black
grey
blue
red
brown
white

If most of us remain ignorant of ourselves, it is because self-knowledge is painful and we prefer the pleasures of illusion.

Aldous Huxley

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.
ALDOUS HUXLEY

Abstraction All Consist Diabolical Human Being Last Propaganda Resort Substitute War
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.
ALDOUS HUXLEY

All Army Boss Control Efficient Excite Manager One Political Population Powerful Really Start Totalitarian
If human beings were shown what they’re really like, they’d either kill one another as vermin, or hang themselves.
ALDOUS HUXLEY

Another Being Either Hang Human Kill Like Really Shown Themselves Vermin
Consistency is contrary to nature, contrary to life. The only completely consistent people are dead.
ALDOUS HUXLEY

Complete Consistency Contrary Dead Life Nature People
No social stability without individual stability.
ALDOUS HUXLEY

Individual No Social Stability
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.
ALDOUS HUXLEY

Except Higher Ignore Longer More Must Persist Price Really Terrible
It’s a little embarrassing that after 45 years of research & study, the best advice I can give people is to be a little kinder to each other.
ALDOUS HUXLEY

Advice Each Other Embarrassing Five Forty Give Kinder People Research Study Years
Experience is not what happens to you; it’s what you do with what happens to you.
ALDOUS HUXLEY

Experience Happen
There is only one corner of the universe you can be certain of improving, and that’s your own self.
ALDOUS HUXLEY

Certain Improve One Only Orner Own Self Universe
If we evolved a race of Isaac Newtons, that would not be progress. For the price Newton had to pay for being a supreme intellect was that he was incapable of friendship, love, fatherhood, and many other desirable things. As a man he was a failure; as a monster he was superb.
ALDOUS HUXLEY

Being Country Evolve Incapable Intellect Newton Pay Person Price Progress Race Supreme
It isn’t a matter of forgetting. What one has to learn is how to remember and yet be free of the past.
ALDOUS HUXLEY

Forgetting Free Learn Matter Past Remember Yet
You shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you mad.
ALDOUS HUXLEY

Know Mad Make Shall Truth
Most human beings have an almost infinite capacity for taking things for granted.
ALDOUS HUXLEY

Almost Being Capacity Grant Human Infinite Most Take Thing
The development of a vast mass communications industry, concerned in the main neither with the true nor the false, but with the unreal, the more or less totally irrelevant. In a word, they failed to take into account man’s almost infinite appetite for distractions.
ALDOUS HUXLEY

Communication Development Infinity Man More Neither Sitraction Totally
The older dictators fell because they could never supply their subjects with enough bread, enough circuses, enough miracles, and mysteries. Under a scientific dictatorship, education will really work’ with the result that most men and women will grow up to love their servitude and will never dream of revolution.
ALDOUS HUXLEY

Bread Circus Dictator Enough Miracle Mysteries never Old Reach Subject
But today, in the world’s most powerful democracy, the politicians and the propagandists prefer to make nonsense of democratic procedures by appealing almost exclusively to the ignorance and irrationality of the electors.
ALDOUS HUXLEY

Appear Elector Ignorance Nonsense Politician Powerful Propaganda World

If most of us remain ignorant of ourselves, it is because self-knowledge is painful and we prefer the pleasures of illusion.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

If most of us remain ignorant of ourselves, it is because self-knowledge is painful and we prefer the pleasures of illusion.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

More Aldous Huxley Quotes