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.
ALDOUS HUXLEYWherever the choice has had to be made between the man of reason and the madman, the world has unhesitatingly followed the madman.
More Aldous Huxley Quotes
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Most human beings have an almost infinite capacity for taking things for granted.
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As political and economic freedom diminishes, sexual freedom tends correspondingly to increase. And the dictator will do well to encourage that freedom…it will help to reconcile his subjects to the servitude which is their fate.
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When the sun rises, it rises for everyone.
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All war propaganda consists, in the last resort, in substituting diabolical abstractions for human beings. Similarly, those who defend war have invented a pleasant sounding vocabulary of abstractions in which to describe the process of mass murder.
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Dictators can always consolidate their tyranny by an appeal to patriotism.
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Man is unique in organizing the mass murder of his own species.
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The worst enemy of life, freedom and the common decencies is total anarchy; their second worst enemy is total efficiency.
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Higher education is not necessarily a guarantee of higher virtue.
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You shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you mad.
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Reality cannot be ignored except at a price; and the longer the ignorance is persisted in, the higher and more terrible becomes the price that must be paid.
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Don’t try to behave as though you were essentially sane and naturally good. We’re all demented sinners in the same cosmic boat – and the boat is perpetually sinking.
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To be a fool at the right time is also an art.
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The trouble with fiction,” said John Rivers, “is that it makes too much sense. Reality never makes sense.
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One believes things because one has been conditioned to believe them.
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Round pegs in square holes tend to have dangerous thoughts about the social system and tend to infect others with their discontents.
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A child-like man is not a man whose development has been arrested; on the contrary, he is a man who has given himself a chance of continuing to develop long after most adults have muffled themselves in the cocoon of middle-aged habit and convention.
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The greatest triumphs of propoganda have been accomplished, not by doing something, but by refraining from doing. Great is truth, but still greater, from a practical point of view, is silence about truth.
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The greater part of the population is not very intelligent, dreads responsibility, and desires nothing better than to be told what to do. Provided the rulers do not interfere with its material comforts and its cherished beliefs, it is perfectly happy to let itself be ruled.
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People often ask me what is the most effective technique for transforming their life. It is a little embarrassing that after years and years of research and experimentation, I have to say that the best answer is – just be a little kinder.
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A really efficient totalitarian state would be one in which the all-powerful executive of political bosses and their army of managers control a population of slaves who do not have to be coerced, because they love their servitude.
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Everyone who wants to do good to the human race always ends in universal bullying.
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All gods are homemade, and it is we who pull their strings, and so, give them the power to pull ours.
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Liberty, as we all know, cannot flourish in a country that is permanently on a war footing, or even a near war footing. Permanent crisis justifies permanent control of everybody and everything by the agencies of central government.
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Beware of being too rational. In the country of the insane, the integrated man doesn’t become king. He gets lynched.
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To be well informed, one must read quickly a great number of merely instructive books. To be cultivated, one must read slowly and with a lingering appreciation the comparatively few books that have been written by men who lived, thought, and felt with style.
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Most ignorance is vincible ignorance. We don’t know because we don’t want to know.
ALDOUS HUXLEY