Not to mention the right to grow old and ugly and impotent; the right to have syphilis and cancer; the right to have too little to eat, the right to be lousy; the right to live in constant apprehension of what may happen tomorrow; the right to catch typhoid; the right to be tortured by unspeakable pains of every kind." There was a long silence." I claim them all, " said the Savage at last. Aldous Huxley

I want to know what passion is. I want to feel something strongly. Aldous Huxley

...reality, however utopian, is something from which people feel the need of taking pretty frequent holidays.... Aldous Huxley

He woke once more to external reality, looked round him, knew what he saw- knewit, with a sinking sense of horror and disgust, for the recurrent deliriumof his days and nights, the nightmare of swarming indistinguishable sameness. Aldous Huxley

No social stability without individual stability. Aldous Huxley

Orgy-porgy, round and round and round, beating one another in six-eight time. Aldous Huxley

Every one belongs to every one else. Aldous Huxley

Home, home - a few small rooms, stiflingly over-inhabited by a man, by a periodically teeming woman, by rabble of boys and girls of all ages. No air, no space; an understerilized prison; darkness, disease and smells. Aldous Huxley

There was something called Christianity. Aldous Huxley

What fun it would be, " he thought, "if one didn't have to think about happiness! Aldous Huxley

If one's different, one's bound to be lonely. Aldous Huxley

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. Aldous Huxley

Generalities are intellectually necessary evils. Aldous Huxley

You pays your money and you takes your choice. Aldous Huxley

Feeling lurks in that interval of time between desire and its consummation. Aldous Huxley

Shut lips, sleeping faces, Every stopped machine, The dumb and littered places Where crowds have been:. All silences rejoice, Weep (loudly or low), Speak-but with the voice Of whom, I do not know. Aldous Huxley

Chronic 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. Aldous Huxley

One believes things because one has been conditioned to believe them. Aldous Huxley

Happiness is a hard master - particularly other people's happiness. Aldous Huxley

There's so much one doesn't know; it wasn't my business to know. I mean, when a child asks you how a helicopter works or who made the world—well, what are you to answer if you're a Beta and have always worked in the Fertilizing Room? What are you to answer? Aldous Huxley

The greater a man's talents, the greater his power to lead astray. Aldous Huxley

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

Imagine a factory staffed by Alphas–that is to say by separate and unrelated individuals of good heredity and conditioned so as to be capable (within limits) of making a free choice and assuming responsibilities. Imagine it! Aldous Huxley

That is the secret of happiness and virtue - liking what you've got to do. Aldous Huxley

Yes, " Mustapha Mond was saying, "that's another item in the cost of stability. It isn't only art that's incompatible with happiness; it's also science. Science is dangerous; we have to keep it most carefully chained and muzzled. Aldous Huxley

He was digging in his garden--digging, too, in his own mind, laboriously turning up the substance of his thought. Death--and he drove in his spade once, and again, and yet again. And all our yesterdays have lighted fools they way to dusty death. A convincing thunder rumbled through the words. He lifted another spadeful of earth. Why had Linda died? Why had she been allowed to become gradually less than human and at last.. He shuddered. A good kissing carrion. He planted his foot on his spade and stamped it fiercely into the tough ground. As flies to wanton boys are we to the gods; they kills us for their sport. Thunder again; words that proclaimed themselves true--truer somehow than truth itself. And yet that same Gloucester had called them ever-gentle gods. Besides, thy best of rest is sleep, and that thou oft provok'st; yet grossly fear'st thy death which is no more. No more than sleep. Sleep. Perchance to dream. His spade struck against a stone; he stooped to pick it up. For in that sleep of death, what dreams..? . Aldous Huxley

And it's what you never will write, " said the Controller. "Because, if it were really like Othello nobody could understand it, however new it might be. And if were new, it couldn't possibly be like Othello. Aldous Huxley