Aldous Huxley
Aldous Huxley
Aldous Leonard Huxleywas an English writer, novelist, philosopher, and prominent member of the Huxley family. He graduated from Balliol College, Oxford, with a first in English literature...
NationalityEnglish
ProfessionNovelist
Date of Birth26 July 1894
brave-new-world evil philosopher
For particulars, as everyone knows, make for virtue and happiness; generalities are intellectually necessary evils. Not philosophers but fretsawyers and stamp collectors compose the backbone of society.
pain cancer long
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.
two feet west
Slowly, very slowly, like two unhurried compass needles, the feet turned towards the right; north, north-east, east, south-east, south, south-south-west; then paused, and after a few seconds, turned as unhurriedly back towards the left. South-south-west, south, south-east, east...
mean ends determine
But the nature of the universe is such that the ends never justify the means. On the contrary, the means always determine the end.
philosophy history firsts
Nobody can have the consolations of religion or philosophy unless he has first experienced their desolations.
brave-new-world masters supreme
We are not our own any more than what we possess is our own. We did not make ourselves, we cannot be supreme over ourselves. We are not our own masters.
queens eye desire
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.
brave-new-world punishment enemy
One of the principal functions of a friend is to suffer (in a milder and symbolic form) the punishments that we should like, but are unable, to inflict upon our enemies.
art dangerous brave-new-world-happiness
It isn’t only art that is incompatible with happiness, it’s also science. Science is dangerous, we have to keep it most carefully chained and muzzled.
way wells
Those who meant well behaved in the same way as those who meant badly.
real memorable omission
The soul of wit may become the very body of untruth. However elegant and memorable, brevity can never, in the nature of things, do justice to all the facts of a complex situations. On such a theme one can be brief only by omission and simplification. Omission and simplification help us to understand - but help is, in many cases, to understand the wrong thing; for our comprehension may be only of the abbreviator's neatly formulated notions, not of the vast, ramifying reality from which these notions have been so arbitrarily abstracted.
brave-new-world stitches riches
The more stitches, the less riches.
mending
Ending is better than mending.
philosophy believe zippers
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.