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Aldous Huxley

260 quotes

“Most human beings have an almost infinite capacity for taking things for granted.”
Aldous Huxley (1894–1963) said by 1963 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Man is an intelligence, not served by, but in servitude to his organs.”
Aldous Huxley (1894–1963) said by 1963 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“A belief in hell and the knowledge that every ambition is doomed to frustration at the hands of a skeleton have never prevented the majority of human beings from behaving as though death were no more than an unfounded rumour, and survival a thing beyond the bounds of possibility.”
Aldous Huxley (1894–1963) said by 1963 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“But a priest's life is not supposed to be well-rounded; it is supposed to be one-pointed — a compass, not a weathercock.”
Aldous Huxley (1894–1963) said by 1963 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Every crusader is apt to go mad. He is haunted by the wickedness which he attributes to his enemies; it becomes in some sort a part of him.”
Aldous Huxley (1894–1963) said by 1963 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“It had been, when I read it, only a vaguely pregnant piece of nonsense. Now it was all as clear as day, as evident as Euclid. Of course the Dharma-Body of the Buddha was the hedge at the bottom of the garden. At the same time, and no less obviously, it was these flowers, it was anything that I—or rather the blessed Not-I, released for a moment from my throttling embrace—cared to look at.”
Aldous Huxley (1894–1963) said by 1963 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I was looking at my furniture, not as the utilitarian who has to sit on chairs, to write at desks and tables, and not as the cameraman or scientific recorder, but as the pure aesthete whose concern is only with forms and their relationships within the field of vision or the picture space. But as I looked, this purely aesthetic, Cubist's-eye view gave place to what I can only describe as the sacramental vision of reality. I was back where I had been when I was looking at the flowers—back in a world where everything shone with the Inner Light, and was infinite in its significance.”
Aldous Huxley (1894–1963) said by 1963 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“How significant is the enormous heightening, under mescalin, of the perception of color! ... Man's highly developed color sense is a biological luxury—inestimably precious to him as an intellectual and spiritual being, but unnecessary to his survival as an animal. ... Mescalin raises all colors to a higher power and makes the percipient aware of innumerable fine shades of difference, to which, at ordinary times, he is completely blind. It would seem that, for Mind at Large, the so-called secondary characters of things are primary.”
Aldous Huxley (1894–1963) said by 1963 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“We live together, we act on, and react to, one another; but always and in all circumstances we are by ourselves. The martyrs go hand in hand into the arena; they are crucified alone. Embraced, the lovers desperately try to fuse their insulated ecstacies into a single self-transcendence; in vain. By its very nature every embodied spirit is doomed to suffer and enjoy in solitude.”
Aldous Huxley (1894–1963) said by 1963 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“We can pool information about experiences, but never the experiences themselves. From family to nation, every human group is a society of island universes.”
Aldous Huxley (1894–1963) said by 1963 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“To see ourselves as others see us is a most salutary gift. Hardly less important is the capacity to see others as they see themselves.”
Aldous Huxley (1894–1963) said by 1963 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I was seeing what Adam had seen on the morning of his creation — the miracle, moment by moment, of naked existence.”
Aldous Huxley (1894–1963) said by 1963 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“What the rest of us see only under the influence of mescalin, the artist is congenitally equipped to see all the time. His perception is not limited to what is biologically or socially useful.”
Aldous Huxley (1894–1963) said by 1963 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The man who comes back through the Door in the Wall will never be quite the same as the man who went out. He will be wiser but less cocksure, happier but less self-satisfied, humbler in acknowledging his ignorance yet better equipped to understand the relationship of words to things, of systematic reasoning to the unfathomable Mystery which it tries, forever vainly, to comprehend.”
Aldous Huxley (1894–1963) said by 1963 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“To be shaken out of the ruts of ordinary perception, to be shown for a few timeless hours the outer and inner world, not as they appear to an animal obsessed with survival or to a human being obsessed with words and notions, but as they are apprehended, directly and unconditionally, by Mind at Large — this is an experience of inestimable value to everyone and especially to the intellectual.”
Aldous Huxley (1894–1963) said by 1963 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Art, I suppose, is only for beginners, or else for those resolute dead-enders, who have made up their minds to be content with the ersatz of Suchness, with symbols rather than with what they signify, with the elegantly composed recipe in lieu of actual dinner.”
Aldous Huxley (1894–1963) said by 1963 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The really important facts were that spatial relationships had ceased to matter very much and that my mind was perceiving the world in terms of other than spatial categories. At ordinary times the eye concerns itself with such problems as where? — how far? — how situated in relation to what? In the mescaline experience the implied questions to which the eye responds are of another order. Place and distance cease to be of much interest. The mind does its perceiving in terms of intensity of existence, profundity of significance, relationships within a pattern.”
Aldous Huxley (1894–1963) said by 1963 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“And suddenly I had an inkling of what it must feel like to be mad.”
Aldous Huxley (1894–1963) said by 1963 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I strongly suspect that most of the great knowers of Suchness paid very little attention to art.... (To a person whose transfigured and transfiguring mind can see the All in every this, the first-rateness or tenth-rateness of even a religious painting will be a matter of the most sovereign indifference.) Art, I suppose, is only for beginners, or else for those resolute dead-enders, who have made up their minds to be content with the ersatz of Suchness, with symbols rather than with what they signify, with the elegantly composed recipe in lieu of actual dinner.”
Aldous Huxley (1894–1963) said by 1963 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The man who comes back through the Door in the Wall will never be quite the same as the man who went out. He will be wiser but less sure, happier but less self-satisfied, humbler in acknowledging his ignorance yet better equipped to understand the relationship of words to things, of systematic reasoning to the unfathomable mystery which it tries, forever vainly, to comprehend.”
Aldous Huxley (1894–1963) said by 1963 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“In the days before machinery men and women who wanted to amuse themselves were compelled, in their humble way, to be artists. Now they sit still and permit professionals to entertain them by the aid of machinery. It is difficult to believe that general artistic culture can flourish in this atmosphere of passivity.”
Aldous Huxley (1894–1963) said by 1963 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“All that the conscious ego can do is to formulate wishes, which are then carried out by forces which it controls very little and understands not at all.”
Aldous Huxley (1894–1963) said by 1963 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Bed," as the Italian proverb succinctly puts it, "is the poor man's opera.”
Aldous Huxley (1894–1963) said by 1963 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I don't think that there are any sinister persons deliberately trying to rob people of their freedom but I do think, first of all, that there are a number of impersonal forces which are pushing in the direction of less and less freedom. And I also thing there are a number of technological devices which anybody who wishes to use, can use, to accelerate this process of going away from freedom, of imposing control.”
Aldous Huxley (1894–1963) said by 1963 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I mean, a genuinely productive society. I mean you could produce plenty of goods without much freedom, but I think the whole sort of creative life of man is ultimately impossible without a considerable measure of individual freedom, of initiative, creation, all these things which we value, and I think value properly, are impossible without a large measure of freedom.”
Aldous Huxley (1894–1963) said by 1963 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The soul of wit may become the very body of untruth.”
Aldous Huxley (1894–1963) said by 1963 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The nature of power is such that even those who have not sought it, but have had it forced upon them, tend to acquire a taste for more.”
Aldous Huxley (1894–1963) said by 1963 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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 central government.”
Aldous Huxley (1894–1963) said by 1963 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Democracy can hardly be 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 centralization of power.”
Aldous Huxley (1894–1963) said by 1963 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Never have so many been manipulated so much by so few.”
Aldous Huxley (1894–1963) said by 1963 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Societies are composed of individuals and are good only insofar as they help individuals to realize their potentialities and to lead a happy and creative life.”
Aldous Huxley (1894–1963) said by 1963 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“In the course of evolution nature has gone to endless trouble to see that every individual is unlike every other individual.... Physically and mentally, each one of us is unique. Any culture which, in the interests of efficiency or in the name of some political or religious dogma, seeks to standardize the human individual, commits an outrage against man's biological nature.”
Aldous Huxley (1894–1963) said by 1963 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“It is in the social sphere, in the realm of politics and economics, that the Will to Order becomes really dangerous.”
Aldous Huxley (1894–1963) said by 1963 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“However hard they try, men cannot create a social organism, they can only create an organization. In the process of trying to create an organism they will merely create a totalitarian despotism.”
Aldous Huxley (1894–1963) said by 1963 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“If a nation expects to be ignorant and free,” said Jefferson, “it expects what never was and never will be.”
Aldous Huxley (1894–1963) said by 1963 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“In regard to propaganda the early advocates of universal literacy and a free press envisaged only two possibilities: the propaganda might be true, or it might be false. They did not foresee what in fact has happened, above all in our Western capitalist democracies—the development of a vast mass communications industry, concerned in the main neither with the true nor the false, but with the unreal, the more or less totally irrelevant. In a word, they failed to take into account man's almost infinite appetite for distraction.”
Aldous Huxley (1894–1963) said by 1963 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Assembled in a crowd, people lose their powers of reasoning and their capacity for moral choice.”
Aldous Huxley (1894–1963) said by 1963 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Unlike the masses, intellectuals have a taste for rationality and an interest in facts.”
Aldous Huxley (1894–1963) said by 1963 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The survival of democracy depends on the ability of large numbers of people to make realistic choices in the light of adequate information.”
Aldous Huxley (1894–1963) said by 1963 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The indispensible is not necessarily the desirable.”
Aldous Huxley (1894–1963) said by 1963 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Most kings and priests have been despotic, and all religions have been riddled with superstition.”
Aldous Huxley (1894–1963) said by 1963 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The effectiveness of political and religious propaganda depends upon the methods employed, not upon the doctrines taught. These doctrines may be true or false, wholesome or pernicious—it makes little or no difference.”
Aldous Huxley (1894–1963) said by 1963 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“An unexciting truth may be eclipsed by a thrilling falsehood.”
Aldous Huxley (1894–1963) said by 1963 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Children are nowhere taught, in any systematic way, to distinguish true from false, or meaningful from meaningless, statements. Why is this so? Because their elders, even in the democratic countries, do not want them to be given this kind of education.”
Aldous Huxley (1894–1963) said by 1963 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Who is going to educate the human race in the principles and practice of conservation?”
Aldous Huxley (1894–1963) said by 1963 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“In any race between human numbers and natural resources, time is against us.”
Aldous Huxley (1894–1963) said by 1963 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“It is a political axiom that power follows property.”
Aldous Huxley (1894–1963) said by 1963 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“At this point we find ourselves confronted by a very disquieting question: Do we really wish to act upon our knowledge?”
Aldous Huxley (1894–1963) said by 1963 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Rational and kindly behavior tends to produce good results and these results remain good even when the behavior which produced them was itself produced by a pill.”
Aldous Huxley (1894–1963) said by 1963 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: In Moksha: Writings on Psychedelics and the Visionary Experience (1977), p. 99
“Both of us victims of the same twentieth-century plague. Not the Black Death, this time; the Grey Life.”
Aldous Huxley (1894–1963) said by 1963 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source