Aldous Huxley
Brave New World, visionary dystopian novelist
Most quoted
"As political and economic freedom diminishes, sexual freedom tends compensatingly to increase. And the dictator (unless he is so foolish as to provoke resentment by forbidding it) will do well to encourage that freedom. In conjunction with the freedom to daydream under the influence of dope, the freedom to indulge in uninhibited sex will help reconcile his subjects to the servitude which is their lot."
— from Brave New World Revisited, 1958
"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."
— from The Doors of Perception, 1954
"Chronic remorse, as all the moralists are agreed, is a most undesirable sentiment. If you have behaved badly, repent, make what amends you can and then dismiss the matter from your mind. No amount of brooding on the past will alter what has happened. But by brooding on the past you can ruin the present and the future. These are the things to which one should pay attention."
— from Brave New World, 1932
All quotes by Aldous Huxley (265)
The most important of all the commandments is this: 'Thou shalt not be boring.'
The human mind is a device for measuring the universe.
The highest and most complete experience of the divine is to be found in the here and now.
We live together, we act on, and react to, one another; but always and in all circumstances we are by ourselves.
Perhaps it's good to have a beautiful mind, but an even greater gift is to discover a beautiful heart.
The really important revolution is not the economic or the political, but the psychological.
Children are at once the most sensitive and the most insensitive of creatures.
A man's got to be a man. And a woman's got to be a woman. And that's all there is to it.
The aim of life is to live, and to live means to be aware, joyously, drunkenly, serenely, divinely aware.
If you want to change the world, you must first change yourself.
The secret of happiness is to make others happy.
The highest art is always the most religious, and the greatest artist is always the most devout.
The world is a stage, but the play is badly cast.
The more we are in harmony with the universe, the more we are in harmony with ourselves.
The human race is a race of slaves, and the only way to be free is to be a master.
The greatest enemy of knowledge is not ignorance, it is the illusion of knowledge.
Happiness is a by-product of an effort to make someone else happy.
The deepest craving of human nature is the need to be appreciated.
The more you know, the more you know you don't know.
Art is a device for making us see the world as it is, not as we think it is.
Contemporaries of Aldous Huxley
Other Literatures born within 50 years of Aldous Huxley (1894–1963).