Aldous Huxley, Brave New World

"For I am you and you are I."

"-make them lose their faith in happiness as the Sovereign Good and take to believing instead, that the goal was somewhere beyond, somewhere outside the present human sphere; that the purpose of life was not the maintenance of well-being..."

"It is their duty to be infantile, even against their inclination."

"And all our yesterdays have lighted fools the way to dusty death."

"And it's what you never will write," said the Controller. "Because, if it were really like Othello nobody could understand it, however new it might be. And if were new, it couldn't possibly be like Othello."

"He was digging in his garden--digging, too, in his own mind, laboriously turning up the substance of his thought. Death--and he drove in his spade once, and again, and yet again. And all our yesterdays have lighted fools they way to dusty death. A convincing thunder rumbled through the words. He lifted another spadeful of earth. Why had Linda died? Why had she been allowed to become gradually less than human and at last... He shuddered. A good kissing carrion. He planted his foot on his spade and stamped it fiercely into the tough ground. As flies to wanton boys are we to the gods; they kills us for their sport. Thunder again; words that proclaimed themselves true--truer somehow than truth itself. And yet that same Gloucester had called them ever-gentle gods. Besides, thy best of rest is sleep, and that thou oft provok'st; yet grossly fear'st thy death which is no more. No more than sleep. Sleep. Perchance to dream. His spade struck against a stone; he stooped to pick it up. For in that sleep of death, what dreams...?"

"Yes," Mustapha Mond was saying, "that's another item in the cost of stability. It isn't only art that's incompatible with happiness; it's also science. Science is dangerous; we have to keep it most carefully chained and muzzled."

"That is the secret of happiness and virtue - liking what you've got to do."

"Imagine a factory staffed by Alphas—that is to say by separate and unrelated individuals of good heredity and conditioned so as to be capable (within limits) of making a free choice and assuming responsibilities. Imagine it!"

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

"The greater a man's talents, the greater his power to lead astray."

"There's so much one doesn't know; it wasn't my business to know. I mean, when a child asks you how a helicopter works or who made the world–well, what are you to answer if you're a Beta and have always worked in the Fertilizing Room? What are you to answer?"

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

"One believes things because one has been conditioned to believe them."

"Chronic remorse, as all the moralists are agreed, is a most undesirable sentiment. If you have behaved badly, repent, make what amends you can and address yourself to the task of behaving better next time. On no account brood over your wrongdoing. Rolling in the muck is not the best way of getting clean."

"Shut lips, sleeping faces,Every stopped machine,The dumb and littered places Where crowds have been:. All silences rejoice,Weep (loudly or low),Speak-but with the voice Of whom, I do not know."

"Feeling lurks in that interval of time between desire and its consummation."

"You pays your money and you takes your choice."

"Generalities are intellectually necessary evils."

"Her cheeks were flushed. She caught hold of the Savage's arm and pressed it, limp, against her side. He looked down at her for a moment, pale, pained, desiring, and ashamed of his desire. He was not worthy, not... Their eyes for a moment met. What treasures hers promised! A queen's ransom of temperament. Hastily he looked away, disengaged his imprisoned arm. He was obscurely terrified lest she should cease to be something he could feel himself unworthy of."