Quotes from Aldous Huxley

The gods are just. No doubt. But their code of law is dictated, in the last resort, by the people who organize society; Providence takes its cue from men.

Then you think there is no God? No, I think there quite probably is one. Then why? … Mustapha Mond checked him. But he manifests himself in different ways to different men. In premodern times he manifested himself as the being that's described in these books. Now … How does he manifest himself now? asked the Savage. Well, he manifests himself as an absence; as though he weren't there at all.

Defined in psychological terms, a fanatic is a man who consciously overcompensates a secret doubt.

Generalities are intellectually necessary evils.

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.

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

Half at least of all morality is negative and consists in keeping out of mischief. The lords prayer is less than 50 words long, and 6 of those words are devoted to asking god not to lead us into temptation.

You've got to be hurt and upset; otherwise you can't think of the really good, penetrating, X-rayish phrases.

To rush headlong into the comforting darkness of selfhood as a reborn human being, or even as beast, an unhappy ghost, a denizen of hell. Anything rather than the burning brightness of unmitigated Reality.

On no account brood over your wrongdoing. Rolling in the muck is not the best way of getting clean.

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...

But liberty, as we all know, cannot flourish in a country that is permanently on a war footing, or even a near-war footing. Permanent crisis justifies permanent control of everybody and everything by the agencies of the central government.

An irrelevance, and your life's altered.

O wonder!' he was saying; and his eyes shone, his face was brightly flushed. 'How many goodly creatures are there here! How beauteous mankind is! ... O brave new world! O brave new world that has such people in it.

Happiness is like coke — something you get as a by-product in the process of making something else.

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...

Most men and women lead lives at the worst so painful, at the best so monotonous, poor and limited that the urge to escape, the longing to transcend themselves if only for a few moments, is and has always been one of the principal appetites of the soul.

Words can be like X-rays, if you use them properly–they'll go through anything. You read and you're pierced.

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.

All right then, said the Savage defiantly, I'm claiming the right to be unhappy.

You pays your money and you takes your choice.

Here and now, boys.

The question of the next generation will not be one of how to liberate the masses, but rather, how to make them love their servitude.

Only times and places, only names and ghosts.