Aldous Huxley

"Maybe this world is another planet’s hell."

"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."

"Disappointed in his hope that I would give him the fictional equivalent of One Hundred Ways of Cooking Eggs or the Carnet de la Ménagère, he began to cross-examine me about my methods of collecting material. Did I keep a notebook or a daily journal? Did I jot down thoughts and phrases in a cardindex? Did I systematically frequent the drawing-rooms of the rich and fashionable? Or did I, on the contrary, inhabit the Sussex downs? or spend my evenings looking for copy in East End gin-palaces? Did I think it was wise to frequent the company of intellectuals? Was it a good thing for a writer of novels to try to be well educated, or should he confine his reading exclusively to other novels? And so on. I did my best to reply to these questions — as non-committally, of course, as I could. And as the young man still looked rather disappointed, I volunteered a final piece of advice, gratuitously. My young friend, I said, if you want to be a psychological novelist and write about human beings, the best thing you can do is to keep a pair of cats. And with that I left him. I hope, for his own sake, that he took my advice."

"But all the same, insisted the Savage, it is natural to believe in God when you're alone–quite alone, in the night, thinking about death …But people never are alone now, said Mustapha Mond. We make them hate solitude; and we arrange their lives so that it's almost impossible for them ever to have it."

"Los hombres siempre han sido presa de las distracciones, que son el pecado original de la mente; sin embargo, hasta ahora nunca se había hecho ningún intento por organizar y explorar las distracciones, por hacer de ellas, debido a su importancia económica, el mello y el centro vital de la vida humana, es decir, por idealizarlas y convertirlas en las más altas manifestaciones de la actividad mental."

"Technological progress has merely provided us with more efficient means for going backwards."

"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."

"Sons have always a rebellious wish to be disillusioned by that which charmed their fathers."

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

"Your true traveller finds boredom rather agreeable than painful. It is the symbol of his liberty - his excessive freedom. He accepts his boredom, when it comes, not merely philosophically, but almost with pleasure."

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

"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."

"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."

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

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

"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."

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

"Man approaches the unattainable truth through a succession of errors."

"Proverbs are always platitudes until you have personally experienced the truth of them."

"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."