Aldous Huxley

Technological progress has merely provided us with more efficient means for going backwards.

The author of the Iliad is either Homer or, if not Homer, somebody else of the same name.
Aldous Huxley - Vendeta for the Western World, 1945
Happiness is not achieved by the conscious pursuit of happiness; it is generally the by-product of other activities.

Consistency is contrary to nature, contrary to life. The only completely consistent people are dead.

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.

The only completely consistent people are the dead.

Experience teaches only the teachable.
Aldous Huxley - "Music at Night", 1931
After silence, that which comes nearest to expressing the inexpressible is music.

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.
Aldous Huxley - "Texts and Pretexts", 1932
Experience is not what happens to a man; it is what a man does with what happens to him.
Aldous Huxley - unknown
Words form the thread on which we string our experiences.

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.
Aldous Huxley - Eyeless in Gaza (1936)
Death ? It?s the only thing we haven?t succeeded in completely vulgarizing.

That all men are equal is a proposition which, at ordinary times, no sane individual has ever given his assent.

Chastity: the most unnatural of the sexual perversions.

Ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you mad.
Aldous Huxley - "Themes and Variations", 1950
Most human beings have an almost infinite capacity for taking things for granted.

The silent bear no witness against themselves.

Experience is not what happens to you. It is what you do with what happens to you

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.

I wanted to change the world. But I have found that the only thing one can be sure of changing is oneself.

An intellectual is a person who has discovered something more interesting than sex.

Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored

Most human beings have an almost infinite capacity for taking things for granted.

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.
Aldous Huxley - "Proper Studies", 1927
Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored.

To his dog, every man is Napoleon; hence the constant popularity of dogs.

All that happens means something; nothing you do is ever insignificant.

Folly is often more cruel in the consequences than malice can be in the intent.

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.

- Aldous Huxley