Continued Insights from Aldous Huxley

"The worst enemy of life, freedom and the common decencies is total anarchy; their second worst enemy is total efficiency"

"The vast majority of human beings dislike and even actually dread all notions with which they are not familiar... Hence it comes about that at their first appearance innovators have generally been persecuted, and always derided as fools and madmen"

"The secret of genius is to carry the spirit of the child into old age, which mean never losing your enthusiasm"

"The quality of moral behavior varies in inverse ratio to the number of human beings involved"

"That we are not much sicker and much madder than we are is due exclusively to that most blessed and blessing of all natural graces, sleep"

"That men do not learn very much from the lessons of history is the most important of all the lessons of history"

"That all men are equal is a proposition to which, at ordinary times, no sane human being has ever given his assent"

"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"

"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"

"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?"

"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"

"To travel is to discover that everyone is wrong about other countries"

"Those who believe that they are exclusively in the right are generally those who achieve something"

"Dream in a pragmatic way"

"Defined in psychological terms, a fanatic is a man who consciously over-compensates a secret doubt"

"De Sade is the one completely consistent and thoroughgoing revolutionary of history"

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

"Children are remarkable for their intelligence and ardor, for their curiosity, their intolerance of shams, the clarity and ruthlessness of their vision"

"Chastity - the most unnatural of all the sexual perversions"

"Bondage is the life of personality, and for bondage the personal self will fight with tireless resourcefulness and the most stubborn cunning"

"Beauty is worse than wine, it intoxicates both the holder and beholder"

"An unexciting truth may be eclipsed by a thrilling lie"

"An intellectual is a person who's found one thing that's more interesting than sex"

"Amour is the one human activity of any importance in which laughter and pleasure preponderate, if ever so slightly, over misery and pain"

"All gods are homemade, and it is we who pull their strings, and so, give them the power to pull ours"

"Habit converts luxurious enjoyments into dull and daily necessities"

"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"

"What we feel and think and are is to a great extent determined by the state of our ductless glands and viscera"

"The finest works of art are precious, among other reasons, because they make it possible for us to know, if only imperfectly and for a little while, what it actually feels like to think subtly and feel nobly"

"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.'"

"The proper study of mankind is books"

"My father considered a walk among the mountains as the equivalent of churchgoing"

"Uncontrolled, the hunger and thirst after God may become an obstacle, cutting off the soul from what it desires. If a man would travel far along the mystic road, he must learn to desire God intensely but in stillness, passively and yet with all his heart and mind and strength"

"People intoxicate themselves with work so they won't see how they really are"

"We participate in a tragedy; at a comedy we only look"

"There's only one effectively redemptive sacrifice, the sacrifice of self-will to make room for the knowledge of God"

"The impulse to cruelty is, in many people, almost as violent as the impulse to sexual love - almost as violent and much more mischievous"

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

"Science has explained nothing; the more we know the more fantastic the world becomes and the profounder the surrounding darkness"

"Happiness is a hard master, particularly other people's happiness"

Page 2 of 2

Inspiring Quotes by Aldous Huxley - Page 2