We don't want to change. Every change is a menace to stability. - Aldous Huxley

The legs, for example, of that chair — how miraculous their tubularity, how supernatural their polished smoothness! I spent several minutes — or was it several centuries? — not merely gazing at those bamboo legs, but actually being them — -or rather being myself in them; or, to be still more accurate (for "I" was not involved in the case, nor in a certain sense were "they") being my Not-self in the Not-self which was the chair.

At this point we find ourselves confronted by a very disquieting question: Do we really wish to act upon our knowledge?

The people who make wars, the people who kill and torture and tell lies in the name of their sacred causes, the really evil people in a word- these are never the publicans and the sinners. No, they're the virtuous, respectable men, who have the finest feelings, the best brains, the noblest ideals.