Quotes from Aldous Huxley

Public health and social reform are the indispensable preconditions of any kind of general enlightenment

Casi todos desean la paz y la libertad, pero son muy pocos los que tienen gran entusiasmo por las ideas, sentimientos y actos que hacen factibles esos ideales. Inversamente, casi nadie quiere la guerra o la tiranía, pero son muchos los que hallan un placer intenso en las ideas, sentimientos y actos que llevan a esas calamidades.

Propaganda may be defined as opposed to rational argument; argument based upon facts. Argument based on facts aims at producing an intellectual conviction; propaganda aims, above all, at producing reflex action. It is aimed at bypassing the rational choice based upon knowledge of facts and getting directly at the solar plexus, so to speak, and affecting the subconscious.

The individual, he began in a soft and sadly philosophical tone, is not a self-supporting universe. There are times when he comes into contact with other individuals, when he is forced to take cognisance of the existence of other universes besides himself. He

Western intellectuals are all sitting-addicts. That's why most of you are so repulsively unwholesome.

But all the same," insisted the Savage, "it is quite natural to believe in God when you're alone-quite alone, in the night, thinking about death …" "But people never are alone now," said Mustapha Mond. "We make them hate solitude; and we arrange their lives so that it's almost impossible for them to ever have it.

Till at last the child's mind is these suggestions, and the sum of the suggestions is the child's mind. And not the child's mind only. The adult's mind too—all his life long. The mind that judges and desires and decides—made up of these suggestions. But all these suggestions are our suggestions!

Cuanto mayores son los talentos de un hombre más grande es su poder de corromper a los demás. Y es mejor que sufra uno solo a que se corrompan muchos. (...) El asesino sólo mata al individuo, y, al fin y al cabo, ¿qué es un individuo? Podemos fabricar otro nuevo con la mayor facilidad; tantos como queramos.

Certainly not. I do muscular work, because I have muscles; and if I don't use my muscles I shall become a bad-tempered sitting-addict.

He had emerged from that crimson twilight into the common electric glare with a self-consciousness intensified to the pitch of agony. He was utterly miserable, and perhaps (her shining eyes accused him), perhaps it was his own fault.

La felicidad real siempre aparece escuálida en comparación con las compensaciones que ofrece la desdicha.

You can't have a lasting civilization without plenty of pleasant vices.

And then what about the society you're supposed to be adjusted to? Is it a mad society or a sane one? And even if it's pretty sane, is it right that anybody should be completely adjusted to it?

What the rest of us see only under the influence of mescalin, the artist is congenitally equipped to see all the time.

Confronted by a chair which looked like the Last Judgment—or, to be more accurate, by a Last Judgment which, after a long time and with considerable difficulty, I recognized as a chair—I found myself all at once on the brink of panic.

Quizá la más grande lección de la historia es que nadie aprendió las lecciones de la historia

He wanted to imprison his nameless misery in words.

The really influential book is not that which converts ten millions of casual readers, but rather that which converts the very few who, at any given moment, succeed in seizing power.

Bernard consideraba que el Golf Electromagnético era una pérdida de tiempo. —Pues, ¿para qué es el tiempo, si no?

His intellectual eminence carries with it corresponding moral responsibilities. The greater a man's talents, the greater his power to lead astray. It is better that one should suffer than that many should be corrupted. . . Murder kills only the individual - and, after all, what is an individual?

Se prueba el pastel comiéndolo; no en el libro de cocina.

I'd rather be myself," he said. "Myself and nasty. Not somebody else, however jolly.

Visionary experience is not the same as mystical experience. Mystical experience is beyond the realm of contradictions. Visionary experience is still within that realm. Heaven entails hell, and 'going to heaven' is no more liberating than is the descent into horror.

Every discovery in pure science is potentially subversive.