Quotes from Aldous Huxley

I mean what does a democracy depend on? A democracy depends on the individual voter making an intelligent and rational choice for what he regards as his enlightened self-interest, in any given circumstance.

Simplicity is no virtue unless you are potentially complicated.

Greatness is nothing more nor less than the harmonious functioning of the faculties of the head and heart; the shorter the neck, the more closely these two organs approach one another; argal…It was convincing.

As a lover or a dipsomaniac, I've no doubt of your being a most fascinating specimen. But as a combiner of forms, you must honestly admit it, you're a bore.

Success went fizzily to Bernard's head, and in the process completely reconciled him (as any good intoxicant should do) to a world which, up till then, he had found very unsatisfactory. In so far as it recognized him as important, the order of things was good.

Universal happiness keeps the wheels steadily turning; truth and beauty can't. Whenever the masses seized political power, then it was happiness rather than truth or beauty that mattered. Happiness has got to be paid for. It hasn't been very good for truth of course. But it's been very good for happiness.

Fortunately, however, birds don't understand pep talks. Not even St. Francis'. Just imagine, he went on, preaching sermons to perfectly good thrushes and goldfinches and chiff-chaffs! What presumption! Why couldn't he have kept his mouth shut and let the birds preach to him?

When in doubt, always act on the assumption that people are more honorable than you have any solid reason for supposing they are.

Consequently, we find it convenient to be misled by the inadequacies of language and to believe (not always, of course, but just when it suits us) that things, persons and events are as completely distinct and separate one from another as the words, by means of which we think about them.

After all, what is an individual?

No holiday is ever anything but a disappointment.

The sum of evil, Pascal remarked, would be much diminished if men could only learn to sit quietly in their rooms.