Aldous Leonard Huxley was an English writer and philosopher. He wrote nearly fifty books—both novels and non-fiction works—as well as wide-ranging essays, narratives, and poems. Profoundly inspirational Aldous Huxley quotes will encourage growth in life, make you wiser and broaden your perspective.
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Famous Aldous Huxley Quotes
There is only one corner of the universe you can be certain of improving, and that’s your own self. Aldous Huxley
Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored. Aldous Huxley
Technological progress has merely provided us with more efficient means for going backwards. Aldous Huxley
Words can be like X-rays if you use them properly they’ll go through anything. You read and you’re pierced. Aldous Huxley
That men do not learn very much from the lessons of history is the most important of all the lessons of history. Aldous Huxley
After silence, that which comes nearest to expressing the inexpressible is music. Aldous Huxley
You shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you mad. Aldous Huxley
But I don’t want comfort. I want God, I want poetry, I want real danger, I want freedom, I want goodness. I want sin. Aldous Huxley
The more powerful and original a mind, the more it will incline towards the religion of solitude. Aldous Huxley
You shall know the truth and the truth shall make you mad. Aldous Huxley
The most shocking fact about war is that its victims and its instruments are individual human beings, and that these individual beings are condemned by the monstrous conventions of politics to murder or be murdered in quarrels not their own. Aldous Huxley
Maybe this world is another planet’s hell. Aldous Huxley
Dream in a pragmatic way. Aldous Huxley
Actual happiness always looks pretty squalid in comparison with the overcompensations for misery. And, of course, stability isn’t nearly so spectacular as instability. And being contented has none of the glamour of a good fight against misfortune, none of the picturesqueness of a struggle with temptation, or a fatal overthrow by passion or doubt. Happiness is never grand. Aldous Huxley
Experience teaches only the teachable. Aldous Huxley
If one’s different, one’s bound to be lonely. Aldous Huxley
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. Aldous Huxley
The more powerful and original a mind, the more it will incline towards the religion of solitude. Aldous Huxley
A child like man is not a man whose development has been arrested; on the contrary, he is a man who has given himself a chance of continuing to develop long after most adults have muffled themselves in the cocoon of middle aged habit and convention. Aldous Huxley
I want to know what passion is. I want to feel something strongly. Aldous Huxley
There’s only one effectively redemptive sacrifice, the sacrifice of self will to make room for the knowledge of God. Aldous Huxley
The real hopeless victims of mental illness are to be found among those who appear to be most normal. Many of them are normal because they are so well adjusted to our mode of existence, because their human voice has been silenced so early in their lives, that they do not even struggle or suffer or develop symptoms as the neurotic does. They are normal not in what may be called the absolute sense of the word; they are normal only in relation to a profoundly abnormal society. Their perfect adjustment to that abnormal society is a measure of their mental sickness. These millions of abnormally normal people, living without fuss in a society to which, if they were fully human beings, they ought not to be adjusted. Aldous Huxley
Man is an intelligence in servitude to his organs. Aldous Huxley
I wanted to change the world. But I have found that the only thing one can be sure of changing is oneself. Aldous Huxley
The propagandist’s purpose is to make one set of people forget that certain other sets of people are human. Aldous Huxley
An intellectual is a person who has discovered something more interesting than sex. Aldous Huxley
Most human beings have an almost infinite capacity for taking things for granted. Aldous Huxley
One believes things because one has been conditioned to believe them. Aldous Huxley
Speed, it seems to me, provides the one genuinely modern pleasure. Aldous Huxley
There are things known and there are things unknown, and in between are the doors of perception. Aldous Huxley
The secret of genius is to carry the spirit of the child into old age, which means never losing your enthusiasm. Aldous Huxley
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. Aldous Huxley
After silence, that which comes nearest to expressing the inexpressible is music. Aldous Huxley
I am I, and I wish I weren’t. Aldous Huxley
It is a bit embarrassing to have been concerned with the human problem all one’s life and find at the end that one has no more to offer by way of advice than try to be a little kinder. Aldous Huxley
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 address yourself to the task of behaving better next time. On no account brood over your wrongdoing. Rolling in the muck is not the best way of getting clean. Aldous Huxley
Maybe this world is another planet’s hell. Aldous Huxley
The secret of genius is to carry the spirit of the child into old age, which means never losing your enthusiasm. Aldous Huxley
Great is truth, but still greater, from a practical point of view, is silence about truth. By simply not mentioning certain subjects totalitarian propagandists have influenced opinion much more effectively than they could have by the most eloquent denunciations. Aldous Huxley
Most human beings have an almost infinite capacity for taking things for granted. Aldous Huxley
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. Aldous Huxley
I like being myself. Myself and nasty. Aldous Huxley
An intellectual is a person who’s found one thing that’s more interesting than sex. Aldous Huxley
Experience is not what happens to a man; it is what a man does with what happens to him. Aldous Huxley
Most ignorance is vincible ignorance. We don’t know because we don’t want to know. Aldous Huxley
We live together, we act on, and react to, one another; but always and in all circumstances we are by ourselves. The martyrs go hand in hand into the arena; they are crucified alone. Embraced, the lovers desperately try to fuse their insulated ecstasies into a single self transcendence; in vain. By its very nature every embodied spirit is doomed to suffer and enjoy in solitude. Sensations, feelings, insights, fancies all these are private and, except through symbols and at second hand, incommunicable. We can pool information about experiences, but never the experiences themselves. From family to nation, every human group is a society of island universes. Aldous Huxley
A democracy which makes or even effectively prepares for modern, scientific war must necessarily cease to be democratic. No country can be really well prepared for modern war unless it is governed by a tyrant, at the head of a highly trained and perfectly obedient bureaucracy. Aldous Huxley
Every man’s memory is his private literature. Aldous Huxley
I’m afraid of losing my obscurity. Genuineness only thrives in the dark. Like celery. Aldous Huxley
The surest way to work up a crusade in favor of some good cause is to promise people they will have a chance of maltreating someone. To be able to destroy with good conscience, to be able to behave badly and call your bad behavior righteous indignation this is the height of psychological luxury, the most delicious of moral treats. Aldous Huxley
To his dog, every man is Napoleon; hence the constant popularity of dogs. Aldous Huxley
Happiness is not achieved by the conscious pursuit of happiness; it is generally the by product of other activities. Aldous Huxley
Perhaps it’s good for one to suffer. Can an artist do anything if he’s happy? Would he ever want to do anything? What is art, after all, but a protest against the horrible inclemency of life? Aldous Huxley
Consistency is contrary to nature, contrary to life. The only completely consistent people are the dead. Aldous Huxley
Every man’s memory is his private literature. Aldous Huxley
There is only one corner of the universe you can be certain of improving, and that’s your own self. Aldous Huxley
Every man who knows how to read has it in his power to magnify himself, to multiply the ways in which he exists, to make his life full, significant and interesting. Aldous Huxley
No social stability without individual stability. Aldous Huxley
Cynical realism is the intelligent man’s best excuse for doing nothing in an intolerable situation. Aldous Huxley
All that happens means something; nothing you do is ever insignificant. Aldous Huxley
An unexciting truth may be eclipsed by a thrilling lie. Aldous Huxley
I’d rather be myself, he said. Myself and nasty. Not somebody else, however jolly. Aldous Huxley
Consistency is contrary to nature, contrary to life. The only completely consistent people are dead. Aldous Huxley
It’s dark because you are trying too hard. Lightly child, lightly. Learn to do everything lightly. Yes, feel lightly even though you’re feeling deeply. Just lightly let things happen and lightly cope with them. So throw away your baggage and go forward. There are quicksands all about you, sucking at your feet, trying to suck you down into fear and self pity and despair. That’s why you must walk so lightly. Lightly my darling. Aldous Huxley
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. Aldous Huxley
I ate civilization. It poisoned me; I was defiled. And then, he added in a lower tone, I ate my own wickedness. Aldous Huxley
What is absurd and monstrous about war is that men who have no personal quarrel should be trained to murder one another in cold blood. Aldous Huxley
Man is so intelligent that he feels impelled to invent theories to account for what happens in the world. Unfortunately, he is not quite intelligent enough, in most cases, to find correct explanations. So that when he acts on his theories, he behaves very often like a lunatic. Aldous Huxley
Science has explained nothing; the more we know the more fantastic the world becomes and the profounder the surrounding darkness. Aldous Huxley
That all men are equal is a proposition which at ordinary times no sane individual has ever given his assent. Aldous Huxley
People intoxicate themselves with work so they won’t see how they really are. Aldous Huxley
A really efficient totalitarian state would be one in which the all powerful executive of political bosses and their army of managers control a population of slaves who do not have to be coerced, because they love their servitude. Aldous Huxley
Words, words, words! They shut one off from the universe. Three quarters of the time one’s never in contact with things, only with the beastly words that stand for them. Aldous Huxley
Ironically enough, the only people who can hold up indefinitely under the stress of modern war are psychotics. Individual insanity is immune to the consequences of collective insanity. Aldous Huxley
There are things known and there are things unknown, and in between are the doors of perception. Aldous Huxley
Chastity the most unnatural of all the sexual perversions, he added parenthetically, out of Remy de Gourmont. Aldous Huxley
Experience is not what happens to you; it’s what you do with what happens to you. Aldous Huxley
The propagandist’s purpose is to make one set of people forget that certain other sets of people are human. Aldous Huxley
Beauty is worse than wine, it intoxicates both the holder and beholder. Aldous Huxley
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 sure, 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. Aldous Huxley
To travel is to discover that everyone is wrong about other countries. Aldous Huxley
Every man with a little leisure and enough money for railway tickets, every man, indeed, who knows how to read, has it in his power to magnify himself, to multiply the ways in which he exists, to make his life full, significant and interesting. Aldous Huxley
Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored. Aldous Huxley
One of the principal functions of a friend is to suffer in a milder and symbolic form the punishments that we should like, but are unable, to inflict upon our enemies. Aldous Huxley
The most valuable of all education is the ability to make yourself do the thing you have to do, when it has to be done, whether you like it or not. Aldous Huxley
Armaments, universal debt, and planned obsolescence those are the three pillars of Western prosperity. If war, waste, and moneylenders were abolished, you’d collapse. And while you people are overconsuming the rest of the world sinks more and more deeply into chronic disaster. Aldous Huxley
The worst enemy of life, freedom and the common decencies is total anarchy; their second worst enemy is total efficiency. Aldous Huxley
Great is truth, but still greater, from a practical point of view, is silence about truth. Aldous Huxley
Everyone who wants to do good to the human race always ends in universal bullying. Aldous Huxley
For in spite of language, in spite of intelligence and intuition and sympathy, one can never really communicate anything to anybody. Aldous Huxley
Several excuses are always less convincing than one. Aldous Huxley
Technological progress has merely provided us with more efficient means for going backwards. Aldous Huxley
There isn’t any formula or method. You learn to love by loving by paying attention and doing what one thereby discovers has to be done. Aldous Huxley
In spite of language, in spite of intelligence and intuition and sympathy, one can never really communicate anything to anybody. The essential substance of every thought and feeling remains incommunicable, locked up in the impenetrable strong room of the individual soul and body. Our life is a sentence of perpetual solitary confinement. Aldous Huxley
Speed provides the one genuinely modern pleasure. Aldous Huxley
