Aldous Huxley Quotes

If one's different, one's bound to be lonely.

«Όλοι λένε πως είμαι πολύ πνευματώδης», είπε η Λενίνα και χάιδεψε τα πόδια της.
«Πολύ». Η έκφρασή του έδειχνε να πονάει. «Σαν κρέας», σκέφτηκε. Τον κοίταξε ανήσυχα. «Δεν με βρίσκεις γεμάτη, έτσι;». Έκανε όχι. Όσο ένα κομμάτι κρέας.
«Με βρίσκεις καλή;» Κι άλλο κούνημα του κεφαλιού. «Παντού; Δηλαδή από πάσης πλευράς που λένε;»
«Τέλεια», είπε φωναχτά. Και από μέσα του. «Θεωρεί τον εαυτό της κρέας. Της αρέσει να 'ναι κρέας».

Who lives longer? The man who takes heroin for two years and dies, or a man who lives on roast beef, water and potatoes 'till 95? One passes his 24 months in eternity. All the years of the beefeater are lived only in time.

His intellectual eminence carries with it corresponding moral responsibilities. The greater a man's talents, the greater his power to lead astray.

But then every man is ludicrous if you look at him from outside, without taking into account what's going on in his heart and mind.

The course of every intellectual, if he pursues his journey long and unflinchingly enough, ends in the obvious, from which the non-intellectuals have never stirred. ...The thoroughly contemptible man may have valuable opinions, just as in some ways the admirable man can have detestable opinions. ...Many intellectuals, of course, don't get far enough to reach the obvious again. They remain stuck in a pathetic belief in rationalism and the absolute supremacy of mental values and the entirely conscious will. You've got to go further than the nineteenth-century fellows, for example; as far at least as Protagoras and Pyrrho, before you get back to the obvious in which the nonintellectuals have always remained. ...these nonintellectuals aren't the modern canaille who read the picture papers and... are preoccupied with making money... They take the main intellectualist axiom for granted—that there's an intrinsic superiority in mental, conscious, voluntary life over physical, intuitive, instinctive, emotional life. The whole of modern civilization is based on the idea that the specialized function which gives a man his place in society is more important than the whole man, or rather is the whole man, all the rest being irrelevant or even (since the physical, intuitive, instinctive and emotional part of man doesn't contribute appreciably to making money or getting on in an industrialized world) positively harmful and detestable. ...The nonintellectuals I'm thinking of are very different beings. ...There were probably quite a lot of them three thousand years ago. But the combined efforts of Plato and Aristotle, Jesus, Newton and big business have turned their descendants into the modern bourgeoisie and proletariat. The obvious that the intellectual gets back to, if he goes far enough, isn't of course the same as the obvious of the nonintellectuals. For their obvious is life itself and his recovered obvious is only the idea of that life. Not many can put flesh and blood on the idea and turn it into reality. The intellectuals who, like Rampion, don't have to return to the obvious, but have always believed in it and lived it, while at the same time leading the life of the spirit, are rarer still.

Who is going to educate the human race in the principles and practice of conservation?

They do not sweat and whine about their condition. They do not lie awake in the dark and weep for their sins.'' [...] To be a perfect animal and a perfect human - that was the ideal.

If you want to get men to act reasonably, you must set about persuading them in a maniacal manner.

It's embarrassing to tell you this, but it seems to come down mostly to just learning to be kinder.

It's a bit embarrassing to have been concerned with the human problem all one's life and to find at the end that one has no more to offer by way of advice than "try to be a little kinder.

Did you ever feel, as though you had something inside you that was only waiting for you to give it a chance to come out? Some sort of extra power that you aren't using - you know, like all the water that goes down the falls instead of through the turbines?

"And along with indifference to space, there was an even more complete indifference to time. "There seems to be plenty of it", was all I would answer when the investigator asked me to say what I felt about time. Plenty of it, but exactly how much was entirely irrelevant. I could, of course, have looked at my watch but my watch I knew was in another universe. My actual experience had been, was still, of an indefinite duration. Or alternatively, of a perpetual present made up of one continually changing apocalypse."

That would distract your attention, and attention is the whole point. Attention to the experience of something given, something you haven't invented in your imagination.

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."