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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

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.
ALDOUS HUXLEY

Art Better Desire Do Dread Greater Intelligent Nothing Population Responsibility Told
No social stability without individual stability.
ALDOUS HUXLEY

Individual No Social Stability
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
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
ALDOUS HUXLEY

Great Human Justifier Least Malice Miseries Motivation Stupidity Third Two
In all activities of life, the secret of efficiency lies in an ability to combine two seemingly incompatible states: a state of maximum activity and a state of maximum relaxation.
ALDOUS HUXLEY

Ability Activity All Combine Efficiency Incompatible Life Secret Seemingly State
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.
ALDOUS HUXLEY

Agreed Chronic Moralist Most Remorse Sentiment Undesirable
If one’s different, one’s bound to be lonely.
ALDOUS HUXLEY

Bound Different Lonely One
Ignore death up to the last moment; then, when it can’t be ignored any longer, have yourself squirted full of morphia and shuffle off in a coma. Thoroughly sensible, humane and scientific, eh?
ALDOUS HUXLEY

Coma Death Full Ignore Last Longer Moment Morphia Shuffle Squirted Yourself
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.
ALDOUS HUXLEY

Acco Doing Greatest Impish Propaganda Refraining Something Triumph
Man is unique in organizing the mass murder of his own species.
ALDOUS HUXLEY

Man Mas Murder Organizing Species Unique
Your true traveller finds boredom rather agreeable than painful. It is the symbol of his liberty – his excessive freedom.
ALDOUS HUXLEY

Agreeable Boredom Excessive Liberty Painful Rather Symbol Traveller True
In regard to propaganda the early advocates of universal literacy and a free press envisaged only two possibilities: the propaganda might be true, or the propaganda might be false. They did not foresee what in fact has happened, above all in our Western capitalist democracies.
ALDOUS HUXLEY

Advocate Early Envisage Free Literacy Possibility Press Propaganda Regar Two Universal
Assembled in a crowd, people lose their powers of reasoning and their capacity for moral choice.
ALDOUS HUXLEY

Assemble Capacity Choice Crowd Lose Moral People Power Reason
Every ceiling reached becomes a floor.
ALDOUS HUXLEY

Become Ceil Every Floor Reach
There seems to be no good reason why a thoroughly scientific dictatorship should ever be overthrown.
ALDOUS HUXLEY

Dictatorship Enthusiasm Good Loss Never One Reson Seem Thoroughly
People will come to love their oppression, to adore the technologies that undo their capacities to think.
ALDOUS HUXLEY

Adore Capable Come Love Oppression People Technology Think
The pleasures of ignorance are as great, in their way, as the pleasures of knowledge.
ALDOUS HUXLEY

Great Knowledge Pleasure Torrance Way
Which is better – to be born stupid into an intelligent society or intelligent into an insane one?
ALDOUS HUXLEY

Better Born Insane Intelligent One Society Stupid
The most shocking fact about war is that its victims and its instruments are individual human beings, and that these individual beings are condemned by the monstrous conventions of politics to murder or be murdered in quarrels not their own.
ALDOUS HUXLEY

Condemned Fact Human Being Individual Instrument Most Stock Victim
Single-mindedness is all very well in cows or baboons; in an animal claiming to belong to the same species as Shakespeare, it is simply disgraceful.
ALDOUS HUXLEY

Belong Claim Cow Dingle Disgraceful Mindedness Person Same Shakespeare Simple Species Very Well
A majority of young people seem to develop mental arteriosclerosis forty years before they get the physical kind.
ALDOUS HUXLEY

Arteriosclerosis Before Develop Get Kind Majority Mental People Physical Seem Year Young
Addiction is an increasing desire for an act that gives less and less satisfaction
ALDOUS HUXLEY

Act Addiction Desire Give Increase Less Satisfaction
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
My father considered a walk among the mountains as the equivalent of churchgoing.
ALDOUS HUXLEY

Among Church Consider Equivalent Father Going Mountain Walk
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
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.
ALDOUS HUXLEY

Behave Essentially Good Naturally Sane Try
Round pegs in square holes tend to have dangerous thoughts about the social system and tend to infect others with their discontents.
ALDOUS HUXLEY

Discontent Hole Infect Peg Round Social Square System Tend Through

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.

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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.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

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