Aldous Huxley quotes - page 4

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 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. View quote
Aldous Huxley
At this point we find ourselves confronted by a very disquieting question: Do we really wish to act upon our knowledge? View quote
Aldous Huxley
All war propaganda consists, in the last resort, in substituting diabolical abstractions for human beings. Similarly, those who defend war have invented a pleasant sounding vocabulary of abstractions in which to describe the process of mass murder. View quote
Aldous Huxley
The survival of democracy depends on the ability of large numbers of people to make realistic choices in the light of adequate information. View quote
Aldous Huxley
Ending is better than mending. View quote
Aldous Huxley
Words are good servants but bad masters. View quote
Aldous Huxley
The nature of power is such that even those who have not sought it, but have had it forced upon them, tend to acquire a taste for more. View quote
Aldous Huxley
The indispensible is not necessarily the desirable. View quote
Aldous Huxley
Can you say something about nothing? View quote
Aldous Huxley
To be excited is still to be unsatisfied. (Aldous Huxley)
All democracies are based on the proposition that power is very dangerous and that it is extremely important not to let any one person or small group have too much power for too long a time. View quote
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. View quote
Aldous Huxley
Societies are composed of individuals and are good only insofar as they help individuals to realize their potentialities and to lead a happy and creative life. View quote
Aldous Huxley
To see ourselves as others see us is a most salutary gift. Hardly less important is the capacity to see others as they see themselves. View quote
Aldous Huxley
A man can smile and smile and be a villain. View quote
Aldous Huxley
For in spite of language, in spite of intelligence and intuition and sympathy, one can never really communicate anything to anybody. View quote
Aldous Huxley
Jehovah, Allah, the Trinity, Jesus, Buddha, are names for a great variety of human virtues, human mystical experiences, human remorses, human compensatory fantasies, human terrors, human cruelties. If all men were alike, all the world would worship the same God. View quote
Aldous Huxley
Unlike the masses, intellectuals have a taste for rationality and an interest in facts. View quote
Aldous Huxley
Parodies and caricatures are the most penetrating of criticisms. View quote
Aldous Huxley
In the days before machinery men and women who wanted to amuse themselves were compelled, in their humble way, to be artists. Now they sit still and permit professionals to entertain them by the aid of machinery. It is difficult to believe that general artistic culture can flourish in this atmosphere of passivity. (Aldous Huxley)
To talk about religion except in terms of human psychology is an irrelevance. View quote
Aldous Huxley
What's the point of truth or beauty or knowledge when anthrax bombs are popping all around you? View quote
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. View quote
Aldous Huxley
We are not our own any more than what we possess is our own. We did not make ourselves, we cannot be supreme over ourselves. We are not our own masters. View quote
Aldous Huxley