#ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ NEWRANDOM

Aldous Huxley

English writer; grandson of Thomas Huxley who is remembered mainly for his depiction of a scientifically controlled utopia (1894-1963)

Update this biography »

click to add your vote (3 votes)

Famous quotes by Aldous Huxley:Sort:PopularA - Z

The finest works of art are precious, among other reasons, because they make it possible for us to know, if only imperfectly and for a little while, what it actually feels like to think subltly and feel nobly.
Experience teaches only the teachable.
I wanted to change the world. But I have found that the only thing one can be sure of changing is oneself.
Maybe this world is another planet's hell.
The secret of genius is to carry the spirit of the child into old age, which means never losing your enthusiasm.
Ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you mad.
The older dictators fell because they could never supply their subjects with enough bread, enough circuses, enough miracles and mysteries. Nor did they posses a really effective system of mind-manipulation. Under a scientific dictator, education will rea
Experience is not what happens to you it's what you do with what happens to you.
To his dog, every man is Napoleon; hence the constant popularity of dogs.
We participate in a tragedy at a comedy we only look.
A country which proposes to make use of modern war as an instrument of policy must possess a highly centralized, all-powerful executive, hence the absurdity of talking about the defense of democracy by force of arms. A democracy which makes or effectively prepares for modern scientific war must necessarily cease to be democratic.
A man's worst difficulties begin when he is able to do as he likes.
Abused as we abuse it at present, dramatic art is in no sense cathartic it is merely a form of emotional masturbation. It is the rarest thing to find a player who has not had his character affected for the worse by the practice of his profession. Nobody can make a habit of self-exhibition, nobody can exploit his personality for the sake of exercising a kind of hypnotic power over others, and remain untouched by the process.
After silence, that which comes nearest to expressing the inexpressible is music.
All that happens means something; nothing you do is ever insignificant.
An intellectual is a person who has discovered something more interesting than sex.
Art is one of the means whereby man seeks to redeem a life which is experienced as chaotic, senseless, and largely evil.
At least two-thirds of our miseries spring from human stupidity, human malice and those great motivators and justifiers of malice and stupidity idealism, dogmatism and proselytizing zeal on behalf of religous or political ideas.
At least two-thirds of our miseries spring from human stupidity, human malice and those great motivators and justifiers of malice and stupidity: idealism, dogmatism and proselytizing zeal on behalf of religous or political ideas.
Chastity: the most unnatural of the sexual perversions.
Consistency is contrary to nature, contrary to life. The only completely consistent people are dead.
Death Its the only thing we havent succeeded in completely vulgarizing.
Experience is not what happens to a man it is what a man does with what happens to him.
Experience is not what happens to you. It is what you do with what happens to you
Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored
Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored.
Finding bad reasons for what one believes for other bad reasons - that's philosophy.
Folly is often more cruel in the consequences than malice can be in the intent.
From their experience or from the recorded experience of others (history), men learn only what their passions and their metaphysical prejudices allow them to learn.
Happiness is not achieved by the conscious pursuit of happiness it is generally the by-product of other activities.
Idealism is the noble toga that political gentlemen drape over their will to power.
If the Prince of Peace should come to earth, one of the first things he would do would be to put psychiatrists in their place.
It is the customary fate of new truths to begin as heresies and to end as superstitions.
Most human beings have an almost infinite capacity for taking things for granted.
My fate cannot be mastered it can only be collaborated with and thereby, to some extent, directed. Nor am I the captain of my soul I am only its noisiest passenger.
Never put off till tomorrow the fun you can have today.
One of the great attractions of patriotism -- it fulfills our worst wishes. In the person of our nation we are able, vicariously, to bully and cheat. Bully and cheat, what's more, with a feeling that we are profoundly virtuous.
Silence is as full of potential wisdom and wit as the unhewn marble of a great sculpture.
Such prosperity as we have known up to the present is the consequence of rapidly spending the planet's irreplaceable capital.
Technological progress has merely provided us with more efficient means for going backwards.
That all men are equal is a proposition which, at ordinary times, no sane individual has ever given his assent.
That men do not learn very much from the lessons of history is the most important of all the lessons that history has to teach.
The author of the Iliad is either Homer or, if not Homer, somebody else of the same name.
The charm of history and its enigmatic lesson consist in the fact that, from age to age, nothing changes and yet everything is completely different.
The only completely consistent people are the dead.
The silent bear no witness against themselves.
The thin and precarious crust of decency is all that separates any civilization, however impressive, from the hell of anarchy or systematic tyranny which lie in wait beneath the surface.
The vast majority of human beings dislike and even dread all notions with which they are not familiar. Hence it comes about that at their first appearance innovators have always been devided as fools and madmen.
There is only one corner of the universe you can be certain of improving, and that is your own self. So you have to begin there, not outside, not on other people. That comes afterwards, when you have worked on your own corner.
There's only one corner of the universe you can be certain of improving, and that's your own self.
To us, the moment 8:17 A.M. means something - something very important, if it happens to be the starting time of our daily train. To our ancestors, such an odd eccentric instant was without significance - did not even exist. In inventing the locomotive, Watt and Stevenson were part inventors of time.
We are long before we are convinced that happiness is never to be found, and each believes it possessed by others, to keep alive the hope of obtaining it for himself.
When one's ill or unhappy, one needs something outside oneself to hold one up. It is a good thing, I think, when one has been knocked out of one's balance . to have some external job or duty to hang on to.
Words form the thread on which we string our experiences.
You never see animals going through the absurd and often horrible fooleries of magic and religion. Only man behaves with such gratuitous folly. It is the price he has to pay for being intelligent but now, as yet, intelligent enough.
You shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you mad.

Missing a quote of Aldous Huxley?

Know another good quote of Aldous Huxley? Don't keep it to yourself!

The Web's Largest Resource for

Famous Quotes & Sayings

A Member Of The STANDS4 Network