Aldous Huxley

“Both of us victims of the same twentieth-century plague. Not the Black Death, this time; the Gray Life.”

“Everyone works for everyone else. We can't do without anyone. Even Epsilons are useful. We couldn't do without Epsilons. Everyone works for everyone else. We can't do without anyone.”

“You can't consume much if you sit still and read books.”

“Conventions are stupid things; but even the children of the spirit must make some compromise with the world.”

“My fate cannot be mastered; it can only be collaborated with and thereby, to some extent, directed. Nor am I the captain of my soul; I am only its noisiest passenger.”

“But God doesn't change.''Men do, though.''What difference does that make?''All the difference in the world.”

“„All effective propaganda“, Hitler wrote, „must be expressed in a few stereotyped formulas.“ The stereotyped formulas must be constantly repeated for „only constant repetition will finally succeed in im printing an idea upon the memory of a crowd.“ Philosophy teaches us to feel uncertain about the things that seems to us self-evident. Propaganda, on the other hand, teaches us to accept as self-evident matters about which it would be reasonable to suspend our judgement or to feel doubt.”

“Intellectuals are the kind of people who demand evidence and are shocked by logical inconsistencies and fallacies. They regard oversimplification as the original sin of the mind and have not use for the slogans, the unqualified assertion and sweeping generalization which are the propagandist´s stock in the trade.”

“Unlike the masses, intellectuals have a taste for rationality and interest in facts. Their critical habit of mind makes them resistant to the kind of propaganda that works so well on the majority. Among the masses „instinct is supreme, and from instinct comes faith...”

“Groups are capable of being as moral and inteligent as the individuals who form them; a crowd is chaotic, has no purpose of its own, and is capable of anything except inteligent action and realistic thinking. Assembled in a crowd, people lose their powers of reasoning and their capacity for moral choice.”

“„Hitler“, wrote Herman Rauschning in 1939, „ has a deep respect for the Catholic church and the Jesuit order, not because of their Christian doctrine, but because of the ´machinery they have elaborated and controlled, their hierarchical system, their extremely clever tactics, their knowledge of human nature and their wise use of human weaknesses in ruling over believers.”

“„Hitler´s dictatorship“, he said, „differed in one fundamental point from all its predecessors in history. It was the first dictatorship in the present period of modern technical developement, a dicttorship which made complete use of all technical means for the domination of its own country. Through technical devices like the radio and the loud-speaker, eighty million people were deprived of independent thought. It was thereby possible to subject them to the will of one man....Earlier dictators needed highly qualified assistants even at the lowest level – men who could think and act independently. The totalirian system in the period of modern technical development can dispense with such men; thanks to modern methods of communication, i tis possible to mechanize the lower leadership. As a result of this there has arisen the new type of uncritical recipient of orders.“ (Albert Speer)”

“Did you ever feel, as though you had something inside you that was only waiting for you to give it a chance to come out? Some sort of extra power that you aren't using - you know, like all the water that goes down the falls instead of through the turbines?”

“Önerme şudur: Beyin, sinir sistemi ve duyu organlarının işlevi aslında eleyicidir, üretici değil. Her insan, her an kendi başına gelenleri anımsamak ve evrenin her yerinde olan her şeyi algıama yeteneğine sahiptir. Beyin ve sinir sisteminin işlevi büyük oranda yararsız ve ilgisiz bu bilgi kütlesinin her yeri kaplamasından ve kafamızı karıştırmasından bizi korumaktadır, bunu da doğal olarak her an anımsayacağımız veya algılayacağımız şeylerin çoğunu dışarıda bırakarak ve uygulamada yararlı olabilecek görünenlere özel bir seçim sonucu çok az yer açarak yapar.”

“Happiness is a hard master--particularly other people's happiness. A much harder master, if one isn't conditioned to accept it unquestionably, than truth.”

“Dinted dimpled wimpled--his mind wandered down echoing corridors of assonance and alliteration ever further and further from the point. He was enamoured with the beauty of words.”

“[...] Technology has tended to devaluate the traditional vision-inducing materials. The illumination of a city, for example, was once a rare event, reserved for victories and national holidays, for the canonization of saints and the crowning of kings. Now it occurs nightly and celebrates the virtues of gin, cigarettes and toothpaste.”

“I'm claiming the right to be unhappy.”

“civilization has absolutely no need of nobility or heroism. These things are symptoms of political inefficiency. In a properly organized society like ours, nobody has any opportunities for being noble or heroic. Conditions have got to be thoroughly unstable before the occasion can arise. Where there are wars, where there are divided allegiances, where there are temptations to be resisted, objects of love to be fought for or defended–there, obviously, nobility and heroism have some sense.”

“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.”

“O brave new world that has such people in it.”

“Thus, it is a political axiom that power follows property. But it is now a historical fact that the means of production are fast becoming the monopolistic property of Big Business and Big Government. Therefore, if you believe in democracy, make arrangements to distribute property as widely as possible. Or take the right to vote. In principle, it is a great privilege. In practice, as recent history has repeatedly shown, the right to vote, by itself, is no guarantee of liberty. Therefore, if you want to avoid dictatorship by referendum, break up modern society's merely functional collectives into self-governing, voluntarily co-operating groups, capable of functioning outside the bureaucratic systems of Big Business and Big Government.”

“The values, first of all, of individual freedom, based upon the facts of human diversity and genetic uniqueness; the values of charity and compassion, based upon the old familiar fact, lately rediscovered by modern psychiatry - the fact that, whatever their mental and physical diversity, love is as necessary to human beings as food and shelter; and finally the values of intelligence, without which love is impotent and freedom unattainable.”

“Encendió un cigarrillo para desinfectar la memoria.”

“It's a bit embarrassing to have been concerned with the human problem all one's life and to find at the end that one has no more to offer by way of advice than "try to be a little kinder.”

“This Power Elite directly employs several millions of the country´s working force in its factories, offices and stores, controls many millions more by lending them the money to buy its products, and, through its ownership of the media of mass communication, influences the thoughts, the feelings and the actions of virtually everybody. To parody the words of W. Churchill, never have so many been manipulated so much by few.”

“Many historians, many sociologists and psychologists have written at lenght, and with deep concern, about the price that Western man has had to pay and will go on paying for technological progress. They point out, for example, that democracy can be hardly expected to flourish in societies where political and economic power is being progressively concentrated and centralized.But the progress of technology has led and is still leading to just such a concentration and centralisation of power.As the machinery of mass production is made more efficient it tends to become more complex and more expensive - and so less available to the eterpriser of limited means. Moreover, mass production cannot work without mass distribution; but mass distribution raises problems which only the largest producers can satisfactorily solve. In a world of mass production and mass distribution the Little Man, with his inadequate stock of working capital, is at a grave disadvantage. In competition with Big Man, he loses his money and finally his very existence as an independent producer; the Big Man has grobbled him up. As the Little Men disappear, more and more economic power comes to be wielded by fewer and fewer people. Under a dictatorship the Big Business, made possible by advancing technology and the consequent ruin of Little Business, is controlled by the State - that is to say, by small group of party leaders and soldiers, policemen and civil servants who carry out their orders.”

“Where the republican or limited monarchial tradition is weak, the best of constitutions will not prevent ambitious politicians from succumbing with glee and gusto to the temptations cannot fail to arise. Overpopulation leads to economic insecurity and social unrest. Unrest and insecurity lead to more control by central governments and an increase of their power, In the absence of a constitutional tradition, the increased power will probably be exercised in a dictatorial fashion. Even if Communism had never been invented, this would be likely to happen.. But communism has been invented. Given this fact, the probability of overpopulation leading through unrest to dictatorship becomes a virtual certainity. It is a pretty safe bet that, twenty years from now, all the world´s overpopulated and underdeveloped countries will be under some form of totalitarian rule – probably by the Communist Party.”

“Analizando su vida doméstica, Biran sentía que había hecho muy bien en casarse con una "amable y simple mujer, capaz de ser feliz a mi lado sin reclamarme nada, y para quien soy siempre lo suficientemente bueno como para no hacer esfuerzo alguno en modificarme".”

“One entered the world, Denis pursued, having ready-made ideas about everything. One had a philosophy and tried to make life fit into it. One should have lived first and then made one's philosophy to fit life...Life, facts, things were horribly complicated; ideas, even the most difficult of them, deceptively simple. In the world of ideas, everything was clear; in life all was obscure, embroiled. Was it surprising that one was miserable, horribly unhappy?”

“If you want to get men to act reasonably, you must set about persuading them in a maniacal manner.”

“I was a pretty good physicist in my time. Too good—good enough to realize that all our science is just a cookery book, with an orthodox theory of cooking that nobody’s allowed to question, and a list of recipes that mustn’t be added to except by special permission from the head cook.”

“The religiously-minded dualist calls homemade spirits from the vasty deep; the nondualist calls the vasty deep into his spirit or, to be more accurate, he finds that the vasty deep is already there.”

“Dualism... Without it there can hardly be good literature. With it, there most certainly can be no good life.”

“which is better - to be born stupid into an intelligent society or intelligent into an insane one?”

“I don't care where I'm from. Nor where I'm going. From hell to hell.”

“Art and religion, carnivals and saturnalia, dancing and listening to oratory - all these have served, in H. G. Wells's phrase, as Doors in the Wall.”

“Mescalin opens up the way of Mary, but shuts the door on that of Martha.”

“Eating, drinking, dying - three primary manifestations of the universal and impersonal life. Animals live that impersonal and universal life without knowing its nature. Ordinary people know its nature but don't live it and, if they think seriously about it, refuse to accept it. An enlightened person knows it, lives it, and accepts it completely. He eats, he drinks, and in due course he dies - but he eats with a difference, drinks with a difference, dies with a difference.”

“Punctured, utterly deflated, he dropped into a chair and, covering his face with his hands, began to weep. A few minutes later, however, he thought better of it and took four tablets of soma.Upstairs in his room the Savage was reading Romeo and Juliet.”

“...the first question to be asked and answered in every contingency of life being: "How will this thought or action contribute to, or interfere with, the achievement, by me and the greatest possible number of other individuals, of man's Final End?”

“That so many of the well fed young television-watchers in the world's most powerful democracy should be so completely indifferent to the idea of self-government, so blankly uninterested in freedom of thought and the right to dissent, is distressing, but not too surprising. "Free as a bird", we say, and envy the winged creatures for their power of unrestricted movement in all the three dimensions. But alas, we forget the dodo. Any bird that has learned how to grub up a good living without being compelled to use its wings will soon renounce the privilege of flight and remain forever grounded.”

“Things somehow seem more real and vivid when one can apply somebody else's ready-made phrase about them (...) you bring them out triumphantly, and feel you've clinched the argument with the mere magical sound of them. That's what comes of the higher education.”

“...everybody happy and no one ever sad or angry, and every one belonging to every one else...”

“She looked at Bernard with an expression of rapture, but of rapture in which there was no trace of agitation or excitement—for to be excited is still to be unsatisfied. Hers was the calm ecstasy of achieved consummation, the peace, not of mere vacant satiety and nothingness, but of balanced life, of energies at rest and in equilibrium. A rich and living peace.”

“I'm thinking of a queer feeling I sometimes get, a feeling that I've got something to say and the power to say it -- only I don't know what it is, and I can't make use of the power. If there was some different way of writing...Or else something else to write about.”

“Our epoch has been give many nicknames--the Age of Anxiety, the Atomic Age, the Space Age. It might, with equally good reason, be called the Age of Television Addiction, the Age of Soap Opera, the Age of the Disk Jockey.”

“Don't try to behave as though you were essentially sane and naturally good. We're all demented sinners in the same cosmic boat - and the boat is perpetually sinking.”

“¿Cómo puede el cuerdo saber lo que realmente se siente cuando se está loco?”

“There, on a low bed, the sheet flung back, dressed in a pair of pink one-piece zippyjamas, lay Lenina, fast asleep and so beautiful in the midst of her curls, so touchingly childish with her pink toes and her grave sleeping face, so trustful in the helplessness of her limp hands and melted limbs, that the tears came to his eyes.”