Quotes from Aldous Huxley

To be enlightened is to be aware, always, of total reality in its immanent otherness - to be aware of it and yet remain in a condition to survive as an animal. Our goal is to discover that we have always been where we ought to be. Unhappily we make the task exceedingly difficult for ourselves.

I can sympathize with people's pains, but not with their pleasure. There is something curiously boring about somebody else's happiness.

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.

An unexciting truth may be eclipsed by a thrilling falsehood.

For 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 religious or political idols

Given the nature of spiders, webs are inevitable. And given the nature of human beings, so are religions. Spiders can't help making fly-traps, and men can't help making symbols. That's what the human brain is there for - the turn the chaos of given experience into a set of manageable symbols.

What's the point of truth or beauty or knowledge when anthrax bombs are popping all around you?

The optimum population is modeled on the iceberg- eight-ninths below the water line, one-ninth above.

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.

I believe one would write better if the climate were bad. If there were a lot of wind and storms for example...

God isn't compatible with machinery and scientific medicine and universal happiness. You must make a choice. Our civilization has chosen machinery and medicine and happiness.

But the nature of the universe is such that the ends never justify the means. On the contrary, the means always determine the end.