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)
We are all alone in this world, and we are all together.
The human race is a single species, and its problems are global.
The only thing that is constant is change.
To be truly free, one must be free from the fear of death.
The greatest good you can do for another is not just to share your riches but to reveal to him his own.
We are not human beings having a spiritual experience. We are spiritual beings having a human experience.
The more you love, the more you suffer.
The only way to have a friend is to be one.
The unexamined life is not worth living.
The most important of all the commandments is: Thou shalt not be boring.
To be a man, you must be a man of your time. And to be a man of your time, you must be a man of your time, but not too much of your time.
The greatest triumphs of propaganda have been accomplished, not by doing something, but by refraining from doing something. Great is truth, but still greater, from a practical point of view, is silence about truth.
To be able to choose, a man must be able to think. And to be able to think, he must be able to doubt.
The people who are most successful in life are those who are most curious.
The highest and most complete experience of life is to be found in the contemplation of beauty.
Children are not things to be molded, but are people to be unfolded.
The human mind is a device for measuring the universe, and the universe is a device for measuring the human mind.
The world is full of people who are trying to make a living, and a few who are trying to make a life.
Most ignorance is vincible ignorance. We don't know because we don't want to know.
If you want to be original, be ready to be copied.
Contemporaries of Aldous Huxley
Other Literatures born within 50 years of Aldous Huxley (1894–1963).